Mistaken Identity

[darrels joy]

Mistaken Identity
Best of the Web Today - November 29, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO

Yesterday we got an e-mail from an old friend who is a captain in the U.S. Army. He writes:

I just got back from my third deployment from Iraq on Friday, and I happened to be at the dentist and saw a completely offensive ad from the idiots at MoveOn.org this morning. Anyway, it is a Bush-bashing ad that pretends to be arguing for American soldiers families as they will miss the holidays and it shows turkey and crying wives and blames Bush for it all. Here is the crucial part of the ad that I would like to bring to your attention. As they pretend to argue on my behalf, they show a group of soldiers standing around a table in the Middle East.

Here's the scene to which our friend refers:



"A hundred and fifty thousand American men and women are stuck in Iraq," according to the narration that accompanies this scene. Our friend (we've cleaned up a bit of his language for civilian consumption) continues:

These are not your normal everyday U.S. soldiers though. If you look at the frame they are actually British soldiers. One is in shorts (we don't have shorts as a normal combat uniform) and the others are all clearly wearing British pattern fatigues. So, my point is that these [turkeys] pretend to argue on my behalf and bash the president in the name of my crying wife, and they don't even know what an American soldier looks like! Anyway, it really [ticked] me off.

The only thing that would have made this more galling is if the ad had mentioned that the liberation of Iraq was "unilateral."