Viral Smears

VIRAL SMEARS....The world obviously moves too fast for me: today, Gregory Stroud emails to tell me that the "TF Wasatch" rumor has been debunked. The what? Who/what is TF Wasatch?

Turns out some officer from Task Force Wasatch in Afghanistan started up a viral email claiming that Barack Obama blew off the troops to hobnob with the brass when he visited a couple of days ago. I had no idea. But Greg has been following the whole thing at his place, and today the Daily News formally debunked it, quoting official Army sources. Apparently there's a Utah Army National Guard intelligence officer in a linguist unit at Bagram Airfield who's in big trouble now.

So: a brand new Obama smear went through the entire cycle of getting started, going viral, and being unequivocally laid to rest before I even heard about it. Welcome to the internet age.