We receive a lot of stories day to day on Netscape. They run the gamut: hard-hitting stories from well-known news sources like CNN and Fox News, stories from well-known and established blogs like The Huffington Post and Engadget, some very hands-on and personal blogging of breaking news, some interesting videos here and there, some conspiracy theories, and quite a bit of spam that we work to kill and remove from the system as soon as we spot it.
Amidst all these various stories, there are quite a few that pop up that are suspicious or questionable. These stories often come out of the blue from some unknown source and with little corroborating evidence to support the story.
Case in point, today we experienced a new twist on the unverifiable story. A Netscape member contacted our
Navigator Ousama, along with several of the rest of our Navigators and myself, claiming that s/he has been sent to Iraq as a contractor, asking us to blog about his/her story, keeping his/her identity a secret, and noting that since s/he has arrived s/he has already been shot and has shot someone.
After the jump, you will find his/her story retold via Ousama. We have several reasons for doubting the story:
- After I began looking into this on behalf of the Navigators, I noticed that the member's IP address since deployment has remained the same as s/he used before leaving the U.S. The IP address is not an overseas address.
- The member shares an IP address with another Netscape member. Either they're the same person or they live in the same home or access the internet through the same service or router.
- If you were just shot in the chest, would you be contacting Navigators and Anchors on Netscape?
- An issue that was also raised was how a contractor could operate in Iraq and what type of role they could play, since the member states that s/he is a contractor not a soldier. This raised some flags since s/he states s/he has killed an Iraqi Insurgent. However, here is an older article talking about contractors' roles in providing security in Iraq http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/contractors_4-6.html. From that article, it's obvious that contractors do assist in running missions and providing security to the military and private contractors in Iraq [Major thanks to Ousama for digging this information up for us].
Read over the story and let us know what you think in the comments. Is this a true life story from a war zone or a hoax?
