{"id":9792,"date":"2009-04-17T09:44:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T14:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=9792"},"modified":"2009-04-17T11:44:01","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T16:44:01","slug":"military-times-vs-vfw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=9792","title":{"rendered":"Military Times vs VFW"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I promised last night, the first thing I did this morning was call the VFW about the article in the Military Times<\/a> that was posted on their website last night in regards to the DHS memo. I talked to Joe Davis, their public affairs guy who was the subject of the interview by Military Times reporter Rick Maze. The first thing I brought up was the line in the article that angered me most, that being;<\/p>\n

VFW officials said the fuss over the new report seems contrived as a political attack on the Obama administration….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Davis told me he didn’t say that. We talked for another half hour during which I expressed my displeasure – the rock head that I am. When I was finished, I emailed Mr. Maze, the reporter, and asked him where he got the quote since Mr. Davis didn’t admit to the line. Mr. Maze responded;
\n<\/p>\n

I did not interview Mr. Gardner. I quoted from a statement that the VFW sent me. His direct quotes are in quotation marks. The full statement probably is available from the VFW.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, it sure is, I had a window open to the VFW’s statement<\/a> when he emailed me back. No where in the statement did it say anything even remotely similar to an allegation of a political attack on the Obama Administration. So I asked Mr. Maze again where he got the quote. His response;<\/p>\n

That is my summary of his statement, that if he doesn’t see the intelligence report as being terribly wrong — just poorly worded — then this is a lot of fuss about very little. And, from the people making a big deal about it — conservative commentators and prominent Republicans — it is being used for a political knife fight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the VFW didn’t call the American Legion’s response a partisan attack on President Obama, Rick Maze, a reporter, called it a partisan attack. No where in the VFW statement is the word “fuss” used, but it appears twice in Maze’s attempt at reporting, once after the phrase “VFW officials said” – although no VFW official made the statement. <\/p>\n

Maze also made reference to a “similar” FBI report from last year – the same one that TSO referenced in his first post<\/a>. So, rather disingenuously I asked him where I could find the FBI report, His response;<\/p>\n

I only found a declassified summary, which provided me the number of people recruited by extremists groups (203, I think, but I would have to look again). I did not locate full report but really didn’t look for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, he referenced a report, only read a summary and called it “similar” to the DHS report. That’s what passes as reporting these days at Military Times, I guess. To his credit, he did send me a .pdf of the original report after he Googled for a few minutes – but he couldn’t be bothered to research the report before he wrote the Military Times article. Not surprisingly, Maze sent me a link to the report on Liberal blog “Crooks and Liars”. <\/p>\n

What is “similar” about the report is here;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe FBI report makes a point of saying “the number is miniscule” of veterans are involved in potential terrorist activities. So it may be similar, but the language isn’t so antagonistic as the DHS report. <\/p>\n

Am I giving VFW and DHS a pass? Nope. VFW should have known better than to give ammunition to the media and to liberals to demean military members. DHS intentionally worded the report to have a political impact on veterans and service members – that’s obvious because of Maze’s deliberate mischaracterization of the VFW’s statement. <\/p>\n

By the way, Maze is a highly partisan reporter that TSO has dealt with in the past in regards to IAVA and their scorecard on this article. Maze didn’t find it odd that Phil Carter<\/a>, a founding member of IAVA, was Obama’s veteran adviser and the score card heavily favored Obama. ANd now we know that Maze readily admits that he doesn’t research things that don’t fit the article he’s written in his head before he does a lick of background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I promised last night, the first thing I did this morning was call the VFW … Military Times vs VFW<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9792","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=9792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}