If wishes were e-mails, the Iraq war would be won. And John Kerry would be friendless.
Yesterday we learned via the National Review Online that, at least according to year-old spam, ground troops think the United States is winning the war in Iraq.
Now, Michelle Malkin, Powerline and a guy named Scott Hennen, host of “HotTalk” on North Dakota’s AM 970, bring us news that troops in Iraq recently shunned Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), making him eat alone at an inexplicably festive breakfast at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, as some kind of petulant junior-high form of retaliation for his botched “joke” that dumb kids get sent to war.
“A friend of mine serving in Iraq sent me this photo and note,” is the dubious introduction that Hennen gives the picture on his blog. (Hennen appears to have been first to post the picture.) “Priceless story it tells….”
“This is a true story,” Hennen quotes the email as saying. “Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.”
Ah, but with such an unquestioning post, can trouble be far behind? No.
At Hennen’s site, commenter “Anthony” noted that the picture’s embedded data, just a right-click away, shows the picture was taken on January 9, 2006 — several months before Kerry botched his joke:
News accounts at the time put Kerry in England around that time — which might explain the giant Union Jack hanging on the far wall.
At PowerLine, another problem surfaced: As commenter “Angus” noted, the flag hanging to the right of the Union Jack belongs to Portugal, which withdrew its mighty 120-man coalition force from Iraq nearly two years ago.
Update: There may be reason to question the image data. In addition to giving the date of Jan. 9th for the picture, it says it was taken by a Vivitar Vivicam 8400 camera. According to this article dated Feb. 27, that model was not yet released. Can anyone verify this?