7/4/10: HuffPost pimps picture of dead Marine who supported US action in Afghanistan to... hawk anti-war screeds

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SEE UPDATES AT END.

One might think that HuffPost --- now the #1 blog on Earth, and one of America's top ten news sites --- would not be so depraved as to:

• Pimp a picture of a Marine who was killed in action in a conflict that he wholeheartedly supported...
• In order to frame its Independence Day screeds against the same conflict...
• On that Marine's birthday, no less

How sad that this is exactly what HuffPost did today. (And as is documented at the end of this article, this is not the first time HuffPost has demonstrated a depraved bias against our soldiers.)


At 6:00am on July 4, HuffPost's top headline appeared as follows:



The story link is here. But before you read the story of Corporal Jason Leicht, take a look at the editorials that HuffPost listed just beneath his picture:

Gary Hart: "Our war of necessity that became a war of choice is costing hundreds of billions of dollars needed to employ our workers and get our country back on its feet."

William Bradley: "(Thomas) Jefferson didn't insist on deposing the ruler of Tripoli and imposing a government to his own liking."

Dennis Kucinich: "We are losing our nation to lies about the necessity of war."

Nathan Gardels: "After ten years of war, we are back at ground zero. Even the senile ravens of the Soviet Politburo could see after six years that war in Afghanistan was a losing proposition and ordered their tanks to rumble out of the country."

Hm, is there a theme there... of denouncing America's actions in Afghanistan, perhaps? Which would lead one to the following presumption:


So was Corporal Leicht really against America's military actions in Afghanistan?

Let's take a look at the story about Corporal Leicht, and discover what, if anything, he said about his views on Afghanistan, before he was killed. Excerpts (emphasis added):

The Kerrville Daily Times reported that "Leicht fought through 18 surgeries to recover from his injuries in 2007 just to rejoin the his band of brothers fighting in Afghanistan. [...]

Jacob's father told HuffPost (that of) the mission in Afghanistan... "We believe strongly in it -- and he did as well, that there was a definite evil in the world that has to be stopped."

Photo from God's Marines --- please read their entire tribute to Corporal Leicht... what a remarkable young man, patriot, and Marine.

Conclusion

So at the end of the day, what do we have?

• HuffPost made the decision to use Corporal Leicht's photo in its screaming headline, even though at the time it had first-hand knowledge that he "believe(d) strongly in" America's mission in Afghanistan --- and his family does as well.
  
  
• HuffPost positioned his photo above a listing of editorials that it chose to publish, all of which are opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
  

HuffPost could have presented a mixture of perspectives on the war in Afghanistan, at least to give the appearance of being a nonpartisan "newspaper" --- a claim it has repeatedly made; a claim that we at HUFF-WATCH have repeatedly debunked.

Is this an isolated incident of HuffPost's depraved actions against the U.S. military?

Far from it. This is but the most recent example of how HuffPost has gone out of its way to exhibit its glaring anti-U.S. military bias, and its gross disrespect of American soldiers and support contractors. Over the past year, we've documented incident after incident of how HuffPost has:

• Smeared the U.S. military in its "news" stories (1, 2, 3, 4).
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• Enabled, protected and emboldened an anti-U.S. military propagandist to obsessively post blood libels against American soldiers around-the-clock --- then banned a user who attempted to expose the truth.
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• (Right) Splashed a picture on its front page of a Marine who was moments away from death, over the pleadings from his family (and the Pentagon) that it not be used, in part because it was obtained through a violation of a photojournalist's written agreement
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• Actively violated its own commenting policy, by permitting "news" threads about the deaths of American soldiers and contract personnel to be turned into hate-fests of user comments denouncing these deceased individuals (1, 2).
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• Banned a user who asked others to not use threads about the deaths of American soldiers to flirt, post their favorite music, talk about sex, etc.
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• See an archive of HuffPost's anti-U.S. military bias here.
  

To make your voice known to HuffPost:

If, after reviewing this article, you'd like to voice your thoughts to HuffPost's management (politely, please), here's how.

And by the way, from everyone here at HUFF-WATCH, God bless America on this 234th Independence Day --- and particularly, all those who wear, or have worn the uniform of our military, the finest the world has ever known. How ironic that it is our military that protects the freedom the American press enjoys, even to smear and libel and pimp pictures of the very soldiers who provide this protection.

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UPDATE July 4, 12:20pm: Not content to merely pimp the picture of one recently-killed, war-supporting U.S. soldier, HuffPost doubles-down by using another --- right below the first:

We checked in at 12:20pm to see if HuffPost was still pimping Corporal Leicht's picture. (We hoped this would not be the case, as our coverage of this issue broke at the top of Gateway Pundit, a top-10 conservative site, at 9:27am).

What we found is that HuffPost decided to double-down on its depravity:


Excerpt from the story at HuffPost, and the source story to which it linked (emphasis added):

Pfc. Ryan J. Grady, 25, formerly of Bristow, was killed Thursday when an improvised explosive device hit the military vehicle he was in near Bagram airfield in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said Saturday.

Grady died hours after he had breakfast with one of his brothers, Kevin Grady, 27, who is also with the Vermont National Guard in Afghanistan. The brothers' oldest brother, James Grady, 31, of Muskogee, said Ryan Grady "was complaining (to Kevin) that he didn't get to see any action. He was kind of upset about it."

Ryan Grady graduated from Bristow High School and joined the Army in 2003. He received a Purple Heart for injuries he suffered in Operation Iraqi Freedom during 2005-06. "He had an IED hit his vehicle and he got some shrapnel," James Grady said.

Ryan Grady joined the Vermont National Guard in late 2006 and transferred to the Oklahoma National Guard in 2008. James Grady said his brother Ryan returned to the Vermont National Guard in 2009 in part because he heard its units would be going to Afghanistan.

"We grew up in a military family, and we had high standards for being the best soldiers we could be," he said.

So now, we have two instances, hours apart, in which HuffPost decided to pimp the pictures of recently-killed U.S. soldiers --- both of whom fought through terrible injuries to return to the fight in Afghanistan, one of whom was disappointed he hadn't seen action --- to falsely advance its anti-war propaganda... on Independence Day.

Want to know the really ironic part? The one thing one never finds on HuffPost is tributes to these soldiers for what they did while they were alive.

For example, HuffPost went online in May 2005. Why did it not run a feature of Pfc. Ryan for the Purple Heart he received? Did it run a single story about Corporal Leicht's 18 surgeries --- or of the fact that he was itching to get back into the fight that he supported, in Afghanistan? Why does it never, ever run stories of the heroism of our soldiers, day in and day out, on the fields of battle --- such as the "Someone You Should Know" feature from BlackFive? If the only stories we ever hear about our soldiers are negative ones, what makes HuffPost any different from, say, the terrorist-friendly, notorious al Jazeera (which it has actually used as a "source" for its "news" stories - 1, 2, 3)?

Yes, this is how they're "celebrating" Independence Day in the HuffPost offices.


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