MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Australian Age op-ed writer spreading Jesse MacBeth lie

• Posted by Beth on July 29th, 2006 filed in General, Iraq, Journalism, Moonbats, Stupid, The War, WTF    

I knew that once the Jesse MacBeth storm died down, someone would recycle the story as fact. Terry Lane writes at The Age:

Why doesn’t the Government hold an inquiry into the video evidence of US Army Ranger Jessie Macbeth? Macbeth served in Iraq for 16 months and regrets that he was ever part of the invasion and occupation. You can see and hear Macbeth on Google Video - just search for Iraq war.

Macbeth is young and troubled. He speaks with a slight stutter. There is pain in his eyes as he describes the things he was ordered to do.

Macbeth is a little like Obersturmfuhrer Kurt Gerstein, the German who joined the SS to see for himself if the rumours of mass murder were true. He found that indeed they were and he tried to tell the world what he had seen. He approached Swedish, Swiss and Vatican legations in Berlin and was told to go away. He believed that if the Allies had eyewitness reports of what was happening in the extermination camps they would broadcast the information across Germany and the good German people would be horrified and would rise up against the Nazi regime. Would they? It seems unlikely, given what we know of our capacity to turn a blind eye towards any evidence that makes us uncomfortable about our own complicity in great crimes.

This is what Macbeth says of his orders in Iraq: “Our job over there is to strike fear into the hearts of the Iraqis. You can do whatever it takes in the field to make them fear you. You can be brutal - the Geneva Convention doesn’t mean crap.”

Operation Iraqi Freedom is more like Operation Iraqi Slaughter. Macbeth describes going into a basement bomb shelter looking for insurgents.

“We had to go in there and make sure everything was dead. So whether there were women and children, if they weren’t dead, we had to finish them off and drag their bodies out.”

Macbeth says of the people in makeshift bomb shelters: “Most of them were just families hiding down there but we were told that there were insurgents hiding down there, Saddam’s forces hiding down there. I remember going in there and smelling burnt flesh and hearing people crying and begging us to help them because they thought we were there for them. There were some that weren’t wounded very bad and we had to kill them.”

(Can’t leave out Godwin’s Law, can we?)

Hey, you moron: at least do enough “inquiry” YOURSELF to get the asshole’s name right! You make a whole column out of a thoroughly debunked story that’s still on Google Video? You want an investigation? IT’S BEEN DONE, you idiot! Here’s just what I wrote.

Here’s what everyone ELSE wrote. Here’s the Wikipedia (gag) entry for Jesse MacBeth. And here’s what Iraq Veterans Against the War wrote, if you refuse to listen to everyone else:

Questions have been raised about Jesse MacBeth and his claims of service in Iraq. MacBeth came to Iraq Veterans Against the War in January 2006 asking for help, and the organization and its members extended itself to help him in various ways. Assisting veterans is one of the founding principles of IVAW and it is a mission that we take seriously. After looking into his recent claims, we have learned that Jesse is not what he represented himself to be. Accordingly, IVAW does not in any way endorse Jesse MacBeth or any of his accounts involving military service. He — and he alone — is responsible for them. IVAW was not aware of the creation of the video program featuring MacBeth, and did not authorize use of our logo in the program.

Terry Lane, you are a joke, a pathetic excuse for a writer, and a moron.

Email The Age at ‘feedback@theage.com.au‘. I’ve sent mine already; I expect an immediate retraction.

I STG, stupidity should be painful.

Linking this to Wizbang’s Carnival of Trackbacks, H&I Fires at Argghhh! (Happy Birthday, John!)

Tags: Jesse MacBeth, Jessie Macbeth, shocking stupidity, lazy journalism, liars, fools, idiotarians, The Age, Australia, newspapers