Moving Right Along
As gotchas go, this is a good one.
The Wall Street Journal's online site quotes a U.S. Army captain who found fault with MoveOn.org's video ads that noted 150,000 U.S. men and women wouldn't be home to share Thanksgiving with their families. The ad compared Democratic and Republican leadership in arguing for withdrawal from Iraq. Sided with the Dems.
The captain, a friend of the Journal's Best of The Web editor, groused by email:
These are not your normal everyday U.S. soldiers though. If you look at the frame they are actually British soldiers. One is in shorts (we don't have shorts as a normal combat uniform) and the others are all clearly wearing British pattern fatigues. So, my point is that these [turkeys] pretend to argue on my behalf and bash the president in the name of my crying wife, and they don't even know what an American soldier looks like! Anyway, it really [ticked] me off.
It gets better.
Two other sites, GOP in College and Running For The Right, went looking through the lefty organization's Web site for a print version of the ad and found that in it, the soldier in shorts is now the soldier in long pants.
The Bad Example site devotes many lines to discussing why this was shoddy Photoshopping.
Blinq called a MoveOn spokesman who acknowledged the soldiers in the picture were British. Said the advertising firm grabbed a picture that didn't specify the soldiers' nationality. The video has been pulled. Wouldn't comment about the addition of long pants.
"We totally stand by the message of that ad," he said. "There are 150,000 American soldiers who weren't home for Thanskgiving."
Uh...so, let me understand this. MoveOn.org basically stands by their ad that states that 150,000 soldiers weren't home for Thanksgiving, but the Wall Street Journal takes umbrage over the fact that a British soldier appears in an ad instead of an American soldier. And this is a controversy? How does that make the ad's message fundamentally incorrect? Also, you don't hesitate to point out MoveOn.org's political leanings, but fail to mention that the editorial page of the WSJ is so right wing that it is pathetic. Of course they're going to make the mountain out of the proverbial molehill on this!
HA! Now that's some shoddy commercial making. Some generic footage of a 'soldier' they used? Good grief. That is just pathetic. You'd think they'd use images of soldiers with patches of Old Glory to further drill home the message. And then just PSing some pants one? Gimme a break. Get another photo.
Ed H. just don't get it, and never will, so we won't bother to explain it to him. However: every holiday of every year, there are tens of thousands (maybe even a hundred-or-so thousand) of soldiers stationed overseas pulling duty and not at home with their families. Yet, there's no boo hoo phony hand wringing and whining by the lefties about this, is there? I say we unilaterally withdraw from Germany NOW!! Bring the troops home, the war can't be won. The occupation is a failure. Germany can never be democratized by force. Our presence in Germany will only result in sectarian civil war. Blah blah blah.
Big Bill is Sweet William Young now. Uh, don't you think there is a difference between active duty troops being away for the holidays during peacetime and active, reserve, and Guard troops being shot at, blown up, etc. during holidays? Just a thought. Gee, MoveOn used a wrong picture, so it must prove they hate the troops and have no idea what they're talking about! Meanwhile, the prez and company used faulty photos to "prove" the existence of WMD (remember Powell's embarassing speech to the UN? Remember those photos that were supposed to prove the Iraqis moved WMD's right before the war started?) and these lemmings don't have any problem continuing to follow their great leader like sheep. Bush said it, so it must be true. Hey, speaking of Germany, that sounds an awful lot like those people who followed that crazy dictator there 70 years ago,whose name escapes me now...
Geoff - it's not that they used a wrong picture in the video, and it's not even so much that they doctored the picture to suit their needs. It's that they did such a piss-poor job of doctoring the photo, and an even worse job of hiding the evidence that they doctored it. At least Bush managed to "lie" successfully for 2 years plus. These dopes got caught within a few days.
In the larger scheme of things, which is important? Lying to get into a war, or poorly editing an incoonsequential picture and trying to cover up your embarassment? The larger part of MoveOn's campaign concerned the message, not the picture. And it isn't as if they used Iraqi Republican Guard pictures; the Brits are our only significant ally over there and are suffering just as much. Ultimately this is really a non-story, and focusing on it and not on the war itself is just what the Bushies want.
It matters because credibility matters. MoveOn.org has done some good things for raising awareness and getting folks involved in the political process once again, but getting caught in dumbass pointless BS like this damages their credibility and it doesn't take a lot for people to take their advice and Move On.
Are the righties going to get their drawers in a uproar a case of stock footage screw-up when Li'l Ricky does it? http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/13313566.htm And let's not forget all those cloned soldiers in last year's Bush campaign ad: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/27/22442/878