The Coffeespy

The Boston Globe’s disingenuous story on overseas recruitment carries the usual trappings of a poorly sourced, contrived article:

The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.

It begins with a statement not proven to be true in order to set up the appeal to authority that is not identified.  The military has continually denied they are “struggling” to meet recruiting numbers.  In fact, they report that recruiting is going well.  So, we start off with a lie told by Globe reporter Bryan Bender.

Then we have the whole ball of wax attributed to a “Pentagon official.”  Well, it doesn’t get any more official than William J. Carr, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy:

Your Dec. 28 editorial regarding mercenaries in uniform repeats the same untruth embodied in your Dec. 26 page-one article (”Military considers recruiting foreigners”) — that the military plans to open recruiting offices overseas to recruit noncitizens. Nonsense.

Citizenship criteria for military service are set in law, requiring that one be a US citizen or have been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence.

For decades, military recruiting offices have operated overseas to support US citizens living abroad, including those whose parents are affiliated with the departments of defense or state, or with American businesses operating abroad. That will continue. Nothing more.

Hmm… so if the Globe story is to be taken at face value as a properly researched piece of factual reporting, of course Mr. Bender discovered that U.S. law prohibits recruiting foreigners and actually meant to say that legislators are looking at a proposal to alter the law, right?  Aw, crud.  Now I’m starting with a false premise: Mr. Bender did research…

Another piece of piffle from the Globe story:

In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military.

Really?  Well, my wife’s a Colombian immigrant going through naturalization and is also a member of the Army reserve.  Her JAG hasn’t heard of this, S1 (personnel) hasn’t hear of this, and no one sent her a memo.  Oh yeah, and while we were at the immigration office a month ago, they didn’t know about it either.

Heh, I need to read other blogs while I’m posting… Right Wing Nation, who I’m now going to link to twice in two days, was giving the finger to the NYTimes while I was busy mooning the Boston Globe above.  Every time I read something like this I wonder what Joseph Rago was thinking.  With ghosts like Jamail Hussein and the disinformation armada working to confuse the populace, how can the necessity of blogs be discounted?