Speaking of sources of information...

[mmcirvin]

Zell Miller's deranged and howling Republican convention speech seems to have based in part on chain e-mails.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Heh. I noticed something similar in President Bush's speech-- he mentioned several things that I had read about either in feel-good stories that circulated in blogs or at snopes.com about emails that had been passed around:

From the speech [transcript] (http://www.gopconvention.com/cgi-data/speeches/files/v46q7t4op60p0109d9b8i8373arhnn0r.shtml) quite near the end: "I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, (http://www.snopes.com/glurge/birdwell.htm) some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I've held the children of the fallen (http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/05/06/loc_moment06.html), who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom.

And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers to offer encouragement to me. [...]"

This reminded me of the foreign service officer's wife, not the family of a fallen soldier, who told W. that he was in her prayers (http://www.snopes.com/glurge/yeskoo.htm). From this, of course, we can only conclude that BUSH LIED.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Also, Stephen Green (http://vodkapundit.com/archives/006566.php) takes a crack at snopes's claims in re: Sen. Miller. It supports quite well the claim that Kerry opposed all of those weapons systems. The circulated email says that Kerry voted against them, while Sen. Miller says that he opposed them, and while Snopes's debunking of the email stands intact, Kerry's own 1984 memo (http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/002675.html) seems to vindicate Sen. Miller's claim. (I linked directly to the memo there because the link from Vodkapundit doesn't seem to be correctly formed.)

It's also worth noting that the F-14A and F-14D should be considered two systems for good reason-- even as the A was flying, I recall, the D version with advanced systems and some structural improvements, and its development had to go the same process that the original A did because it amounted to a new aircraft. Remember in "Top Gun" when Goose died when he ejected into the canopy because their plane was in a flat spin? Flat spin propensity was a design problem with the A that was largely resolved in the D. I'm not saying Kerry wanted real pilots to die just like Goose -- noooo, I wouldn't dream of it -- I'm just saying that the D was worth doing for that sort of reason.

On the other hand, the Phoenix missile, which is also listed, would have to die if the F-14 died, since the missile was peculiar to that aircraft, having been built around the Tomcat's fighter-interceptor role and more or less leashed to the Tomcat's radar system. The Tomcat can hold 6 of the missiles, and each one could kill a Soviet Bomber at somewhere around 100 mile range. Add that range to the range of a patrolling F-14, and you're looking at the carrier group's first line of defense against anti-ship cruise missiles. Back in '84, the carriers weren't yet equipped, I think, with the Phalanx CIWS gattling gun that does an adequate job of chewing up incoming missiles (but can be overwhelmed, as players of Harpoon II know). But the carrier's escorts were, I believe, so equipped.

[darius.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the Making Light post about political chain e-mail that, in her opinion as a professional editor, read like a PR professional pretending to be a random outraged person. It's easy to imagine the speech and the e-mails coming out of some common source in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.