The New Republic Left Holding the Bag

[thedrifter]

August 08, 2007
The New Republic Left Holding the Bag
By Jeff Emanuel

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - The door was slammed shut on the seemingly un-killable Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair this week, when the US Army completed its investigation into the formerly pseudonymous "Baghdad Diarist's" claims of reprehensible behavior on the part of himself and his fellow soldiers while living and working in Iraq.

The investigation began on Thursday, July 26 - the same day that Beauchamp "outed" himself on The New Republic's (TNR) website, giving his full name and unit affiliation, and stating that he stood by his stories 100%. "It's been maddening, to say the least," he wrote, "to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. ...[M]y character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name."

The New Republic, which had published - and repeatedly stood behind - Beauchamp's diaries, annotated Beauchamp's "coming out" post with a statement of its intention "to go back and, to the extent possible, re-report every detail" of the Baghdad Diarist's stories, adding:
This process takes considerable time, as the primary subjects are on another continent, with intermittent access to phones and email. Thus far we've found nothing to disprove the facts in the article; we will release the full results of our search when it is completed.
TNR finally began backing off of its staunch support of Beauchamp a bit last Thursday, running an editorial in which it admitted that there were some inaccuracies in the original stories - but in which the editors also claimed to have corroborated two of the three incidents Beauchamp wrote about in their entirety. However, with the publication of that editorial came a massive shifting of the goal posts, an obfuscation of the points of different parts of Beauchamp's essays, and the making of claims that the factuality of small parts or underlying details rendered entire narratives accurate - thus hopefully rendering invalid the claims and opinions of those who had challenged it, while making the entirety of the story unassailable.

The tactic is, unfortunately, very typical, and demonstrates the arrogance possessed by a Fourth Estate which sees it as their duty to serve as a watchdog over all others, while being unwatchable themselves. As has been seen before, when called on a story that, like the so-called "Haditha massacre," was simply "too good to be [thoroughly] checked," TNR backed off a bit, made a few minor concessions, and then pulled the classic Dan Rather-esque "those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the major thrust of our report" - which, of course, is far from accurate. As my colleague at RedState.com, Dan McLaughlin, mentioned upon reading TNR's editorial, they "have made concessions on the very things that people flagged as factually unlikely."

The rest, they were simply lazy with, and the attitude displayed in last week's editorial - and the stages through which it passed, from stolid defensiveness, to revealing details in hopes that the larger part will be accepted as factual without question, to minor concessions paired with defensiveness in hopes of the same - was poor, defensive journalism at its near-worst, reflective of a publication (which revels in accusations that others are lying) that values its short-term pride over honesty, accuracy, and long-term respectability.

In other words, never mind the fact that the small detail of Beauchamp and his companion ridiculing a "horribly disfigured woman" actually took place (still allegedly) in Kuwait, before the author had ever even seen the Iraq war - and never mind the fact that, given TNR's claim that the entire purpose behind the series was to describe "the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war," the location of the incident renders its applicability absolutely moot. The fact that Beauchamp carried out one of the most revolting acts he describes before he ever went to Iraq and experienced "the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war is irrelevant to the point which TNR was trying to make - and any who stray from that line (and point out instead that this incident appears to say far more about Beauchamp's breeding and his parents' poor job of raising him to be anything other than a horrible human being than it does about President Bush and his horrible war) are simply ignoring the "bigger truth" about this war to which TNR is so diametrically opposed.

TNR's defenses were propped up by many on the left who, rather than recognizing a ship sinking under the weight of its own disregard for the truth, sought to serve as Dutch Boys and to plug up holes with further obfuscation, and by casting aspersions on those who simply sought the truth of the matter. Pundits and bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, John Cole, and Matthew Yglesias took their turns defending TNR, attacking those who questioned the veracity of Beauchamps stories, and claiming victory on the whole when the most minute of details - like the fact that Beauchamp was an actual American soldier - were shown to be true.

Unfortunately - as the bombshell results of the Army's internal investigation show - every one of them (with The New Republic's editorial staff at the forefront) was played for a fool.

As Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard reported Monday, it turns out that, on the first day of the investigation - the same day that Scott Thomas Beauchamp was telling TNR's readers that he was "willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name" - he was also signing an official affidavit admitting that all three of his articles in The New Republic were exaggerations and contained falsehoods.

In other words, as TNR was "re-reporting" their stories the next week, and defending Beauchamp's accuracy and integrity, his stories had already been officially disavowed - by Beauchamp himself - for a week.

To add insult to insult, the Army's official report on the stories so vigorously defended by TNR did not simply cast doubt on details of Beauchamp's diaries - it blew holes in them.

Said Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

Not "inaccurate." Not "exaggerated." False. TNR and its staunchest allies went to the mat for a source and for stories that turned out to be false - and for what? Simply, it would appear, for a chance to finally show the American military (thanks to the words of one of its own) as being what they already thought them to be - uncouth, brigandish, and inhumane people who have been irrevocably damaged, both in soul and psyche, by Bush's awful war.

If one approaches this from that angle, and sees that TNR and its allies had been waiting for just this opportunity - an opportunity not only to validate their deeply-held views of the American military, but also to break the story of a scandal in which US soldiers were the culprits - then it becomes very easy to understand why it was so important to run these articles without attempting further fact-checking (an exercise which ran the risk of showing these too-good-to-be-true tales to be exactly that).

Already damaged by the Stephen Glass scandal, The New Republic has been left in an exorbitantly embarrassing position by another trusted writer (and the husband of one of its own researchers), who played them for fools, admitting under oath that his articles were fabrications at the same time that he was reasserting to their faces the veracity of his every word.

TNR's credibility has taken yet another massive body blow. How much longer can good-conscienced writers bear to remain with a publication whose ship of credibility has gone down by the mast? How much longer will TNR's readership remain in place, now that they have been shown again that what is presented in the magazine's pages cannot necessarily be trusted? How much longer with TNR's defenders allow it to escape the savagery of their own quills, which had so recently been reserved for savaging those who dared question the magazine's claims?

Wishful thinking, perhaps. It is, unfortunately, altogether more likely that those who published and defended such fallacious accounts will simply shrink back into the shadows, choosing rather to lie in wait for the next opportunity to snare the American military, and the administration which they so despise, with another story which presents itself as being "too good to be checked."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

New Recklessness at the New Republic
By John Tabin
Published 8/8/2007 1:07:39 AM

Our story so far:

On July 13, the New Republic printed an article called "Shock Troops" under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas." The article's startling claims about the behavior of U.S. soldiers led many to raise questions about both "Shock Troops" and the two previous pieces run under the Thomas byline.

On July 26, TNR announced that it would investigate the story, and meanwhile revealed that the author was Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and that he wished to stand by his work under his own name. Some investigation into Beauchamp's background revealed what a very strange guy he is.

Last Thursday, August 2, TNR announced the results of its investigation. It had determined that one (rather important) detail was incorrect, but decided that the rest of the story was still plausible. Many found TNR's statement unconvincing, but clearly they thought that it was the end of the matter.

On Friday, TNR editor Franklin Foer appeared on Left, Right and Center, a weekly radio show on KCRW in Los Angeles. He accused TNR's critics of smearing the magazine, saying that they "move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation" and should "for once apologize when they get something wrong."

Even as Foer was speaking, though, it was being reported that the Army's investigation had concluded that all of Beauchamp's claims were false.

On Saturday, this was officially confirmed by Col. Steven Boylan, the Public Affairs Officer for Gen. David Petraeus. "An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims," Col. Boylan told blogger Bob Owens.

TNR, according to its statement, "spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously." Clearly, Beauchamp and these five soldiers lied to someone.

On Monday night, Michael Goldfarb reported at the Weekly Standard that, according to a military source familiar with the Army's investigation, Beauchamp has "signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods."

