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Fact-Checking “General Betray Us”
The Washington Post’s Ad Watch Fact-Checker evaluates the claims made by MoveOn.org in its recent NY Times ad and concludes :
The Pinocchio Test
The data provided by Gen. Petraeus on sharply declining Iraqi casualty rates is certainly open to analysis, debate, and challenge. We plan to take a closer look at them in a future post. However, MoveOn.org does not provide adequate factual support for its larger assertion that Petraeus is “constantly at war with the facts” and is “cooking the books” for the White House. In the absence of fresh evidence, we award MoveOn.org three Pinocchios
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7 Responses to “Fact-Checking “General Betray Us””
Hmmmm.
Move On was being childish and stupid, as usual.
Related to the ad, the vote by the Senate: What did Clinton and Dodd do? Why didn’t Obama cast a vote?
The Post pretty much says it all “We plan to take a closer look at them in a future post” when talking about the underlying facts of Petraeus’ claims sometime in the future.
Couldn’t be bothered to really drill into the facts of a war where our soldiers are dying every day now, we are too busy checking up on frigging NEWSPAPER AD.
Let me point out that the purpose of Ad Watch is the evaluation of claims made in political advertisements.
Move On has jumped the shark. You would think with the momentum they had they would have taken a better tack….
I for on am dissappointed, I thought they were on to something. They are guilty of the same weigh evidence/jump to judgement without fact- checking/source affirmation that people like Bill OReilly, Rush Limbaugh and others are wont to do.
I agree with Hanginjohnny. I also think they went overboard in questioning Petraeus’ patriotism.
Its obvious that Petraeus was brought in to present the administration’s case, because Bush has no credibility left- even the 11 Republican representatives who met with him several months ago told him this. Still, making these kinds of accusations without evidence is unacceptable, and has given new life to the war’s backers, who revel in attacking all Democrats for being anti-patriotic appeasers.
Instead of an honest, thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of continuing our presence in the ME, we now are back to the two parties throwing bombs at each other in a destructive, divisive way.
In this case, I think Bush is wrong for hiding behind Petraeus and Move on is wrong for impugning a hero’s character without evidence.
“open to analysis, debate, and challenge.”
It either is, or it ain’t. Dead/wounded aren’t to be analized, debated, or challenged, they are either dead, or wounded case closed.
Not only is moveon.org over the top, the WP is a friggen joke paper (but not nearly as good as the Onion) that apparently can’t bother themselves to count.