Why Didn't War Mom Deborah Johns Jump Down Neil Cavuto's Throat for Falsely Claiming Her Son Died in Iraq?

Posted by Staff, Brave New Films at 12:00 PM on December 2, 2008.

Deborah Johns, a "Blue Star" mom and a ferocious Iraq war proponent has been a frequent guest on Your World w/Neil Cavuto for years. She made her most recent appearance last Friday as a representative of "Our Country Deserves Better" (also known as OurCountryPAC.org), the PAC that recently released an ad thanking Sarah Palin for being Sarah Palin. (Here are some of their other commercials, and here's the ad -- Johns is the blond woman in the blue top.)

During her Friday appearance, Cavuto said,

I always feel -- this is an unpleasant thing to raise, but you are so forceful and focused on it -- you lost a son in Iraq. And now we have a new president coming in who wants to get us out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Um, he hasn't tipped his hand as to when that might be but he's got what his aides are calling an aggressive timetable. How do you feel about that?

Johns went on to talk about "the need to support our troops"; the "victories" in Fallujah and the "free markets" that are working in Iraq. She didn't say a thing -- nothing -- about her son, who is alive and well and back home!

Take a breath and fast forward to December 1. Cavuto issued a rare correction:

Finally, we wanted to make this correction. While interviewing Deborah Johns last week, we reported that she was a Gold Star mom and that her son had died in Iraq. We were wrong. She's a Blue Star mom and her son is alive and well and now back home after serving three tours of duty in Iraq. That's a correction I'm very happy to make. Again, my apologies to Ms. Johns. And her son. And her family. More after this.

Her son is "alive and well and now back home?" What the hell? There's a lot going on here. A "news" organization that got its facts dramatically wrong (on purpose?). A rare (to say the least) apology? A woman who is so obsessed about getting her point about Iraq across that she's willing to sacrifice her son -- virtually -- in order to make it? (Don't tell me she froze in front of the camera. She's been a media fixture for years and years -- just Google her.) But to me, that's the interesting part.

Why didn't Johns jump up and down when Cavuto said her son was dead, when that wasn't true? My God. Unbelievable. It goes against the most fundamental grains in my heart. Who can stand to hear it announced, on global television, that their son is dead when he isn't? I'd never let that stand. I wonder why Johns did.

Tagged as: death, iraq war, fox news, george bush, barack obama, fallujah, neil cavuto, gold star, deborah johns, blue star