I knew that was going to come up today. The WSJ article originated from Politico, which basically admitted to journalistic dishonesty (To Dan Rather levels) by making stealth edits to their article.
Here is the extent of Ben Carson's military experience:
It's true, is it not, that there's no evidence of a "scolarship" (Carson's words) being offered to him? He had
de facto access to the military programme based on his enrolment, that's definitely true. His mis-writing and mis-speaking on the subject is at best an over-egged pudding and at worst a good old-fashioned lie.
There's also a story he tells that culminates in him being photographed and reported on in the Yale journal... but there's no photograph or article on record and no record that the course he names existed. The Yale librarian says plainly that no such course has ever existed there.
He describes an incident where (on an admittedly hugely volatile campus in 1969) he locked white students in a lab to which he held keys in order to protect them. No primary corroborative source for this has, to date, been produced.
Carson talks about an incident where he was held up at gunpoint in a Popeye's restaurant (whatever the hell that is) where he demonstrated coolness and bravery by telling the gunman to go for the guy behind the counter. Baltimore police have no records of any such incident.
His campaign manager says that there's no evidence that Carson's stories are untrue. Seemingly that evidence is in fact mounting. If they were true and primary sources existed then his campaign manager (who seems to be fielding most of the flat rebuttals) would have produced them by now, surely?
The thing about the stealth-edits that you mention is that, from a personal point of view, I only have your word for it. What stands in the public eye are Carson's words and the rebuttals of other people who were there in the times and places that his stories are set. There should equally be corroborating sources, they seem to be stealthiest of all right now.
The ultimate irony is that you have a guy saying he almost stabbed a relative of his when he was a kid, tried to attack his mother with a hammer, busted up a kids face with a rock and the left is not out to prove he did those things and he's a bad guy, but rather out to prove he didn't do any of those things so they can call him a liar
. A further irony would be that if he hadn't admitted those things in his book, they would have been trying to dig up someone from his childhood to say that he did do those things and that makes him not qualified to be president. Too bad the left wing media doesn't do this kind of vetting on any of their candidates.
Until you went right-ist I was kind-of agreeing
Thing is... whatever he's lying about... if he's a liar he's a liar. That's an important fact in a Presidential campaign. You could argue that all politicians are liars, of course, but if your whole back-story coming into the nominations is questionable that's a different matter.