Thus far, TNR's only response to this has been to quote Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy PAO for Multi National Division-Baghdad, to the effect that he doesn't know whether Beauchamp signed a sworn statement. Maj. Lamb has been quoted on this matter by several news outlets, including the Weekly Standard, USA Today (on a house blog), and the Columbia Tribune (which has covered this story because Beauchamp went to college in Columbia, Missouri). Each of these outlets has quoted Lamb saying that Beauchamp's allegations are "false"; Lamb reiterated that Beauchamp's platoon and company were interviewed, and that no one could substantiate his claims, to both the Standard and the Tribune. Yet TNR has yet to mention (except obliquely, through a link to the Weekly Standard) the results of the Army's investigation.

It is conceivable, of course, that Beauchamp and five other soldiers in his company lied to Army investigators but told TNR the truth. Perhaps six people successfully kept their stories straight while lying to investigators talking to them in person (though it seems a bit more likely that they successfully misled journalists on another continent by email). Lying to Army investigators is much more perilous than lying to journalists, though, and if TNR's editors continue to stand by Beauchamp's work, they're implicitly making some pretty serious accusations against their sources. If we credit Goldfarb's reporting -- and I'm inclined to do so -- they are actually accusing a contributor of perjuring himself.

Some might call that a reckless allegation.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

August 08, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

Winter Soldier Syndrome
It only be cured when the costs of slandering the troops outweigh the benefits.

By Michelle Malkin


The tale of Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the discredited “Baghdad Diarist” for the discredited New Republic magazine, is an old tale: Self-aggrandizing soldier recounts war atrocities. Media outlets disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically. Military folks smell a rat and poke holes in tales too good (or rather, bad) to be true. Soldier’s ideological sponsors blame the messengers for exposing anti-war fraud.

Beauchamp belongs in the same ward as John F. Kerry, the original infectious agent of the toxic American disease known as Winter Soldier Syndrome. The ward is filling up.

U.S. military investigators concluded this week that Beauchamp concocted allegations of troop misconduct in a series of essays for The New Republic. “The investigation is complete and the allegations from PVT Beauchamp are false,” Major Steven Lamb, a spokesman for Multi National Division-Baghdad, told USA Today. The New Republic is standing by Beauchamp’s work. But Michael Goldfarb, online editor and blogger at The Weekly Standard who first challenged Beauchamp’s writing, reported Monday that Beauchamp had “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in The New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods — fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source.”

To illustrate the soul-deadening impact of war, Beauchamp had described sitting in a mess hall in Iraq mocking a female civilian contractor whose face had “melted” after an IED explosion. “I love chicks that have been intimate — with IEDs,” Pvt. Beauchamp claimed he said out loud in her earshot. “It really turns me on — melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses.” Beauchamp recounted vividly: “My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall.”

It wasn’t true. After active-duty troops, veterans, embedded journalists, and bloggers raised pointed questions about the veracity of the anecdote, Beauchamp confessed to The New Republic’s meticulous fact-checkers that the mocking had taken place in Kuwait — before he had set foot in Iraq to experience the soul-deadening impact of war.

Military officials in Kuwait tried to verify the incident and called it an “urban legend or myth.” Beauchamp’s essays are filled with similarly spun tales. How much of a bull-slinger was Beauchamp, an aspiring creative writer who crowed on his personal blog that he would “return to America an author” after serving (which he told friends and family would “add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING I do afterwards”)? The very first line of his essay “Shock Troops,” which opened with the melted-face mockery, was this: “I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.”

“Nearly every time.” At “my base in Iraq.” Complete and utter bull.

Defenders of The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine infamously duped by another young and ambitious fabulist, Stephen Glass, say the Beauchamp saga has been 1) blown out of proportion; 2) perpetuated by sloppy, rumor-mongering bloggers; 3) used as a distraction from the troubles in Iraq; and 4) exploited by “chickenhawks” who deny that war atrocities happen.

But the truth is, you won’t find a single Bush Kool-Aid drinker among the military bloggers, embedded independent journalists, and active-duty troops who prominently questioned the Beauchamp sham. They know it ain’t all going swimmingly overseas. But unlike Pvt. Beauchamp, they’re committed to telling the whole truth about the war, not just approximations and embellishments that will score easy magazine gigs and future book deals with elite New York City publishers. The doubters of Scott Thomas know atrocities when they see them. But, unlike the TNR editors, they know steaming bull dung when they smell it.

