Getting much play in the right-wing blogosphere in recent days is a post at the blog MacsMind citing a message from an anonymous “sergeant that was there” when President Obama visited troops in Iraq that the enthusiastic reception the troops gave Obama was staged because the troops who attended the reception were “pre-screened, asked by officials “Who voted for Obama?”, and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line. They even handed out digital cameras and asked them to hold them up.” The anonymous sergeant added, “Take a look at the picture at AP and notice all the cameras are the same models? Coincidence? I think not.”
Macsmind — nor anyone else — has offered any evidence to substantiate the anonymous sergeant’s allegations. But anonymous, unverified claims are good enough for the ConWeb if they can sufficiently smear Obama.
Tom Blumer embraced the claim in an April 14 NewsBusters post ironically carrying the headline, “Too Good to Be True?” and adding, “Indeed, there are an awful lot of cameras that look awfully identical.” Alan Keyes similarly repeated it in his April 17 WorldNetDaily column. Neither noted the anonymous, unverified nature of the accusation.
Explanations by a couple of commenters on Blumer’s post that any similarity in digital cameras among the troops was likely due to the fact that the post PX carries a very limited selection of them went largely ignored by the right-wing regulars in the thread and unacknowledged by Blumer himself.