See, this is my problem with Fox News. They take a story about a legitimate issue - Afghan soldiers coming to the U.S. to get military training, then going AWOL instead of back home to fight the Taliban - which has also been reported in places like the New York Times and ABC News, and they turn into some salacious all-capital-letters claptrap that reads like an Onion parody of a Fox News story.
A "network of Mexican-American women"? Check. "some of whom may be illegal immigrants"? Check. Teaching the AWOL Afghans "how to move around the U.S. without any documentation"? A colorful dehumanizing acronym? Check and check. How often do you get a terrorism angle, an illegal immigrant angle AND the implication of sex between different brown people all in one story? It's like How to Frighten a Bigot Bingo.
And that is my problem with Fox News. It's got nothing to do with any political slant they may have. It's got everything to do with the sloppy and ignorant slant they most definitely have. If something catches on fire anywhere on the planet, Fox News will totally be all over it, until five minutes later when something catches on fire somewhere else.
Where did this news about the shadowy network of "Mexican" barflies spiriting away foreign soldiers, complete with juicy details about the nightlife surrounding Lackland Air Force Base and, of course, the tidbit that the women are known as "BMWs," come from? Sources. Always sources. Anonymous frakking sources. Who are they? We don't know because Fox won't tell us. (Let's hope it's not the same guy whose BS trashing of Sarah Palin Fox so gleefully broke in 2008. You know, the one that didn't exist.)
And then there's the total lack of context, another Fox hallmark that makes me want to throw things. How many Afghan soldiers have deserted, supposedly helped by the BMWs? Forty-six. In eight years. That's less than six a year.
If you know that, say, 17,000 British troops have gone AWOL since 2003, then this story stops being "ZOMG! Scary AWOL Afghans at large in the heartland, guided by their mysterious Latina henchwomen!" and becomes "Wow, clearly we need better security," or maybe even "Why are we fighting for this country if the people who live there won't?"... and we can't have that, can we?
For what it's worth, the Times story reports 17 defectors in the last eight months, vs. Fox's 46 in eight years. The Air Force says that all but four have been accounted for: four already in custody, awaiting deportation; eight in Canada (six of whom have requested asylum); and one granted legal status here in the U.S.
So can we calm the hell down now?
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