Ever since John Kerry sat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and accused American soldiers of wantonly razing villages “in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,” the Left has embraced a small cadre of self-loathing soldiers and soldier wannabes willing to sell their deadened souls for the anti-war cause. Think Jimmy Massey, the unhinged Marine who falsely accused his unit of engaging in mass genocide against Iraqis. Think Jesse MacBeth and Micah Wright, anti-war Army Rangers who weren’t Army Rangers.

Winter Soldier Syndrome will only be cured when the costs of slandering the troops outweigh the benefits. Exposing Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his brethren matters because the truth matters. The honor of the military matters. The credibility of the media matters. Think it doesn’t make a difference? Imagine where Sen. John Kerry would be now if the Internet had been around in 1971.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Army: Soldier-blogger’s reports not true
Investigation finds stories in New Republic to be false
By John Milburn and Ellen Simon - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Aug 8, 2007 22:21:50 EDT

NEW YORK —A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym.

The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured women sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers.

Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.

Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp. The stories, which ran under the name “Scott Thomas,” were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation that is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.

Since then, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, of 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, has come forward as the author. The New Republic said Beauchamp “came to its attention” through Elspeth Reeve, a reporter-researcher at the magazine he later married.

The Army said this week it had concluded an investigation of Beauchamp’s claims and found them false.

“During that investigation, all the soldiers from his unit refuted all claims that Pvt. Beauchamp made in his blog,” Sgt. 1st Class Robert Timmons, a spokesman in Baghdad for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, said in an e-mail interview.

The Weekly Standard said Beauchamp signed a sworn statement admitting all three articles were exaggerations and falsehoods.

Calls to Editor Franklin Foer at The New Republic in Washington were not returned, but the magazine said on its Web site that it has conducted its own investigation and stands by Beauchamp’s work.

In its note posted Aug. 2, it said, “We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report.”

After the pieces were questioned, the magazine said it extensively re-reported his account, contacting dozens of people, including former soldiers, forensic experts, war reporters and Army public affairs officers.

The New Republic said it also spoke to five members of Beauchamp’s company, all of whom corroborated Beauchamp’s anecdotes but requested anonymity.

In the note, the magazine said the incident with the disfigured woman took place in Kuwait, not Iraq.

The magazine also said the Army took away Beauchamp’s mobile phone and his computer and he “is currently unable to speak to even his family.”

The Associated Press has been unable to reach Beauchamp and the Army said details of the investigation are not expected to be released.

“Personnel matters are handled internally, they are not discussed publicly,” said Lt. Col. Joseph M. Yoswa, an Army spokesman.

Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said granting a writer anonymity “raises questions about authenticity and legitimacy.”

“Anonymity allows an individual to make accusations against others with impunity,” Steele said. “In this case, the anonymous diarist was accusing other soldiers of various levels of wrongdoing that were, at the least, moral failures, if not violations of military conduct. The anonymity further allows the writer to sidestep essential accountability that would exist, were he identified.”

Steele said he was troubled by the fact that the magazine did not catch the scene-shifting from Kuwait to Iraq of the incident Beauchamp described involving the disfigured woman.

“If they were doing any kind of fact-checking, with multiple sources, that error — or potential deception — would have emerged,” Steele said.

He added that he was also troubled by the relationship between Beauchamp and Reeve, his wife, who works at The New Republic. “It raises the possible specter of competing loyalties, which could undermine the credibility of the journalism,” he said.

Paul McLeary, a staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review who has written about the matter, said The New Republic failed to do some basic journalistic legwork, such as calling the public affairs officer for Beauchamp’s unit.

“There is a degree of trust and faith editors have to put in their writers,” McLeary said. “If you’re on a tight deadline, you have to go as far as you can. The New Republic definitely didn’t go as far as it could in terms of checking out its stories.”

