The e-mail published in the article under under discussion has made its way into the Dec MCCLL Newsletter:
Debunking an Urban Myth
Access to the internet has accelerated the formation of “urban myths” that are often widely disseminated throughout a community of users and become accepted as fact. The Marine Corps is not immune to this phenomena. Accounts of “personal experiences” of anonymous Marines can be rapidly proliferated on the internet, with no way to verify the authenticity by going back to the original source. One of the important tools that can be used to either verify or “debunk” an urban myth are the resources of the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned. As an example, MCCLL recently conducted a research effort to verify the accuracy of an anonymous “Marine personal account” that has been widely disseminated on the internet and published as a legitimate news story in the Washington Times . MCCLL was unable to authenticate the source for the story nor certain facts contained in the personal account.