The AP reports:
“For the most part” is a generous description. Aside from Tapper’s faith in the captain as credible, the story remains unverified, and, in fact, “impossible to verify,” since the Obama campaign has not released any detail that might corroborate the account. Even if one takes the captain’s story at face value, there is a large discrepancy between the story he tells and the story Obama told in last night’s debate (mainly that there was no ammunition shortage, and that the unit was equipped with a full compliment of weapons). But at this point the captain’s story cannot be taken at face value, and confirmation of his account cannot be left solely to Jake Tapper’s assessment of the captain’s credibility. Confirmation requires something beyond the word of an unnamed captain who found his way to a meeting with Barack Obama’s staff at some unspecified date in the past. Obama has leveled a specific and unsubstantiated allegation that remains, by any objective analysis, “impossible to verify.”
