And Finally…

Just finished Googling myself to see what the right-wing warblogs are saying about my retraction. Predictable: they have headlines like “Why Do Liberals Lie So Much”? Hey, pinheads: If I wanted to lie about something, I wouldn’t issue a retraction. A retraction is, by definition, an attempt to set the record straight. A lie, on the other hand, is when someone says something that turns out to be untrue, and refuses to admit it. Sound like anyone you know?

Posi writes:

i guess… the families of the dead soldiers can check to see if their child’s photo is included on some memorial site, but otherwise it would be tough to know if one’s dead soldier was included in the number or not. you’d know he was dead and assume he was counted, but how would you know? they’d all have to count the photos.

Well, there’s also a list.

but what i really want to ask is… what’s up with the latest toon with mix and match extremists? no clear message or continuity. did the 9000 toon throw you off track?

Nah, it was just a send-up of that absurd term “Islamo-fascist.” I tried to go simple, but I wonder if everyone got it without an explanation.

forget it, your dong great work. there’s SO much disinformation out there, how the fuck are were supposed to be able to tell between huge lies, small lies, twisted truths, and outlandish acutalities? it’s too much.

Yeah, well, that’s the problem. Usually I’m pretty good at sussing out the lies, but not this time. Of course, that still makes my record better than all the assholes who think Iraq had something to do with 9/11, but that’s a pretty low standard.

Vicker adds:

BS or not, but your cartoon made me wonder about why all casualty figures reported by the US military in Iraq are invariably on the day of the incident. I can recall none having appeared after that date. I assume some soldiers die of their injuries, but these numbers do not
appear to be added to the daily toll killed in action directly. Perhaps your cartoon had a valid point after all, even if the exact number isn’t accurate.

That may be.

Chris says:

Must say, I really dig your work, man. Always check in for your weekly columns, and get a good laugh sometimes from your cartoons, also clenched teeth in anger too, not at you though, but at Bu$Co, and how much has changed in so little time, or at least how much the right feels brash enough to say and get away with in the light of day.
Anyways, I also was taken in by the 9000+ originally. Or I felt it was plausible; I have no doubt those boys at the Pentagon would get away with it if they could. Especially with that ban they have going on photographing coffins, the Soviets did the same thing during their Afghan War, delivering the caskets at night. What I have heard about this war is that with rapid medevacs and improved technology, we’ve been able to save a lot more soldiers’ lives than we did in past wars. Unfortunately, what with the IEDs, RPGs, and other assorted lovelies, it seems that the wounds are much more severe… the flak jackets (and they’re short on those too, especially your Guardsmen, reservists, and marines… seems the marines often like to use older equipment, or they’re stuck with it anyways, and rationalize it by saying it makes ’em feel more “salty”… happened in Nam a lot too) deflect the blast, which then is absorbed by heads and limbs. This has caused an increased number of amputations, and brain damage, blindness, etc. Point is, I think a lot of people see the “wounded” column and think it’s like a Hollywood Hero wound; just one in the shoulder, or a little cosmetic blood by the mouth to look all studly. And our oh so extra vigilant press doesn’t cover the numbers of wounded much at all… over 14,000 now, or damn close to it according to icasualties.org (I think that’s the address). Perhaps some good will come out of this since it’s encouraged more research in prosthetics, but it’s small comfort for so many of these young people who will need lifelong care.
That’s about it for now, I reckon, keep up the good work, Ted, you’re a good man for the left, a real asset, true patriot!

I appreciate that. Still, piss fuck shit damn I hate TBRNews.

More Fallout

Mark wrote this Letter to the Editor of E&P:

The “9,000 dead” US troops in Iraq was a smear from a neo-nazi publication (Barnes Review) to discredit the peace movement. Barnes Review works with KKK leader David Duke, praises Hitler and sells Holocaust Denial books. calling it “tbrnews” doesn’t change the fact that this is a racist disinformation operation.
Barnes Review’s sibling publication “American Free Press” pretends to be an opposition publication investigating scandals but they insert lots of fake claims to discredit real evidence. Perhaps the most notorious is their creation and promotion of fake claims of official complicity in 9/11 to discredit abundant real evidence of complicity. It is reminiscent (if not part of) the Karl Rove strategy used to discredit CBS (see BS?) last fall – the “memos” given to that network that were then used to alienate the media from investigating Bush going AWOL from the Air National Guard.

I don’t know whether this is true.

Then there’s this:

your views are not understood here. my family has been saved by your troops. who do you prefer Saddam the rapest and murderer. or Bush the Mad invader…I prefer Bush, he can only save my town, family, country…….I wish more in the USA could see this. your a lier!!!

I just wonder where this person lives, that he/she was “saved” by our troops. American troops haven’t died defending US soil since World War II, and then just barely (Alaska and Hawaii, which weren’t states then).

