Posted from another site and checked on snopes.com and some other sites.
My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud, Iraq was assigned, with others of her detachment, to be escort/guard/ watcher for Martha Raddatz of ABC News as she covered John McCain's recent trip to Iraq. Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI's walking past. They kept count of the GI's and you should remember these numbers. She asked 60 GI's who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 for Obama and 2 for Hillary. Katelyn called home and told her Mom and Dad to watch ABC news the next night because she was standing directly behind Raddatz and maybe they'd see her on TV. Mom and Dad of course, called and emailed all the kinfolk to watch the newscast and maybe see Katelyn. Well, of course, we all watched and what we saw wasn't a glimpse of Katelyn, but got a hell'uva view of skewed news. After a dissertation on McCain's trip and speech, ABC showed 5 GI's being asked by Raddatz how they were going to vote in November; 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton. No mention of the 54 for McCain.

I snipped a sentence from this post -- "My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud, Iraq" -- and Googled it. This post is all over the web, in exactly the same words. See: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...uud%2C+Iraq%22

So, I doubt that the niece of the poster actually had this experience. But, Katelyn, if you're out there, please step up.

__________________
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G.K. Chesterton

Snopes does mention this, but hardly verifies it. In fact, the Snopes posts raises some obvious questions about it, including a flat denial by Martha Raddatz herself:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/raddatz.asp

Incidentally, I have been doing some research and I cannot find any place called "Baluud" anywhere in the world, let alone Iraq. As Raddatz points out, there is a place called "Balad," an airbase, which she visited with Dick Cheney, not McCain.

This is hilarious.

yeahyeah should be lookup the thread in the lounge section regarding name changes. They could call themselves shillshill or, at the very least gulliblegullible. Wannabe innernet pundits should check their facts before spewing.

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Peter Cetera:
Sometimes I just forget
Say things I might regret
It breaks my heart to see you crying

yeahyeah and others. One way to have more balanced view in the media would be to have conservatives become an administrators for the "Nation" and the "World" sections of PB.

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If he ever had to eat his own words he'd die of malnutrition.
Colin P. Varga 1991

I don't think these sections should have moderators. Shill vs. shill, pundit vs. pundit, until they finally kill each other off. Then us semi-normal people could comment on politics once in awhile...hehe

__________________
Peter Cetera:
Sometimes I just forget
Say things I might regret
It breaks my heart to see you crying

Actually, when I read the original about this on snopes.com, the e-mail from the reporter was not there.

Also, regardless of how many times it's been post (someone googled a phrase), what does that mean? One video on youtube.com of some new band gets a million hit's and they are famous, does that be it's a fake because people posted a lot about them?

Given the way the Web works, it often means that someone is priming the pump. That is, someone is trying to make this (likely) rumor go viral so people will believe it regardless of the facts.

I'd still like to hear from Katelyn herself. Full name, address and a statement on the record that this happened. We know where Martha Raddatz is. Where is Katelyn?

__________________
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G.K. Chesterton