So, there’s a new viral e-mail making the Internet rounds. Perhaps you’ve seen it, but if you haven’t, I’m gonna include the text of it here, grammatical and stylistic errors intact:

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along
that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his
visit to “The War Zone.” I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area
to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at
Bagram.
As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn’t
say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he
finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top
tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with
weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He
again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their
service.
So really he was just here to make a showing for the American’s back home
that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to
make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are
providing the freedom that they are providing for you.
I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the
President of the United States . I just don’t understand how anyone would
want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to
be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know
what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is
all fake.

In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

So, I got this today and I knew it was fake. In the first place, this just doesn’t sound like him. I know that a lot of people don’t want him to be President, but come on, folks.  This is so cartoonish.  He’s not Snidely Whiplash. But beyond that, there’s the undeniable fact that Obama isn’t stupid. Even the people who hate him can’t really imagine that he’s dumb enough to snub the troops with the press all around him, can they?
What surprised me, though, is that the message was signed. I know that it’s “conduct unbecoming an officer” for a soldier to make public political pronouncements (I am expressing no opinion about this rule, merely pointing it out), and a serviceman can face a court martial over it. I wondered if someone had started this silly e-mail and signed a made-up name, or possibly the name of a real officer that they wanted to get in trouble. So I checked, by the simple expedient of Googling “Jeffrey S. Porter.”
Turns out that that is the guy who wrote it; further, Snopes.com, which is an excellent resource for this kind of thing, has already debunked this story. Obama did visit Bagram, but he neither played basketball nor visited the “Clamshell” while he was there. Also, he did indeed visit with some of the troops while he was there; although the visit was kept secret for security reasons, each soldier from Illinois was given an opportunity to meet him, and progress was held up during transit by Obama’s desire to stop and greet soldiers in his path. There’s video of him eating breakfast and chatting with the troops on the site, as well as (anonymous) quotes from the servicemen he talked to.
Best of all, it turns out that Captain Porter wasn’t even there (which, given the factual errors in the e-mail, must come as a surprise to very few). He just made it all up. He has now sort of confessed to this publicly, in that he admits there were “factual errors” in the message and is asking everyone who posted his letter to delete it…good luck with that, Captain.
I don’t know what his intentions were here. Possibly the e-mail was supposed to be sent out as an anonymous hatchet job, but someone looking to lend authority to the story sent it out under his actual name. Or maybe it was only intended for his wife, and she forwarded it without bothering to check the truthfulness of a story told by her own husband (which I can understand) or finding out whether she might get him in trouble by doing so (which I kinda can’t).  Either he didn’t intend for it to become public, or he didn’t intend for it to become public under his name. Unsurprisingly, neither of the Porters are talking, so we’ll just have to speculate.
Anyway, I know that none of you, dear readers, are dumb enough to fall for a message like this, but apparently lots of people out there are. I’ve been doing the rounds on Google (really, I should get back to work), and there’s all kinds of outrage over this. Even on message boards where folks have pointed out the Snopes article and others like it, readers are just saying that Snopes has a liberal bias (gawd, aren’t these people tired of the sad and sorry “liberal bias” lie yet?). This is first time I’ve ever heard anyone accuse Snopes (a non-political site dedicated to busting urban legends) of liberal bias, and it’s a pretty ridiculous suggestion, but again, some people will apparently believe anything.
So, if any of you good people run across any of these poor misguided souls, tell them the story has been debunked. And when they say that the “liberal media” is covering up the truth, tell them that the United States Army itself has now officially stated that Captain Porter’s account of the visit is false. All of the corrections included above come directly from their own official story. Damn that liberal bias in the Army!