I'm Just Saying It Could Have Been Better Sourced

Hugh Hewitt asked if newspapers were going to carry this inspired photo on Thursday.

(Update: Not in the Post)

I love being an American.

I can't tell if Thursday's Washington Post will run it since I'm writing around midnight Wednesday, but the story is up at washingtonpost.com, slated for the front page: Kerry Offers Apology To Troops by Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei. They refer to it thus:

Rejecting the explanation, Republicans quickly developed a Web ad demanding that he apologize and issued statement after statement blasting and mocking him. One released by House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) included a picture that appeared to show soldiers in the desert holding up a banner: "Halp Us Jon Carry -- We R Stuck Hear N Irak."

That's how the issue is framed, as a political squabble with Democrats running away from Kerry and the GOP unleashing the hounds. And it is that, you know, but it's not only that. As Laura Ingraham said today, the unrepresented voice is the military's. They're invisible. Read the emails at Michelle Malkin, or Hewitt's or the milblogs. If nothing else this is a Teachable Moment for mainstream media. Read those emails and then read Howard Kurtz on Wednesday:

There isn't anybody, including in the Bush administration, who believes that Kerry meant to insult the soldiers in Iraq with his clumsy joke that has given the Republicans a big fat target after months on the defensive.

Kerry has compared his Vietnam-era colleagues to Genghis Khan and said U.S. soldiers in Iraq were terrorizing women and children.  But he would never mean to say the American military is composed of uneducated losers. That would be too extreme.

And a tip for the Post's crack multilayered fact-checking reporters and editors describing a picture that appeared to show soldiers in the desert holding up a banner. Powerline identified some of them as members of the 1st Brigade Combat Team / 34th Infantry. At 4 p.m. Yesterday.

They're serving in Irak.