Ruth Ann Dailey A Follow-up

I guess I don't need to do much research to do this follow-up.

Buried deep in the comments section of this morning's posting, someone who wishes to remain anonymous (though I am guessing it's not our famous "anonymous" troll, Braden) did a little research in a very short period of time and found quite a few examples of bloggers "on the left" who weren't actually silent about the death of al-Zarqawi. Remember what Ruth Ann Dailey said:

If silence often speaks louder than words, then for one day last week the silence on the American left was deafening.[emphasis added]

Remember that word: silence. She said that the left was silent. Not that it was on the wrong side of the issue or that it wasn't being supportive enough to the troops. She said the left was silent:

But the silence on left-wing opinion pages and blogs was nearly complete.

And nearly complete.

Let me tell you, it's always a treat to be able to do something like this.

Let me start with anonymous' research. Here's the first link 9:55am on 6/8/6. Here's what it said:

Was never quite sure why we didn't go after him when we had the chance.

Anyway, I'm supposed to give the obligatory "YAY USA!" cheer here, but while it's good to get the bad guys I don't really think it's going to improve much. Hopefully I'm wrong.

The link points to another blog that eventually gets us to a MSNBC article (from March 2004) that says that Bush could have killed al-Zarqawi before the war but didn't. One of the reasons?

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

Oh.

Here's the next link. It's from the dailykos. That was the blog where Ruth Ann said there was just ONE blogger (Bill in Portland, I believe) who blogged on al-Zarqawi's death. Georgia10 (who's an expert on the NSA domestic spying case, by the way) posted this Thursday at about 4:58 PDT (which I assume is about 8am local time).

Here's another from the dailykos. It's Georgia10 again. That's twice Ruth Ann missed this particular writer.

Understandably, there is a lot of media coverage on Zarqawi today. In all the hours and hours of coverage, has anyone mentioned that the President could have killed Zarqawi before the Iraq War but chose not to? Or that he was caught and then released to kill again by an incompetent Iraqi government?

The first link goes to the an Australian paper that described how al-Zarqawi was allowed to escape by the Bush administration. The second link goes to a CNN article that describes how the Iraqis caught and then released al-Zarqawi.

Ruth Ann could have argued that the left was being disrespectful, but she said the left was silent.

Funny, doesn't look like it.

Here's a link to the Washington Monthly. The second link offered by "anonymous" confirms the first.

Here's something from firedoglake.

And so on. There's obviously much more. The left was obviously not silent. Ruth Ann was obviously quite wrong. Will she be correcting the record any time soon? Obviously, I'd be wrong if I thought so.

I'll give anonymous some blog space to end things here (thanks anonymous!):

1. Exactly how much research did Ruth Ann Dailey do prior to submitting her piece?

Um, very little. But that's par for the course for rightwing pundits and trolls everywhere.

2. How carefully did the editors at P-G look at Ms Dailey's "facts" prior to publishing it?

I'll let that rhetorical question filter through the internets. You can decide for yourselves.