Cynical Nation

James Taranto is also skeptical of Nadim Abou Rabeh's revisionism.

Elements of it are easily checkable, and they don't check out. This site lists all U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq. On Dec. 12, 2003, two men were killed in action: Jarrod Black and Jeffrey Braun. Both were soldiers, not Marines; and neither one has a Sudanese-sounding (i.e., Arabic) surname. Nor were any Marines or any servicemen with Arab-sounding names killed on Dec. 10 or 11.

As CNN noted at the time, Saddam was captured by the Fourth Infantry Division, and it's not clear why Marines would be along on an Army operation.

It's starting to smell more and more like another hoax, but there is one aspect of it I find particularly troubling. In the Age of the Internet, when rudimentary fact-checking has never been easier, why is the MSM doing so little of it? And how much shoddy journalism did they get away with before Google and bloggers came on the scene?