"others Have Died For My Freedom. Now This Is My Mark."

[obby]

I know this is a bit long but well worth the read. This is regarding a dead soldiers letter to his family that was found after his death and found in his laptop. The New York Times decided to post this letter BUT they left out many of the soldiers statements. Once his parents heard what was being done by the New York Times they took it upon themselves to ask the President to read the correct letter in it's entirety which he did today during his speech to our nation.

"OTHERS HAVE DIED FOR MY FREEDOM. NOW THIS IS MY MARK."

By Michelle Malkin · November 02, 2005 09:00 AM

***scroll for updates...a soldier responds...***

"OTHERS HAVE DIED FOR MY FREEDOM. NOW THIS IS MY MARK."

These are words you did not read in the New York Times. They are the words of the late Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr, whose letter to his girlfriend in case of death in Iraq was selectively edited by the Times to convey a bogus sense of "fatalism."

My column in the New York Post today and elsewhere follows up on last week's blog post about the Times' butchery. The Times reporter, James Dao, did not respond to my e-mail inquiry about his agenda-driven omission but he did have an interesting e-mail exchange with one of this blog's readers, Michael Valois. Excerpt:

Reader Michael Valois questioned the Times' reporter, James Dao, about his selection bias and forwarded me the exchanges. A defensive Dao (who didn't respond to my e-mail inquiry) argued, "There is nothing 'anti war' in the way I portrayed Cpl. Starr."

He then had the gall to berate the reader: "Even the portion of his e-mail that I used, the one that you seem so offended by, does not express anti-war sentiment. It does express the fatalism that many soldiers and Marines seem to feel about multiple tours. Have you been to Iraq, Michael? Or to any other war, for that matter? If you have, you should know the anxiety and fear parents, spouses, and troops themselves feel when they deploy to war. And if you haven't, what right do you have to object when papers like The New York Times try to describe that anxiety and fear?"

Dao sounds a bit unhinged playing the far-left chickenhawk card. Only people who have traveled to Iraq can criticize a paper's war-related coverage?

And he's dead-wrong about Cpl. Starr's presumed "fatalism." If you don't believe Cpl. Starr's own words, which Dao chose to ignore, listen to Cpl. Starr's father, Brian. I asked him this week whether his son was fatalistic. "I don't agree at all. Jeff had an awareness of death, but was very positive about coming home."

Dao apologized to Valois for the tone of his snippy e-mail, but apparently feels no shame or sorrow for distorting a dead Marine's thoughts and feelings about war, sacrifice and freedom.

In addition, the paper is sending out a separate response from the ombudsman's office to readers challenging the Times' bias. I'm reprinting it here in full:

Dear Reader,

Thanks for writing to us about this article. I raised this issue with Bill Borders, a senior editor at The Times, who responded with the message I have pasted below.

Sincerely,

Joe Plambeck

Office of the Public Editor

The New York Times

Note: The public editor's opinions are his own and do not represent those of The New York Times.

----------

Jim Dao's article about the 2,000 dead last Wednesday was entirely fair, and so, within it, was our presentation of Corporal Jeffrey Starr.

The most prominent part of the presentation of Starr was the picture and caption at the top of Page A15. The caption represented him this way: "His father, Brian Starr, said his son believed in the war but was tired of the harsh life." The article also reported that even after his son's death Brian Starr "remained convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing to do."

It is true that the article did not quote everything that Corporal Starr said in his e-mail, like his reference to Iraqi freedom, any more than it quoted everything said by all the others quoted in the article, who represented all sorts of shades of opinion. But the article was completely fair in its representation of the views of Corporal Starr and his father.

And no one who has read the entire article could possibly conclude that it

was colored by an anti-war point of view. Here, for example, is the seventh paragraph, prominently played on the front page:

"Many of those service members returned voluntarily to war because they

burned with conviction in the rightness of the mission. Others were driven

by powerful loyalty to units and friends. For some it was simply their job."

In its very first paragraph, the article introduces Sgt. Anthony Jones, who

was killed in June weeks after the birth of his second son. Farther down in the piece, it quotes his young widow:

"Mrs. Jones, 26, said she struggled at first to contain her anger that her husband was sent to Iraq instead of Germany. But she has consoled herself with the conviction that he died for a cause he supported. And she firmly rejects the antiwar protests of Cindy Sheehan, saying they dishonor the fallen. ''I hope she doesn't have my husband's name on a cross,'' Mrs. Jones said. ''My husband, if he had a choice, that's how he would want to die. As a soldier.''

Bill

Jason Van Steenwyk at Countercolumn was one of the e-mailers who received the ombudsman's e-mail. His reaction:

Thank you and Mr. Borders for the thoughtful reply.

I still don't get it, though. Is the editorial policy at the NY Times such that you may misrepresent the last letters home of any individual KIA, and dishonor their memory by making them look like whiners and cynics, if only you raise a different argument somewhere else, under another dead soldier's name.

This is somehow acceptable?

No, it isn't.

Re-read the entire article. Remember how the Times reported Cpl. Starr's letter:

Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

And remember the rest of the words from Cpl. Starr's letter that the paper left out:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

The smug reporters and editors argue defiantly that their anti-war propaganda and treatment of Corporal Starr were "entirely fair." They're hoping you'll just forget about it. Please don't.

***

Write ombudsman Byron Calame to share your response to the Times response here.

***

Reader Paul D. writes:

All of this "we can't print the whole letter" business is a farce. What the NY Times aplogists are missing is this: Those 11 words written by the deceased Cpl Starr are his thesis for the letter. And to exclude it is creative journalism at best, but most likely journalistic malpractice. This would be akin for modern day liberal historians to exclude Lou Gehrig's famous "Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth" line from his famous speech, simply to make him appear as a weak and sympathetic figure. If space were an issue they could have simply reprinted those 11 words. Period.

Update: A soldier e-mails a response to Dao.

A quick response back to James Dao's whine about no one being able to criticize him unless they have been to war.

James, yes, I've been to war. Twice now, already in OIF, and I'm heading back to war within the month. Since you do not even have the courage to acknowledge that you used selected quotes from a dead soldier's last letter home to further your (and your paper's) agenda, you are not worthy of even writing about a Marine like Corporal Starr, never mind trying to psychoanalyze what he was feeling about being back in the war. You are a coward when only your reputation is on the line. Corporal Starr was courageous, when even his life was on the line.

Should I die in Iraq, on this, my third tour, my wife will have in her possesion, a letter from me to be released to the press, should some slimy dirtbag like you try to make it look like I served in anything other than an honorable manner. I'm proud of what I do, I do it knowingly and with full knowledge of what the background on this war is. And likely better knowledge of what the outcome can be. I'm not some poor schlep who needs a NYT reporter to "interpret" my thoughts. I've live in the Middle East longer than Juan Cole, I've met more common Iraqis than has George Galloway, and I know more about the military soldiers I serve with than you will ever know in a lifetime of mis-reporting on soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

[igloo]

I read this awhile ago....never hurts for this to be posted as a reminder