Last night, (Friday 25 July) over the course of several hours, I had email exchanges with various members of the milblog community, including Matt Burden of Blackfive, regarding the original email.
The content, or subject matter, of the email is one Army officer's view of the events of the day.
True or not, the email itself is genuine and was sent by a member of the military.
Snopes has it listed as false, based on their investigations. However there is a final entry on the Snopes page that should be noted.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/afghanistan.asp
Reading the Snopes page would leave one with the impression that the email is false, but the last few paragraphs on Snopes are the enigma.
The author of the email was contacted by Snopes.
He responded and asked that the email be removed because it was intended only for his family. (Good luck with that)
Based on that, the email itself is real.
It is the CONTENT of the email that Snopes is listing as false, not the fact that the email was sent.
When the text of the email was posted on Blackfive, Matt had removed all identifying references, including the Army officer's name, out of respect for his privacy.
When the email itself began its journey through the MAIL system, the person who forwarded it did not give the Army officer the same courtesy.
Here’s a tip for future events of this nature:
REMOVE ALL REFERENCES TO IDENTITY.
We owe the members of our military at least that much and it will hinder Snopes investigations which will result in them being unable to give a definite true or false.
(Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.)
I will respectfully ask that you backtrack and send this back up the line to your respective email loops.
**UPDATE ENDS**
Most of you know I spend my day in a pickup truck monitoring construction procedures at a power plant somewhere in central VA. I have my laptop, wireless card, a few books and the FM radio.
I am usually listening to country music, cause I love country music. However, with the current political climate, I have been scanning the dial for alternatives to the usual fare, until Glenn Beck comes on, and then Rush.
Yesterday, I hit the seek button and found
93.1 The Wolf, a country music station I had not heard before. The song playing was one of my favorites, "I Don't Even Know My Last Name" so I left it there and listened.
The song finished and over the airwaves came the voices of two of the most Southern individuals I have ever heard, besides my friend
Tankerbabe.The morning show on 93.1 is called
Rick and Bubba. They are AWESOME. It's morning FM conservative talk radio. No games, no yuck it up, just straight talk from two Americans who absolutely get it, interspersed with great country music.
Today, imagine my surprise as I listened to these two fine individuals interview one of the smartest men in the country, none other than
Dr Walter E Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University. It was great.
Then, in between doing some work stuff, I happened to hear Rick and Bubba talking about this
piece of internet lore and wondering if it was genuine. Since it was posted on Blackfive by someone I know personally, I immediately called the show, spoke to a very nice young lady and encouraged her to visit Blackfive and verify the authenticity. I then sent them the link to that post and also
this post, which is another report on the messiah's visit to our brave military fighting the War on Terror.
I offered to provide any information they needed to verify to their listeners that the stories are indeed actual emails from deployed military.
Since any information on the internet is susupect, any time you know for a fact that the story is true, every attempt should be made to spread the accurate information, with as much diligence as we provide to discounting stories that are not true.
