Appeal For Redress Can't Verify the Signatures - Surprise, Surprise

No surprise at all here - The Australian Sun Herald is reporting that the anti-war group, Appeal for Redress, is having difficulty verifying that all the signees are truly in the US military. (hat tip to Sweetness & Light)

A group claiming earlier this week to represent 65 "active-duty" troops opposed to the war in Iraq acknowledged Thursday it cannot validate the number or the authenticity of all the names it claims to have gathered.

We're trying to figure out a validation process," said David Cortright, an organizer of the Appeal for Redress movement and president of Indiana-based peace-activism group Fourth Freedom Forum. The group is operating the Web site appealforredress.org, where soldiers can go to electronically "sign" the petition to Congress, which legally they are entitled to do as long as they speak only for themselves and not the U.S. military.

A spokesman from Fenton Communications, the firm handling the public relations for appealforredress.org and also for the liberal MoveOn.org, said during a telephone conference call Wednesday that the initial 65 entries had jumped to 219 in 48 hours, with 125 of those being active-duty soldiers

Don't look for any release of the names anytime soon...

"It's a protected site," Cortright said, adding that Fourth Freedom Forum may be legally required to protect the names per a nondisclosure statement on the electronic form. Some involved said promising this kind of privacy is the only way to get members of the military to come forward.

Typical of a Fenton Communications group - start a petition drive where no one but the site owners can see the names but then put on a big media show about the HUGE numbers of people signing up as a protest to the war in Iraq. All they had to do was drop a little blood in the water and the mainstream media sharks were all over it without a second thought. Forget doing any research into the background or hidden agendas of the group or its supporters - that isn't important. What is important is that there are active duty military against the war in Iraq.

Thank goodness that the Australian media still has some journalistic backbone in them...

The name of the Indiana-based group was not given in the initial press statements. The Sun Herald turned up the group by researching the registry of Web site domain names.

See - it's not that hard. It's just a matter of wanting to find out the truth...

Here are some links with some background info on Jonathan Hutto, David Cortright, the Fourth Freedom Forum and more. Remember I called Bravo Sierra on this when the media started pushing Appeal of Redress' agenda...
Appeal for Redress and Jonathan Hutto's True Agenda (also posted at Newsbusters)

The Mudville Gazette - Appeal for Redress: Astroturfing
Antimedia - Military Personnel Speaking Out?...