It turns out that Sarah Palin's claim that she visited Iraq is, in fact, another lie. (Brief media criticism interlude -- the American press: "Obama camp suggests Palin has distorted record." The foreign press: "McCain campaign admits Palin never visited Iraq.")
In fact, Palin has only visited the troops in Kuwait. Aside from the fact that this falsehood is part of a pattern of dishonesty, it doesn't bother me very much: A governor visiting her state's troops to boost morale can reasonably do so in Kuwait and it's possible to say intelligent things about our policy in Iraq without actually having been there (not that McCain or Palin are saying intelligent things about our policy in Iraq).
But traveling back into the mists of memory, recall last year when a controversy arose over the work of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a soldier who wrote several pieces for The New Republic. (See Spencer Ackerman's breakdown here and TNR Editor Frank Foer's retraction and explanation here). The long and short of it is that Beauchamp's frank depiction of the realities of the war created a conservative media firestorm and a hunt for errors in his piece. There was only one: An anecdote that Beauchamp said occurred in a military base in Iraq in fact took place at a military base in Kuwait.
Though problematic, the error didn't really undercut the point of his piece. But conservatives, especially Michael Goldfarb, who is now the McCain campaign's official blogger, believed that this mistake indicated that Beauchamp was a pathological liar and made his every subsequent claim suspect. Charles Krauthammer made that argument, as did many other conservative bloggers. If they were so angry about falsehoods in three articles by an anonymous army private, shouldn't they be harsher toward the truth-telling of someone who could be Vice-President in the very near future?
--Tim Fernholz
