Why the NYT is nothing more than a proaganda organ for the totalitarian left.

From The Mudville Gazette comes an example of our moral and intellectual superiors confusing editing with poetic license (for the betterment of the ignorant masses, of course.)

Lying Times
Greyhawk

Michelle Malkin has a follow up report on the storm brewing over the New York Times' use of selective quotes from a final letter home from an American GI.

For those who might not have known, the Times took these words from US Marine Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."


And edited them down to this:

Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

In her update she notes that although the Times refused to respond to her inquiries, the "reporter" did attack at least one of the readers who had responded to this hatchet job:

Have you been to Iraq, Michael? Or to any other war, for that matter? If you have, you should know the anxiety and fear parents, spouses, and troops themselves feel when they deploy to war. And if you haven't, what right do you have to object when papers like The New York Times try to describe that anxiety and fear?

I've been to Iraq. And I characterized the Times disgraceful use of the words of an American hero as intellectually vacant moral cowardice. I was being generous.

Because I've seen numerous examples of such behavior on the part of the New York Times over the past several months. All involve selective quoting, misquoting, or simply claiming a GI said something without actually quoting them at all. Most range in repugnance from mildly annoying to grossly reprehensible - but in what I believe is the worst case they appear to attempt to frame a soldier for murder.

Let's look back on a few examples of New York Times attacks on American GIs, shall we?

For the rest from The Mudville Gazette, go here.