"The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated"

Here's a wonderful example of the right wing echo machine at work.  Yesterday, we had this report from recent Accuracy in Media award winner* Jim Hoft:

"Breaking Report: Assad Shot By Bodyguard – Hospitalized in Damascus"

Pretty soon, this story was breaking out all over the wingnut world:

New York Daily News:  "Unconfirmed reports of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s shooting highlight chaos in country"

Free Republic:  "Bashar al-Assad was killed by a bodyguard"

Before It's News:  "There are reports of Assad being assassinated coming our of Israel, not sure what this means but it very well could be the Isaiah 17:1 prophecy, the burden of Domascus event or the beginning of it. "

Isaiah 17:1- is that the one that says "In those days shall come a great host of jackasses braying their loud brays, and verily all the jackasses will take up the braying until men of good will go mad from the sound"

and on and on, most of them being insane enough to base their story on what perpetually wrong Hoft had posted.

Today, Hoft has this to say:

"Syrian Embassy: Assad Not Dead – In Fact, He’s Alive and in Good Spirits...The Syrian Embassy in Moscow on Monday dismissed rumors about the death of Syrian President Bashar Assad, something that is currently being discussed by bloggers on social networking sites."

Not a mention that Hoft himself was one of the chief purveyors of this nonsense. I did a Google search for "Bashir Assad Shot Bodyguard" and got 216,000 hits.

And in fairness, I must add that the left wing site Democratic Underground fell for it too.

*They have no shame.  But you already knew that.

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