The Huffington Post ran this little item yesterday accusing THE WEEKLY STANDARD of lying about MoveOn’s outrageous ad in Monday’s New York Times:
Even before MoveOn.org’s ran its controversial ad about General Petraeus in the New York Times, The Weekly Standard published an article by Peter Hegseth, Executive Director of the organization Vets for Freedom. The headline of the article accused the MoveOn.org ad of calling Petreaus a ‘traitor’ (“MoveOn.org Calls Petraeus a Traitor”). The only problem: the word ‘traitor’ appears nowhere in the MoveOn.org ad nor anywhere on the MoveOn.org page about the ad. It is Hegseth’s article that introduced the word ‘traitor’ into the story — an outright lie intended to silence dissent against the war. Less than 24 hours after the Hegseth piece ran and the MoveOn.org ad appeared, the mainstream media picked up the Weekly Standard’s lie and repeated it until it became the story. The word ‘betray’ used by MoveOn in the ad implies many meanings, but does not directly imply ‘traitor’ — unless that definition is introduced.
Just for the record, let’s introduce the folks at MoveOn to the definition of ‘betray’ as it is understood by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, eleventh addition:
BETRAY: a verb 1. To act treacherously (towards one’s country) by aiding the enemy.
Or how about Webster’s New Collegiate:
BETRAYAL: 1. To deliver to an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; as, an officer betrayed the city. 2. To be a traitor to; to prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to fail or desert in a moment of need.
Of course, Petraeus was aiding the enemy from the perspective of the folks at MoveOn–he was aiding President Bush.