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Absolutely Fabulist <br />
<br />
By Ann Coulter <br />
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/9/2007 <br />
<br />
In their latest demonstration of how much they love the troops, liberals have produced yet another anti-war hoax. <br />
<br />
The...

[thedrifter]

An outpost of American valor
By Kathleen Parker
Friday, August 10, 2007


WASHINGTON -- Chances are good that more Americans have heard of Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp than Cpl. Zebulon "Zeb" Webberley.

Both are serving in Iraq. Beauchamp is the soldier recently in the news and this column for writing dispatches for The New Republic about depraved behavior among soldiers whose moral moorings may have slipped a few notches.

That is, according to Beauchamp. Whether his accounts are true -- or a little bit true -- or not has been a subject of debate, primarily among journalists and the U.S. Army. TNR stands by Beauchamp's claims; the Army says the writer-soldier's accounts are false.

Enough time and ink have been devoted to Beauchamp, who admits to going to war for the sole purpose of writing a book. As a balance to that kind of ambition, now seems a good time to mention Webberley, as well as the man who brought his story to light.

First, a few words from Webberley: "Sir, I will die for this post. I have told all of my Marines that no matter what happens out here, we will hold this position at all costs."

Webberley, who at the ripe age of 23 is commanding a combat outpost, was speaking to W. Thomas Smith Jr., who left last month for his second trip to Iraq. Smith is a former Marine (though all Marines contest that once means always), journalist and author -- and a consistently honest broker of information. When he goes to Iraq, Smith doesn't stay in hotels or confine himself to Baghdad's Green Zone. On his first trip, he was with the British, operating south of Baghdad. This time, he's with the U.S. Marines -- Regimental Combat Team 2 -- operating out west in Anbar, the region where the U.S. troop surge has achieved some success as Sunnis have joined American forces against al-Qaeda.

Posting on a blog called "The Tank" at National Review's Web site, Smith says that Webberley is in the most isolated position he has yet seen. Smith described the view from his own windy perch on a sandbag:

"I can see the Euphrates River winding through the desert like a huge snake several miles in front of me. Tiny villages and some greenery run along its banks. A long, endless two-lane highway (the route I took to get here) is behind me. And a vast, rocky, dusty, orange and khaki-colored wasteland extends toward and beyond the river, beyond the highway, and in every other direction as far as I can see."

Webberley's station apparently is as crucial as it is isolated -- a radio-relay post defended by a single squad of Marines. Smith says the position is so vital to Marine communications in the Qaim region that "it cannot be surrendered under any circumstances."

As Webberley and Smith strolled the hilltop, the young corporal -- described by Smith as carrying a 9mm pistol and K-Bar fighting knife with a carved wood handle -- uttered the words quoted earlier.

The difference in attitude and purpose between a Beauchamp and a Webberley doesn't require elaboration. Cynics might argue that a 23-year-old doesn't know what he's doing, that he's a brainwashed pawn of a corrupt and ill-fated mission. Some also might mention that Beauchamp, in reporting the dark side of war -- assuming that what he has written is true -- is providing a necessary service far nobler than mere military submission.

They would be wrong about Beauchamp. Reporting truth is a noble mission -- that much is indisputable -- but victory belongs to the Webberleys of the world, not the Beauchamps. No one is insisting that only sanitized, "happy" news be funneled out of Iraq. Nor is anyone who has read history surprised that some troops behave badly in war. Gallows humor, which constitutes the bulk of Beauchamp's missives, is above all a survival mechanism in the midst of horror.

The news isn't that one soldier made fun of a disfigured woman -- or that another danced around with a piece of a child's skull on his head, as Beauchamp reported. The news is that more soldiers don't do far worse.

A few have, of course, but the vast majority of servicemen and women in Iraq conform to the kind of can-do attitude, loyalty and commitment articulated by Webberley. Thanks to brave journalists like Smith, we get to hear about them, too.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

August 10, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

Embedded Hostility
A case of “Beauchamping.”

By Jeff Emanuel

Baghdad, Iraq — The Scott Thomas affair has, for all intents and purposes, come to a close.

