At The Corner, Iraq News That Isn’t

Reader SB points us to an entry today at The Corner, a blog belonging to National Review magazine, entitled “FROM IRAQ: A MARINE’S NOTES.”

Among other things, the unnamed Marine tells the National Review that:

[M]orale among our guys is very high. They not only believe that they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them.

That sentiment seems a bit out of place, given that the president himself admitted last week the United States isn’t winning the war. Granted, his words were widely reported by the media — but that’s hardly a reason to hate on the messenger.

Turns out the post is out of place, as SB discovered: the “MARINE’S NOTES” are actually an excerpt from an e-mail that circulated widely around November 2005, perhaps earlier.

The e-mail is said to have been written by an unnamed Marine or just-retired Marine, who had recently (at the time of the e-mail’s alleged writing) returned from Iraq.

However, the differing provenances given by the blogs which reprinted the e-mail when it circulated last year makes it hard to confirm its authenticity:

“I got this forwarded by a reader in the Navy, Mike, who in turn got it from a friend of his in the Marines.”

“A friend sent me the following email. A father, of whom I know nothing, passes on what his son told him while on leave from Iraq.”

“[T]his email is second hand, coming from a business contact and written by one of his lifelong friends.”

“The following letter was. . . originally written by a Marine, and sent to the CIA in Germany, was then passed back to Army Intelligence in Iraq and on to the US where it was forwarded to me.“