Is a story about a protester spitting at a wounded Iraq vet a right-wing lie?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 8:23 AM on January 29, 2007.

Uh-oh. The New York Times caught this bit of lefty incivility at Saturday's protest against the occupation of Iraq …

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq …

... as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back. Capitol police made the antiwar protestors walk farther away from the counterprotesters. "These are not Americans as far as I'm concerned," Mr. Sparling said.

The Washington Post characterized Sparling's participation like this:

At least one veteran from the Iraq war tried to bridge the divide between the groups. Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, from Port Huron, Mich., who lost his right leg below the knee in an 2005 explosion in Ramadi, spoke to both groups.

What could be more damning than the image of dirty hippie protesters spitting at a vet, especially a wounded vet who was just trying to bridge "the divide" between the anti-war protesters and what turns out to have been a small group of "freepers"?

Well, it turns out that Joshua Sparling has conveniently been the victim of many outrageous acts of leftist brutality over the years. So much so, in fact, that he's become a bit of a celebrity among the wing-nuts.

Digby has the details.

Sparling was featured in rah-rah military PR efforts as far back as 2005.

Then, in December of 2005, while recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed Medical Center, he was victimized by a Christmas card -- given to him by the Red Cross -- that was wrapped in patriotic fluff on the outside, but inside bore the message: "Have a great time in the war and have a great time dieing in the wor [sic]." It was signed, suspiciously, "Miguel." Fox, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the wingnuttisphere jumped all over the story. Sparling became an instant darling of the right; he even got a personal visit from war criminal Oliver North! What's more, the incident got the Sparlings an invitation to the State of the Union address.

A white supremacist named Michael Crook later took credit for sending the card.

Then, earlier this year, another ugly incident befell our "hero," this time at an airport as Joshua and his father tried to get home for a convalescent leave from Walter Reed …

We told them we would need a wheelchair and assistance with security because he was a wounded paratrooper confined to a wheel chair. They told us that would not be a problem…

We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, "Dad I'm going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there." Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, "You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go."

My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, "That's what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in." Madder and very emotional I asked, "Can't you remember 9-11?" She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out. […]

Meanwhile, Joshua was still at security. I told him "SPIRIT would not help us, but hang tight, I'll get you out tonight, I promise." Joshua said, "never mind Dad, it's not worth it. I'm going to end it tonight. I said don't you dare do anything stupid. There are too many people who care about you and too many people have got you where you are today.

Can't you hear the violins?

Of course, it falls within the realm of possibility that this guy just happens to always be at the exact spot where some unhinged war opponent sinks to blaming the troops, therefore validating one of the right's most cherished myths. But I don't buy the story at the airport -- even if someone was thinking 'you deserved what you got,' nobody would ever say it to a wounded vet in a wheel-chair. And we know that not a single incident of hippies spitting on vets returning from Vietnam was ever reported in the 1960s and 1970s -- that urban legend apparently popped up out of the blue in the 1980s, as the right was working overtime to rehabilitate American militarism.

As Digby writes:

Some might find it odd that such terrible treatment would befall the same man --- first he gets a terrible Christmas card (Christmas!) that tells him to "go die." Then, he was spat upon by protestors --- a myth of the 1960's come to life right before our very eyes. What are the odds?

Luckily the New York Times, which obviously reported his spitting incident without even the most cursory google search on his name, is helping to perpetuate this story for a new generation. From now on, any search of "spitting on Iraq veterans" will turn up this incident to back up the inevitable future claims by wingnuts that they were mistreated by the dirty hippies of 2007. Good job NY Times. That's why they call it the paper of record.

Tagged as: wing-nuts, iraq, protests, media

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.