Retraction: 9,000 Dead? Maybe, Maybe Not.

I draw more than 200 cartoons a year, but this has never happened to me before: commenting on a story that turns out to be, if not bogus, at least inadequately sourced. Of course, an editorial cartoonist is always commenting on other people’s reporting, so he or she is always vulnerable to the possibility of being taken in by some jackass. Consider, for example, all the cartoonists who did cartoons about Saddam postulating what he’d do with hiis nuclear weapons!

To be make this short, I’m not apologizing because I have nothing to apologize for. I read a story that came off as possible, sourced it using previously reliable informants, and ended up doing a cartoon that I wouldn’t have done had I known then what I know now.

So this is a retraction of this past Monday’s “C” cartoon. Did 9,000-plus soldiers get killed in Iraq? Maybe, maybe not. But as a cartoonist friend of mine points out: The relatives of those hidden 7,000 dead troops sure would be raising hell if the Pentagon were trying to hide them. To which I respond: Duh.

The battery in my BS detector must have been running low last week.