Questionable from the very start, the stories penned by the then-pseudonymous Scott Thomas Beauchamp have now been declared false. The New Republic, which published the pieces by the Baghdad Diarist, defended them vigorously when their author came under fire. But according to Mjr. Steven F. Lamb, the deputy public-affairs officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad, “an investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate [his] claims.”

The New Republic, offered stories by Beauchamp which validated their views of the military and of the war — and which were written by the future husband of one of their researchers — bit hard, and came up worse than empty. What they published was shown not to be simply “inaccurate” or “exaggerated,” but false — and TNR, along with its defenders, went to the mat for it.

The motivation for this is likely not as sinister as some ascribe to TNR — it is highly doubtful that they went to press with a story that they knew to be false, from a source they thought untrustworthy. In all likelihood, they simply found a story that validated their views about the “morally and emotionally distorting effects of war,” which also served as “a startling confession of shame about some disturbing conduct, both [the author’s] and that of his fellow soldiers.” Thinking the source unimpeachable, they ran with it.

A massive part of the problem with TNR and others who seek to run to press with the first available scandal is that, to them, such behavior is the rule in the United States military, rather than the exception (as it is in reality).

If one assumes that the magazine’s editors and its allies on the Left had been waiting for just this opportunity — an opportunity not only to validate their deeply held views of the American military, but also to break the story of a scandal in which U.S. soldiers were the culprits — then its easier to see why they ran these articles without thoroughly checking them (an exercise which ran the risk of showing these too-good-to-be-true tales to be exactly that).

This is not to say that scandal and wrongdoing do not take place, for they certainly do. American soldiers are human. They make mistakes, they do things wrong, and, as is true with the rest of the population, there will always be some very bad apples within the group (as Abu Ghraib and the Pendleton 8 clearly showed). However, if there is any group which better deserves the benefit of the doubt based on its conduct in the past — not to mention freedom from allegations in the absence of absolute proof and necessity — I cannot think of it.

Further, the idea that such a juicy story of inhumane activity and wrongdoing would come from a soldier at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon borders on the absurd. More than almost any other FOB, Falcon is constantly populated with journalists. Many embeds have passed through here, writers like me and my good friends Michael Yon, J. D. Johannes, Matt Sanchez, and David Beriain. None of us has ever seen the soldiers there act even remotely in such a way — and you can rest assured that we would be the first to report it if we did. Not one of us believes that the truth — or the story — is best served by covering up less-than-savory aspects.

However, TNR thought that they had latched onto a gem, and, though holes were poked in Beauchamp’s tales early and often, the editorial staff simply dug in for the fight. They claimed, a la Dan Rather, that “those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the major thrust of our report.” This, of course, was an empty point, for several of the flaws exposed in the Baghdad Diarist’s stories rendered their “major thrust” moot.

The stated purpose in publishing the Baghdad Diaries was to demonstrate “the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war.” To this end, Beauchamp told the story of a woman who had been disfigured by an IED, whom he claims he and a friend ridiculed for her appearance. After claiming repeatedly that this story had been proven true, TNR last week admitted that the incident (if it ever happened) now appeared to have taken place in Kuwait rather than Iraq. At the time that the incident now allegedly occurred, neither Beauchamp nor his companion in boorishness had yet seen war.

Far from proving President Bush’s war a horrible scourge, TNR simply proved, through publication of this “startling confession of shame about some disturbing conduct,” that Scott Thomas Beauchamp had issues long before participating in war. Put in its actual context, the alleged event reflects far more on Beauchamp and his upbringing than it does on President Bush or the effect that “his war” is having on the humanity of American soldiers.

Given the fact that it negates the entire point of the essay, it is not surprising that TNR, having published the original story, would fight to keep the reality from coming to light.

Stories like Beauchamp’s will likely keep coming as long as there is a segment of the population and the media who believe (and look for evidence to support the belief) that Scott Thomas Beauchamp is the rule, rather than the exception. Wishing, however, does not make it so.

