Last spring, skeptical bloggers first questioned Massey's hyperbolic, Winter Soldier-esque tales. Justin Katz, a Rhode Island writer and publisher of Dust in the Light (http://www.dustinthelight.com/), wrote in May 2004 after examining Massey's incredulous claims of being ordered to massacre children and use "ICBMs" (sic): "This is how the anti-war forces seek to defeat the U.S. military. Seeping from conspiratorial Web sites and foreign anti-American rags into the mainstream consciousness like leech-filled swamp water rising through the floor boards, the level of conceivability for accusations notches up as time goes on. . . . [T]hose who enable, promote, and lend credibility to this propaganda assault must be faced and stared down this time around the historical cycle."

 Miraculously, a lone member of the mainstream media answered the call. Last weekend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Ron Harris, who was embedded with Massey's unit in Iraq, published a devastating debunking of the crackpot legends of Jimmy Massey. Harris detailed how Massey misled reporters, backtracked from allegations about witnessing a tractor-trailer filled with dead Iraqi civilians he claimed were killed by American artillery, and habitually embellished and altered his uncorroborated accounts of alleged military atrocities in the press and in public speeches.

 The response of Harris's colleagues who were duped by Massey? Mostly, a collective shrug. I e-mailed a reporter from The Washington Post asking if he would follow up. No response. A USA Today reporter told me he had no plans to do so. And I spoke with David Holwerk, editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee, which ran a lengthy freelance interview of Massey by an anti-war activist. "I don't know what we're planning to do," Holwerk said.

 Harris noted in a television interview that Massey continues to sell books and DVDs that smear our troops. "[I]t's been profitable for Jimmy Massey to keep telling this lie," he said.

 Apparently, despite the newspaper industry's plunging circulation figures and credibility, Massey's media enablers believe the same thing.