{"id":58062,"date":"2015-02-04T18:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T23:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=58062"},"modified":"2015-02-04T19:36:44","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T00:36:44","slug":"brian-williams-and-his-misremembered-helicopter-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=58062","title":{"rendered":"Brian Williams and his misremembered helicopter crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

I guess Brian Williams has been telling a story for years about the time his helicopter was shot down in Iraq. According to Stars & Stripes<\/a>, he told that little tale one too many times last Friday;<\/p>\n

Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC\u2019s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.<\/p>\n

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment\u2019s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would not have chosen to make this mistake,\u201d Williams said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, one aircraft was shot down and the one he was riding in wasn’t. I don’t know how he could have “conflated” the two events either. I’m pretty sure that the one helicopter crash I was in would always stand out in my mind – not that I’ve ever been in a crash. However I remember a number of rough landings – like that short runway landing in a Caribou that one time. I still get a taste of my anus when I think of it.<\/p>\n

Here’s a description of the report<\/a> that is no longer on the internet, I guess;<\/p>\n

\"Brian<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Clearly the report at the time was about how the helicopter that Williams was riding in was shot down, so, there’s nothing to “conflate”. That was the report. So it was pretty much BS from the very beginning, it didn’t have anything to do with a failing memory.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Arthur and the guys at Bring the Heat<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n

Added<\/strong> from the Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n

[Williams] added, \u201cBecause I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area \u2014 and the fog of memory over 12 years \u2014 made me conflate the two, and I apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cNobody\u2019s trying to steal anyone\u2019s valor. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, the broadcast went out as Williams getting shot down, and they arrived an hour after the RPG round passed through another bird. So all of that “conflation” happened in the minutes after the news crew arrived on the scene of a downed craft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess Brian Williams has been telling a story for years about the time his helicopter … Brian Williams and his misremembered helicopter crash<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}