Fun with Trolls (not!)

[blufive]

Some people may remember this post, in which I linked to a post by riverbend, discussing the bidding processes in place for reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Yesterday, some enlightened soul decided to comment on that months-old post:

The $50,000,000 for the New Diyala Bridge contract of Riverbend's is a lie

So, in an attempt at fair-mindedness (or just being a sucker for trolls) I went out there looking for *any* further evidence or information whatsoever.

I didn't find any, either agreeing with riverbend or contradicting her. So, in the absence of any sort of official denial from anyone involved, I'll give riverbend the benefit of the doubt, notwithstanding the opinions of anonymous commenters.

However, I did find several near-identical flat-out contradictions, all on months-old blog posts linking the riverbend story, all posted yesterday by a "Ruth" (here, here, here, here and here) I suspect there would be more, if I were to keep looking.

The last couple of those also have comments from a "matt" who posted this:

The $50,000,000 for the New Diyala Bridge contract of Riverbend's looks more and more like a shabby lie.

on November 13th. Hmmm. I wonder if "ruth" and "matt" know each other?

Given my past experience on Usenet, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there are people who have nothing better to do than go bumbling around the web posting anti-comments like that on anything they disagree with.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Yes, apparently there's someone who's so offended by Riverbend that he's faked a whole blog that's one letter away from hers, hoping people will think it's her's.

Bloody pointless if you ask me.

And as you say, like Usenet at its worst.

[blufive.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes I've seen that one. I shan't bother linking it, since it's a lousy read, even if you agree with its "writer" (most of the posts are barely-edited cut-and-pastes from other sources)