As Air Force officer John Noonan said:

None of this detracts from the fact that, of the 160k troops in Iraq, TNR choose a real dirtball to serve as their correspondent. When other soldiers are out building schools, providing medical care, and running security operations for the Iraqi people, TNR decided to highlight a real slug of a mechanic who mocks the disfigured and disrespects the dead for kicks.

This is the crux of the situation: While the vast majority of the American military is doing amazing work in Iraq and around the world, members of the press are still searching for the Next Big Story which will show the military for the inhuman, war-scarred outfit they believe it to be.

Even if TNR’s masthead, and their vociferous supporters on the Left, will not alter their views of the American military as a result of this incident, it is important for the public to learn that these tales of depravity and inhumanity turned out simply to be the exaggerations and fevered delusions of one troubled young man who, as the alleged incident with the woman shows, was in such a state long before he ever experienced the horrors of war.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

August 10, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

Stephen Glass Goes to War
Why did The New Republic run it?

By Charles Krauthammer

For a month, the veracity of The New Republic’s Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the Army private who has been sending dispatches from the front in Iraq, has been in dispute. His latest “Baghdad Diarist” (July 13) recounted three incidents of American soldiers engaged in acts of unusual callousness. The stories were meant to shock. And they did.

In one, the driver of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle amused himself by running over dogs, crippling and killing them. In another, a fellow soldier wore on his head and under his helmet a part of a child’s skull dug from a grave. The most ghastly tale, however, was about the author himself mocking a woman that he said he saw “nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.” She was horribly disfigured, half her face melted by a roadside bomb. As she sat nearby, Beauchamp said loudly, “I love chicks that have been intimate — with IEDs. It really turns me on — melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses.” As his mess hall buddy doubled over in laughter, Beauchamp continued: “In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? ‘IED Babes.’” The woman fled.

After some commentators and soldiers raised questions about the plausibility of these tales, both the Army and The New Republic investigated. The Army issued a statement saying flatly that the stories were false. The New Republic claims that it had corroboration from unnamed soldiers. The Weekly Standard quoted an anonymous military source as saying that Beauchamp himself signed a statement recanting what he had written.

Amid these conflicting claims, one issue is not in dispute. When The New Republic did its initial investigation, it admitted that Beauchamp had erred on one “significant detail.” The disfigured woman incident happened not in Iraq, but in Kuwait.

That means it all happened before Beauchamp arrived in Iraq. But the whole point of that story was to demonstrate how the war had turned an otherwise sensitive soul into a monster. Indeed, in the precious, highly self-conscious literary style of an aspiring writer trying out for a New Yorker gig, Beauchamp follows the terrible tale of his cruelty to the disfigured woman by asking, “Am I a monster?” And answering with satisfaction that the very fact that he could ask this question after (the reader has been led to believe) having been so hardened and brutalized by war, shows that there is a kernel of humanity left in him.

But oh, how much was lost. In the past, you see, he was a sensitive soul with “compassion for those with disabilities.” In a particularly treacly passage, he tells us he once worked in a summer camp with disabled children and in college helped a colleague with cerebral palsy. Then this delicate compassionate youth is transformed into an unfeeling animal by war.

Except that it is now revealed that the mess hall incident happened before he even got to the war. On which point, the whole story — and the whole morality tale it was meant to suggest — collapses.

And it makes the rest of the narrative banal and uninteresting. It’s the story of a disgusting human being, a mocker of the disfigured, who then goes to Iraq, and, as such human beings are wont to do, finds the company of other such human beings who kill dogs for sport, wear the bones of dead children on their heads, and find amusement in mocking the disfigured.

We will soon learn if there actually was a dog killer or a bone wearer. But The New Republic seems not to have understood how the Kuwait “detail” undermines everything. After all, what made the purported story interesting enough to publish? Why did The New Republic run it?

