Hahahahahahaha. A guy named Wayne Madsen at a leftist site called CounterPunch has an entire column making fun of George Bush for supposedly forcing military personnel to eat that famous Thanksgiving dinner at 6 a.m. The only problem, as Brian O’Connell points out, is that they ate the dinner at 6 p.m.
Based on his sloppy mistake about the time, Madsen writes a whole piece mocking the supposed 6 a.m. dinner. In the process, he makes plenty of idiotic statements. For example, he claims that
our military men and women were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast.
He also says:
I would have thought most of the troops, many of whom are support personnel who work relatively normal working hours, would have been more surprised when they were ordered to get up before sunrise to eat Thanksgiving dinner between 6:00 and 7:30 A.M.
Madsen is proud that he is the only guy who figured this out. He says that “the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving ‘breakfast dinner.’” So why does he think nobody else remarked on the unusual timing of the dinner?
Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn.
Or, Mr. Madsen, you could chalk it up to the fact that you are an idiot.
This is rich. Hurry and look before they figure out how stupid they were and take it down. Maybe one of you computer-savvy types can even save us a screen shot, to preserve the evidence. That way we can all laugh at this imbecile for years to come.
(Via Pejmanesque.)
UPDATE: It gets better. O’Connell confronted Madsen with the evidence (click on the O’Connell link above for the update), and Madsen is sticking with the story! He is basing his argument on a Washington Post report that contains an obvious typo. O’Connell pointed out the mountain of proof that the dinner really took place in the evening (again, see O’Connell’s update), and Madsen appears to be ignoring it.
This means that the ridiculous piece will probably stay up at Counterpunch, as a powerful testament to liberals’ desperate need to believe the worst about Bush — even when doing so proves them to be utter fools.
UPDATE x2: Thanks to Eugene Volokh for the mention, but the credit goes to Brian O’Connell for catching this nonsense. Make sure to visit his posts (linked above) for the full story.
UPDATE x3: A commenter to this post says Madsen has “apparently retracted” the story. Well, sort of, but not really. As Brian O’Connell notes, Madsen has a statement at Indymedia which acknowledges that the story is bogus. But the original article is still up at Counterpunch, with no retraction or admission of error as of 9:15 a.m. Pacific time on Sunday, November 30. That ain’t much of a retraction, in my book. [UPDATE: Actually, O'Connell says in the comments to this post that he e-mailed Madsen about this "retraction" and Madsen says that the Indymedia statement is not his. So there has been no retraction at all -- not even one of the half-assed variety.]
Madsen’s bogus story is still making its way through the loony portion of the internet. The Counterpunch version is linked at anti-war site WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM and is copied at the Jeff Rense site. Until Madsen issues a correction at the source, this lunacy will continue to spread — to the great amusement of many like myself.
UPDATE x4: Anticipating Madsen’s inevitable decision (still not forthcoming!) to remove this idiocy, intrepid reader Richard has saved us a copy, here. Bookmark it, as an enduring document of the left’s persistent willful blindness to obvious facts in their pursuit of Bush-bashing.
