Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie's July 18 WorldNetDaily column sees him taking a break from hypocritically attacking politicians for using segregationist metaphors that he himself has used. This time, he's smearing a senator and a writer -- but he won't tell us exactly why.
Among the many insults Massie hurls toward Sen. Barbara Boxer and writer Terry J. Allen are "carrion," "the worst kind of human beings," "disgusting pissoirs," and Allen himself gets the appelation "the hanky that catches the spittle from Boxer's lips." Their alleged offense? According to Massie, they hurled "personal, ad-hominem attacks" at American troops, "label[ing] our military as being in a drugged stupor."
But this paraphrase is all Massie tells us about what he's attacking. He doesn't tell us where or when this accusation was made. He doesn't even tell us who Allen is. Such scarcity of supporting information means only one thing: that Massie is hiding facts in order to proceed with his harangue.
What Massie appears to be referring to is a May 17 letter by Boxer to defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld reacting to a Hartford Courant article "detailing stories of American soldiers who are being redeployed to Iraq despite being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health conditions." Boxer said: "You cannot simply have doctors prescribe psychiatric drugs such as Zoloft and send these men and women back to a combat zone, where they pose a risk to themselves and to their fellow soldiers." Allen, meanwhile, appears to be targeted by Massie's because he wrote a May 31 article for In These Times on the same subject, noting that such medications given to soliders being redeployed "must be monitored for effectiveness and safety, which is beyond the Army’s capability in Iraq." Oddly, the Hartford Courant escaped Massie's wrath.
So it appears that, despite Massie's claim, Boxer and Allen never said American troops were in a "drugged stupor" but, in fact, expressed an entirely legitimate concern about troops sent back into action before they may be ready. And besides, antidepressants of the Zoloft class (Prozac is similar) do not generally result in "stupors"; insomnia, nausea and sexual dysfunction are much more common side effects.
Now we know why Massie was so vague about his allegations: if he told the full truth, he wouldn't have had a column this week.
