XDA

A lot has been made of the three stories by Scott Beauchamp (under a pseudonym) which appeared in the New Republic, a small magazine of the left which has had bad luck with lying, making it up from whole cloth, reporters like Stephen Glass. Scott Beauchamp is a soldier and frustrated writer who was the boyfriend and is now the husband of a TNR staffer. The three stories were: 1) His making fun of a woman burned and disfigured by an IED; 2) A soldier picking up a skull fragment from a long dead little boy and wearing it like a yarmulke; and, 3) A soldier using his Bradly Fighting Vehicle to run over things including dogs. Regarding the second two, all I can say is oh, the horror, the horror*. But the first one bugs me still. All of the stories were to show the deadened soul war afflicts to the average soldier, or, as the TNR editors describe it--the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war.

Now the TNR is doubling down. They have finished their investigation of the stories (after they were published--isn't that the wrong way to do it?) and they are satisfied with the accuracy of each. Oh, but about the first one they say, there is a single mistake--the mocking of the burned woman didn't take place in Iraq between combat patrols, but in Kuwait before Scott Beauchamp got into any sort of combat, or had any sort of contact with the soul deadening aspect of war. I guess it was the result of the morally and emotionally distorting effects of flying in from Germany or, more likely, Beauchamp's just a jerk. As the incomparable Mark Steyn put it: War is hell, but, if you beat up a bloke in a pub in southern England a year before D-Day, that may not be the best anecdote to prove your point.

Ace blogger Ace of Spades takes the TNR editors on in high art mocking form:

TNR calls this an “error.” Error? Mistake? He was off by an entire country and something like nine months?

This is what TNR terms an “error,” a “mistake”? And when they “fact-checked” this beforehand, how did their “rigorous editing and fact-checking” miss the fact this took place in another country, before actual deployment?

I’m reminded of Steven Wright’s joke: “The other day I was… oh wait, that was someone else.”

Could happen to anyone, really. Common mistake.

What made this tall tale smell (and not “smell good,” per TNR’s standard of “fact-checking”) was that no one could figure out what the hell a badly disfigured woman — obviously a medical evacuation case — was doing wandering around a Forward Operating Base in the first place. A med-evac was there… why? In the thick of combat and high-tempo activity… why? What is FOB Falcon, a goddamned sanitarium/spa? Do they have lovely regenerative baths there?

It also didn’t help that no one — no one spoken to — could remember seeing such a woman on the base.

But the TNR isn't the only body investigating the three stories. The army has apparently finished its vetting of the truth of the stories post publication and here, according to milblogger Matt Sanchez, is its conclusion: After a thorough investigation that lasted nearly a week the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division has concluded that the allegations made by Private Thomas Scott Beauchamp, the "Baghdad Diarist", have been "refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false" (Emphasis added).

Whom to believe?



*Imperial Japanese troops in Nanjing, China, in early Winter 1937-38, used to cut holes in the sides of women and young girls who were being raped by three soldiers so that the victims were physically capable of being raped by a fourth or fifth impatient soldier. After knowing that little fact, disrespect to part of a long dead corpse, or running over a dog with an APC, pale to actual and utter insignificance.

UPDATE: The Confederate Yankee is reporting that the Army's conclusion to its investigation of Beauchamp is officially he's lying. No one in the unit corroborated what Beauchamp wrote. Col. Stevan Boylan had this to say:

To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?
Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by thecommand and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon andcompany were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.

Hmmm.

Labels: The New Republic; Free Form Journalism