It's the letter that hit the New York Daily News yesterday from a Cpt. Jeffrey S. Porter describing Senator Barack Obama's recent visit to Bagram Airbase. They said that the story "went viral" on Thursday. Curiously, in their initial reporting, they describe Army brass as "debunking" the story.
But obviously it lived on.
The letter was posted to this blog at 11:03 this morning. By 11:51, another commenter posted that it was false.
Here's the general debunking at snopes.com. Indeed Cpt Porter has written to the Daily News to pull the story down:
Now the Bagram captain is dialing back, having signed the viral e-mail with his name, rank and unit - a possible violation of military regulations barring political statements. This morning, he sent The Mouth a new statement (punctuation corrected):
“I am writing this to ask that you delete my email and not forward it. After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong. This email was meant only for my family. Please respect my wishes and delete the email and if there are any blogs you have my email portrayed on I would ask if you would take it down too. Thanks for your understanding.”
It's also at the Army Times.
I guess that settles things. No guarantee that it won't bubble up again of course. As we all know the authoritarians (John Dean's term) on the right aren't interested in facts - just winning.
