A debunking of a debunking of a debunking

I like that word, don't you? De-bunk-ing! I guess if something is debunked, it had to have once been bunked. That must be the case here with the Freepers' Vietnam Memorial vandalism story.

Today the Washington Post has made a feeble attempt to debunk those who debunked the Freepers' original claim that the monument was vandalized. As I noted earlier, the National Park Service found that the "vandalism" was actually an accident by the cleaning staff. Fortunately, the cleanser streaks can be cleaned off, but it will take a week.

The Pest has had a reputation as a respectable paper, but now they're often as bad as the dreadful Washington Slimes. Last year, the paper set up a right-wing blog run by an ultraconservative hack named Ben Domenech who had posted racist material and set up phony accounts to agree with himself on his own blog. Although the Post had a conservative blog, it offered no liberal blog.

The Post's latest article about the war memorial story was being touted in the comments section of our blog by a hostile party who I'm pretty sure is the same weirdo who keeps making a big issue of it on Freak Rethuglic.

I can find several new inconsistencies in the latest conservative version of the Vietnam Memorial story. The Washington Post - which has generally ignored the NPS's findings that the incident was a cleaning accident - reports that a U.S. Park Police detective calls the incident vandalism. This is clearly misleading, because the detective - who is not identified - could have their own agenda, as has been already pointed out by at least one commenter on this blog.

It's also been pointed out that the Park Police aren't responsible for cleaning the monument; the National Park Service's cleaning crews are. If you visit the Vietnam Memorial, you might see cops patrolling the area, but they're not the ones cleaning it - despite what the Freepers claimed. Police investigate stuff. If one detective's belief disagrees with the conclusion that was already made by the National Park Service, that's not conclusive. The Park Police say the investigation is still ongoing, so even they haven't reached any solid conclusions yet - which the NPS has.

But there's a whole other possibility we haven't seen put forth yet. It could be the NPS was wrong, and the Park Police was right. Do any of the articles say who reported the damage? I'll have to reread them, but some of the articles do say the damage was reported to the police over a week ago. But by who? You don't think a Freeper could have trashed the Vietnam Memorial just so they could blame the antiwar folks, do you?

And if you don't think the Bushists would pull off an elaborate hoax to try to discredit opponents, read about a guy in West Virginia named Phil Parlock. His specialty was staging phony attacks against himself while protesting Democratic rallies.

If it's a Freeper hoax, I hope they throw the book at the vandal. If it was vandalism at all, they should throw the book at the vandal regardless of whether they're connected to the Free Republic politburo. Desecrating a national monument is a serious crime. But I'm still pretty sure the NPS's conclusion that the damage was accidental is accurate.