COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! Pwn'd!!!!!

One of the women featured in the story was a former builder constructionman Amorita Randall, 27, who served six years as a Seabee. Randall told the Times that while in the Navy, she was raped twice — in 2002 while she was stationed in Mississippi, and again in Guam in 2004. She also told the Times that she served in Iraq in 2004, which the Times reported as fact but which it now appears was not the case.

The story was written by Sara Corbett, a contract writer for the magazine. Here’s how Corbett presented it: “Her experience in Iraq, she said, included one notable combat incident, in which her Humvee was hit by an I.E.D., killing the soldier who was driving and leaving her with a brain injury. ‘I don’t remember as all of it … I don’t know if I passed out or what, but it was pretty gruesome.’ “

The story goes on:

“According to the Navy, however, no after-action report exists to back up Randall’s claims of combat exposure or injury. A Navy spokesman reports that her commander says that his unit was never involved in combat during her tour. And yet, while we were discussing the supposed I.E.D. attack, Randall appeared to recall it in exacting detail — the smells, the sounds, the impact of the explosion. As she spoke, her body seemed to seize up; her speech became slurred as she slipped into a flashback. It was difficult to know what had traumatized Randall: whether she had in fact been in combat or whether she was reacting to some more generalized recollection of powerlessness.”

The Navy, while expressing sympathy to a woman it believes is suffering from stress, is annoyed that the Times did so little to check the woman’s story.

Well, I guess when you work for the New York Times and you're working on a story to make the military look bad, some things are just too good to check out.

Apparently, not only had this woman never served in Iraq, but those two rape accusations for which no one was ever punished? The Navy has no record that she ever levied a complaint.

Here's the correction.

Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq. If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article.

Yeah, no shit.

Here's her dad:

“This lady was sexually assaulted twice in the Navy and no one was ever punished for it,” he said. While the Navy says it can find no rape complaint, Lund says she told her doctors about the assaults.

“She went through a lot.” Lund said. But he admits he doesn’t know for sure if Randall was ever in Iraq.

“If she wasn’t, it was a bad mistake on her part,” he said. But, he added, “For her to cope with [all she’s been through], her mind somehow believes she was in Iraq … She doesn’t remember anything in Iraq . If she was wrong about that, she’s sorry. But what you folks need to realize is how traumatized she is. If she’s wrong, I don’t know. She doesn’t know.”

Wow. She doesn't even know whether she was in Iraq or not (she claims to have been injured in an IED explosion) but her word is reliable on the sexual assaults? Apparently the New York Times thinks you can be traumatized by events that never occured!

Now, it's certainly possible that she was sexually assaulted during her time in the Navy (by a sailor? By someone else? Who's to say? Obviously she's not reliable).

So let's blame the Navy when she doesn't tell her chain of command (Apparently, she told her doctors, but doctors keep things like that confidential, in most cases. It's up to the victim to exercize a modicum of initiative and common sense and file a complaint with the chain of command or the MP's / Shore Police / local law enforcement.

Even if she did inform her chain of command, can you imagine trying to investigate and gather a coherent story from someone this flaky? No wonder no one was punished. If she can't tell whether she was wounded in Iraq or not, then what else doesn't she know? If she's delusional about the one, can you really say she's not delusional or at least unreliable about everything?

To be fair to the Times, at least there does seem to be some sort of fact-checking regimine in place. They seem to have uncovered this themselves rather than have a blogger do it for them, entirely.

I'd check out the other lady, too. A soldier ought to know better than to appear in uniform with her hair down.

Splash, out


Jason