Editor & Publisher Notes My Retraction

There was never in any doubt in my mind, once I discovered the dubious nature of TBRNews, that I would issue a retraction. It sucks to admit you’re wrong, but considering the alternative–becoming as credible as a Republican–well, there’s really no choice at all. Anyway, there’s a piece about my retraction in Editor & Publisher.

You get guys like Desmond who kick sand in your face:

Your excuses are pathetic. You liberals are unbelievable. You believe anything no matter how obviously wrong it is, if it fits your liberal agenda. Why don’t you just fold up your act and disappear. It is so apparent what you are trying to do. You should be embarrassed to show your face. Say goodbye already.

Yeah, I know. Doesn’t the guy care about Bush’s lies? Or that he never, ever admits he’s wrong? But still–I do feel stupid for falling for the 9,000 story. After the lies about WMDs, the “search” for Osama in a country we knew he wasn’t in, etc., it’s easy to believe that the Bushies are capable of just about anything. That cynicism opens one up to this sort of thing.

On the other hand, kind souls like Matt have also been offering support:

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I think it was a good thing to issue the retraction, and I respect you more for it. I know you
probably have a lot of rightwingnuts emailing you and telling you to do uncomfortable things to yourself, but I’d give you a pat on the back. After all, I don’t remember hearing any neocons/fascists saying they were wrong about WMD in Iraq, or much of any thing else that they’ve fucked up.

True. In my own, admittedly biased way, I am trying to find the truth. Setting the record straight when you mess up is a big part of that.

Tom is harsh but brings up an excellent point:

I appreciate you cartoon with some exception, but regularly read it. My question for you is what do you do for the reader that glances
casually at your cartoon when you cite an inflammatory and incorrect fact? Unfortunately, I read you guidelines for e-mail and think you will probably stop reading my e-mail when I get too critical, but while I was angry and disappointed, I attempted to temper my e-mail to your guidelines.
I visited you blog for the first time yesterday and found the “retraction” you posted. Everybody gets it wrong sometimes, but your reaction seemed cowardly and infantile. To cite other cartoonists who misrepresented things hardly make it right for anyone else. You have been very critical of neo- cons and I would expect them to react the way you had. Honestly, I thought you were better than that. I would expect Karl Rove to cite others that have gotten away with his plots to exonerate himself, but you?
It would have been useful to post the retraction for the average reader to see, unless you didn’t care that the average Joe see that you got it wrong. You talked about hiding bodies in the cartoon in question, but what about hiding retractions? I am not of the political mind that frequents your blog. I’m not even sure you care much, considering the amount of e-mail you recieve (according to the guidelines). It would just be nice to see someone somewhere refuse to be shrill and caustic without the integrity to make it worthwhile.
I was disappointed in your handling of the situation and hope you have considered rectifiying it. If the US military dropped a bomb on a
wedding party, I’m sure you would expect something to be done about it. While your “bomb” is on a much smaller scale, the regular reader
might like to know that just because the other kids did it, doesn’t mean it’s right to misrepresent the truth for the sake of argument.

Of course, with few exceptions, nothing does come from the thousands of innocent civilians killed by triggerhappy US servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we’re not talking about that here.

Tom brings up an interesting point about “burying” a retraction, a practice I deplore in newspapers and television media. Unfortunately, I don’t have the kind of control editors and producers have. Here’s why: I draw three cartoons for syndication each week. Were I to include a text retraction with one or all three of the next week’s cartoons, my subscribing clients would absolutely not run those cartoons–or would run them minus the retraction. That’s because very few of my papers run all three of my cartoons each week, and they tend to view cartoons as extra content rather than staff content–stuff generated by the papers themselves. I could do an entire retraction cartoon, but no one would run it. So while I can screw up in public, it’s virtually impossible for me to issue a correction anywhere other than here, in my blog. It is no doubt a highly imperfect solution to a vexing problem, but until I own my own paper or work on staff somewhere rather than through syndication I don’t see a solution.

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.

TBR News a Fraud?

F.C. writes:

I want to preface this e-mail by saying that my political leanings are far left and I love reading your articles, comics and blog.
That said, I must point out the site you provided as a source has been discredited beyond cavil:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-lampley/the-ultimate-deception_2838.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-lampley/a-poor-choice-of-sources_2891.html
Again, do not get me wrong, it is not that I cannot posit the criminal-in-thief lying about US troop casulaties but TBRnews.org is not the best way to prove it.
Frankly, as a collateral point, I do not think there is any need to lie about troop deaths – the American public is by and large in a consumeristic [sic?] frenzy (or is it stupor?) who do not care anyway. Time to move onwards!

The Huffington site comments section contains several allegations that TBR News is related to The Barnes Report and is affiliated with wacko Holocaust revisionist types like David Irving. If so, please ignore anything they say.

