Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in 2004, WND frowned upon the media making the Republican administration look bad by pointing out supply shortages for troops in Iraq.
A Dec. 9, 2004, article highlighted how "'disgruntled' soldiers' tough grilling of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq" was the work of aChattanooga newspaper reporter who allegedly "set up the soldiers to ask his questions about the lack of armored vehicles." This was followed by columnist Larry Elder scolding the reporter for making news instead of reporting it, as well as WND's Les Kinsolving asserting that "when Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Pitts rehearsed Army Specialist Thomas Wilson on what to ask Secretary Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had already up-armored 97 percent of the vehicles in Wilson's regimental combat team, and the last 20 of their 830 vehicles were in the up-armored pipeline."
Actually, as we detailed at the time, Pitts didn't "set up" the soldier with the question on vehicle armor; in an interview with Time magazine, the soldier said that while Pitts urged him to come up with some "intelligent questions," it was he, not Pitts, who came up with the question about the armor. Further, more than half of that "830 vehicles ... in the up-armored pipeline" had non-standard makeshift "hillbilly armor."
Now that WND no longer has to protect a Republican president, it's more free to make accusations about the military.
An Aug. 25 WND article claims that "The parents of an American soldier in Afghanistan have accused the U.S. government of leaving defenders of its freedoms without basics such as blankets, food, feminine hygiene supplies and even bullets." The claim, which came from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, provides no corroboration in the WND version, and no named source is quoted -- a much lower level of disclosure than was made in the 2004 story WND decried.
But hey, when the point is to attack Obama -- the front-page promo headline for the article calls it an "Obama outrage" -- minor things like disclosure and substantiation don't matter to WND.
