PrintA Calumnious Smear of our Troops at the Times
I suppose we should be used to it by now. The New York Times is, if nothing else, predictable when it comes to their "support" for the troops - that is to say, if they speak out against the war they are held up as shining examples of our boys in the military.
But the Times hasn't been able to find too many anti-war soldiers lately so they've now switched to a Plan B - what might be called "The Rambo Option:" promoting the idea that our returning troops are a bunch of mindless killers, made that way by both a military that teaches them how to kill mercilessly and the hell they go through in Iraq.
Milbloggers are incensed at a story that appeared in the Times on Sunday that tried to make the case that something is terribly wrong with our boys coming home from Iraq:
THE New York Times is trashing our troops again. With no new "atrocities" to report from Iraq for many a month, the limping Gray Lady turned to the home front.Blackfive asks the question was it "Sloppy work or intentionally malicious? [E]ither way the NYTimes has made a mistake...again.
Front and center, above the fold, on the front page of Sunday's Times, the week's feature story sought to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home. Heart-wringing tales of madness and murder not only made the front page, but filled two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth.
The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began. Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.
There is little doubt that our military has been stretched as a result of our commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan. And there are credible reports that at one time, the army was not doing as good a job as they could in offering psychological assistance to those veterans who may need it.
But in the last year that has changed as the military has found peer to peer counseling for the returning veteran to be the most effective means to help identify any serious psychological problems. There are still many veterans who do not seek psychological help according to the National Veterans Foundation due to the stigma such a diagnosis carries.
War takes a heavy physical and psychological toll on our returning veterans. But it does not turn the overwhelming majority of them into sociopaths who murder innocents. For the the New York Times to write a hit piece trying to make the false point that our returning veterans are turning into deranged murderers as a result of their service to this country is beyond the pale.
(HT: Ed Lasky)
Update: Read Thomas Lipscomb's letter to the editor of the NYT here on Powerline.
Update: John J. DiIulio Jr. reviews the situation in depth at The Weekly Standard's website.
