[link|http://cerdip.motime.com/1064959200|Astroturf with roots?]

Excerpt:

Option 4, which I now think is most likely, considering the words buried in the guts of the article (I had to read it over and over again until I got the real sense of the story):

"Sgt. Christopher Shelton, who signed a letter that ran in the Snohomish Herald, said Friday that his platoon sergeant had distributed the letter and asked soldiers for the names of their hometown newspapers. Soldiers were asked to sign the letter if they agreed with it, said Shelton, whose shoulder was wounded during an ambush earlier this year.

"Everything it said is dead accurate. We've done a really good job," he said by phone from Italy, where he was preparing to return to Iraq.

Sgt. Todd Oliver, a spokesman for the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which counts the 503rd as one of its units, said he was told a soldier wrote the letter, but he didn't know who. He said the brigade's public affairs unit was not involved.

"When he asked other soldiers in his unit to sign it, they did," Oliver explained in an e-mail response to a GNS inquiry. "Someone, somewhere along the way, took it upon themselves to mail it to the various editors of newspapers across the country." "

So there it is - it was a soldier's initiative, done in the field. However the way the story is written in the Olympian by the Gannet guy, Ledyard King, it's been twisted into something nefarious. It sure got my blood up for a while. The soldiers themselves told the GNS people what they had done, so why the blow-up photo comparison of letters at the start of the article? What are they expecting to prove with that ? There is nothing to prove, since the definitive information was presented by the soldiers themselves. IMHO, either the paper or the writer was trying to convey the impression of catching someone out, and what better way to do then than a dramatic "scientific" comparison of the letters.

I say:

Is it astroturf if it starts at the grassroots level?

I think this will have its own entry in my Iraq Lies page, as soon as the dust settles a bit.

That's stretching the point more than a bit, don'cha think?

And the fact reamins, those who went along say they meant it. It's called SINCERITY. And that is NOT astroturf.

Shame on you. Our soldiers in Iraq have a right to disagree with you, and to express that disagreement, singularly, or in unison. It's called free speech, and there's nothing you can do about it.

The right to dissent cuts both ways.

[Silly me. Can't tell a platoon sergeant from a staff sergeant.]