I’m looking into it, including trying to reconfirm my independent source(s). As F.C. writes, we don’t need to copy the right by lying about them–the truth is damning enough.

Editor & Publisher Mention

E&P mentions my cartoon in a small piece. Maybe this will spark a discussion and some plain talk from the Pentagon.

Real Number of Iraq War Dead: More Than 9,000

Some emailers are asking for source material on today’s cartoon about American war dead in Iraq. You can find one reference here, and there are others elsewhere. In addition, I have independently confirmed this news with appropriately-placed sources.

God bless America–with George W. Bush running the joint into the ground, we need all the help we can get.

Rodney Crowell

Jim advises me:

In the new issue of Paste, a music and pop culture mag, there’s a review of Rodney Crowell’s new CD (two stars) that has a prominent blurb that references your work:
“Crowell overstates his point by a Texas mile, constructing a gigantic Ted Rall cartoon version of bourgeois capitalist piggery.”
Thought I’d pass it on, in case you haven’t seen it.

Yeah, well, maybe I do overstate my case sometimes. Sometimes you need to do that to begin to counter the tsunami of lies and perverted logic flooding us from the right.

Book Review: “War Powers”

My review of Peter Irons’ important new book “War Powers”–about how presidents have stolen Congress’ power to declare war under the Constitution–appears in today’s San Diego Union-Tribune.

Today I Read the New York Times with You

I haven’t looked at the paper yet. (That’s right, I still read the physical paper. If I still had a day job I’d no doubt be slacking off reading the whole thing online and saving money in the process, but I don’t which means I have to actually work for a living. So today, for the first and possibly past time, you get to follow along while I react to today’s news, as brought to you by the New York Times.

Today’s lead story quotes the (cough) Pentagon as claiming that some roadside bombs used by Iraqi insurgents are manufactured in Iran. It’s just another floater for possibe war against Iran because, hey, we’ve got so many more troops to send to death and so many more billions a week to spend. The money quote:

But just as troubling is that the spread of the new weapons seems to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out – a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.

Once again, the crux of cluelessness. The reason “enemy” Sunnis and Shiites are cooperating against us is because they both want us to get the fuck out of their country. What’s surprising about that? Oh, but they’ll have to fight each other after we leave. That’s true. But they have to cooperate in the common fight against the United States if either wants the chance to rule post-Bushite Iraq.

On the editorial page, op-ed “writer” John Tierney has surpassed his reliable inanity:

Polar bears are mammals with a mission, whether it’s Gus obsessively swimming in the Central Park Zoo, or the mother and her cub that I once followed during a dogsled expedition here in the Canadian high Arctic. We watched her with awe and kept our distance, especially after coming across the bloody remnants of her seal dinner on the ice. The message I took home was: “You mess with my habitat, and I’ll mess with you.”

The name of the column: “The Good News Bears.”

Every day I read the New York Times’ entropic op-ed page, I’m reminded of how the nation’s greatest newspaper has a section unworthy of most high school newspapers. Yeah, yeah, I like Krugman too. But still.

Every now and then the Times publishes a piece that makes you wonder why they’re just getting to a story now, months after you’ve already read and digested it. “C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in ’92 Race” is a classic case. It’s a rehash of something that we Treasongate watchers have long known: Rove has a history of exactly the sort of sorry shit he pulled on Valerie Plame. On the other hand, the Times’ sluggishness has the salutory effect of keeping the story in the news.

There’s a piece about Gitmo getting leaner and (!) meaner:

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By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: August 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 – In a few years, Pentagon officials say, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will have undergone a radical transformation.
The sprawling detention site known as Camp Delta, with its watchtowers, double-wide trailers housing rows of steel cells and interrogation rooms will be mostly demolished.
Instead, a sharply reduced inmate population of those the military considers the most hard-core will inhabit two nearby hard-walled modern prisons. The newest of those, which is still under construction, is modeled on a modern county jail in Michigan and is designed to counter international criticism of Guantánamo as inhumane and, to some, a symbol of American arrogance.
The first step in changing the character of Guantánamo, officials say, is to relocate many of the 520 detainees. As part of that effort, Defense and State Department officials said this week that they had reached agreement with Afghanistan to transfer 110 Afghan detainees to their home country. Eventually, the population will be reduced to 320, the capacity of the permanent prison buildings.

Sure, this is Judith Miller-style transcription journalism–some “journalist” typing what some government official tells him–but it’s interesting as a trial balloon/statement of intent. The Gitmo concentration camp is becoming, as its Soviet predessors did, more permanent. It also belies, in the case of the 110 guys being shipped back to Afghanistan, repeated Administration claims that all of the Gitmo detainees were “the worst of the worst,” guys so evil we could never, ever release them.

And now I need coffee. Along with regime change.