Milbloggers and MSM watchdog bloggers continue to put heat on the New York Times’ Bob Herbert for his hearsay column on conscientious objector and moonbat darling, Aidan Delgado.

Last year, the liberal media elite savaged the hundreds of Swift Boat Vets who documented their claims of John Kerry’s dubious Vietnam War activities. Now, here comes Bob Herbert, megaphoning a lone disgruntled ex-soldier’s sweeping claims of abuse and violence by our military in Iraq without naming a single name (Delgado accuses “guys in my unit”, “an Army sergeant,” “a Marine corporal”). If a conservative columnist wrote this, it would be reckless rumor-mongering and irresponsible journalism. But when a NYTimes liberal signs his name to it? Well, Herbert’s probably got his Pulitzer nomination already in the bag.

Regarding the Abu Ghraib riot Delgado discussed with Herbert, a reader points to a document by Delgado’s Commanding Officer, Michael Mastrangelo, Jr., who filed a report under oath to the Abu Graib Commission about some of the incidents Delgado says he witnessed. The report states in part:

There was a riot in late November where my unit had to respond to. One of my soldiers killed an Iraqi rioter after expending his non- lethal rounds. There were a total of four rioters killed that day in order to calm the riot, but that was only after using up all the non-lethal rounds.

Another reader says Delgado’s unsubstantiated shock-provoking claims (“Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They’d keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people’s heads.”) remind him of the fraud of the Winter Soldiers’ testimony, whose hallmark was its hearsay nature and “and the willingness of the MS[M] then, and now, to repeat it without any critical sense.”

A commenter at Mudville Gazette writes:

As a member of the 744th MP BN, we had the 320th MP Co. as a guard company under our command. They lived maybe 40 feet away from us when they were in Naseriyah. While they were in Naseriyah, they were our tower guards and QRF for the mini-jail we ran on the outskirts of Talil Air Base. The 320th had few additional missions that involved them going outside the wire that didn’t involve them being our security escort when we transported prisoners to BIAP. Imagine the nightmare that would have occured if 3 buses of 30 Iraqi prisoners each saw a soldier smash a glass bottle over an innocent Iraqis head. Defintely didn’t happen during their time there. As for their time at Abu, I know their mission was, once again, tower guards. One of their platoons was also tasked with being General Karpinski’s security. Now she’s no angel, but i highly doubt an E-4 would have the gall to break a bottle over an Iraqis head with her in the middle vehicle. I was friends with a lot of the younger guys in the unit and after we moved up to Baghdad we would run into each other every now and then. There are few secrets among lower enlisted, and nothing of this sort was ever mentioned. There is a good chance Delgado made these stories out of thin air, and at worst, they are isolated incidents.

Posted by: James at May 3, 2005 04:49 AM

Bob Herbert’s e-mail address is bobherb@nytimes.com.