Because it fits perfectly into the most virulent narrative of the antiwar Left. The Iraq war — “George Bush’s war,” as even Hillary Clinton, along with countless others who had actually endorsed the war, now calls it — has not only caused the sorrow and destruction that we read about every day. It has, most perniciously, caused invisible damage — now made visible by the soul-searching of one brave and gifted private: It has perverted and corrupted the young soldiers who went to Iraq, and now return morally ruined. Young soldiers like Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

We already knew from all of America’s armed conflicts — including Iraq — what war can make men do. The only thing we learn from Scott Thomas Beauchamp is what literary ambition can make men say.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

August 16, 2007
The Real Lesson of the Beauchamp Affair
By Douglas Hanson
The apparent fraud perpetrated by Scott Beauchamp has resulted in plenty of finger-pointing at Franklin Foer and the New Republic, as well as those "progressive" pundits who jumped on board to condemn the Coalition Soldiers and the war in Iraq. However, there is another largely unnoticed direction in which to look as well, in assessing blame for the disgrace.

But Soldiers like serial prevaricator Pvt. Beauchamp have been in the ranks since armies have existed. They spew tall tales that we once called "hee-ro" stories in order to puff up their ego or to prove how tough and callous they are in this nasty business of war. What's different today is that our material and technological abundance has handed the drive-by media a huge amount of anti-war propaganda and worse yet, has provided the enemy with far more operational information than we care to acknowledge. And the Beauchamp affair is a perfect example of how we undermine our own information warfare operations.

The common thread to the CBS Abu Ghraib mess and Beauchamp's tall tales, of running over dogs and the desecration of a corpse in a mass grave, is that the publication of the prison photos and the printing of Beauchamp's phony story potentially supplied further motivation to people with an primitive honor system to oppose US and Coalition efforts in the War on Terror. Even today, the media is still making hay out of the prison fiasco.

The Abu Ghraib incident was a high quality disinformation operation that played off Iraqi and Arab historical ethnic, racial, and cultural biases, indicating that this was run by seasoned professionals in journalism and their government "sources." But what made the operation so effective were the photos taken by the perpetrators with their handy dandy digital cameras. And oh, by the way, these were stored and sent on laptops on a military network in a combat zone. And ultimately made their way from said combat zone to the states to a nosy CBS producer.

Meanwhile, Scott Beauchamp, using his laptop and cell phone, nearly managed to cause a similar ruckus with his version of the John Kerry "we're all war criminals" shtick. If supplying the drive-bys with this garbage wasn't bad enough, the British Army found that it could get much worse.

Last summer, The Telegraph (UK) reported that family members of British Soldiers deployed to Iraq had received threatening phone calls from insurgents, including death threats, after the enemy intercepted transmissions from the Soldiers' cell phones. Because of this, the army issued a document that,
...warns soldiers preparing to take part in operations that insurgents in southern Iraq have managed to obtain the home telephone numbers of soldiers by using electronic intercept devices to hack into mobile phone systems.
At the time of this British report, I went on both CENTCOM and MNF-I websites to review their policy letters on cell phones in theater and any other restrictions concerning electronic devices. Not finding any, I made inquiries to the CENTCOM Public Affairs Office as to their policies concerning this serious flaw in our information and electronic warfare defense procedures. After promises that my request had been forwarded up the chain, I received no reply, and not coincidentally, all policy documents were removed from both websites.

It's not as if we didn't see foresee the negative effects of the overuse of technology.

During experimentation with digitized command and control systems and the tactical internet in the mid- and late- 90s, technical intelligence experts repeatedly hacked into computer systems and the new (at the time) cellular network. Needless to say, this caused some leaders to curb their enthusiasm about issuing these devices to the point of saturation. Nevertheless, it was a get-as-much-as-you-can attitude, so that requirements for encryption and network defense skyrocketed. Every mom and pop small business and large IT company was more than willing to cash in on the booming military digitization market.

Lessons from Desert Shield/Storm were often ignored or forgotten. During the Gulf War, we found that the Iraqi Army and Saddam's intelligence service were very proficient at electronic warfare. This shouldn't have been unexpected since they were a client state of the USSR, whose armed forces had some of the best warriors in the ether. The difference back then was that we took the time to understand their capabilities and operations, and executed plans to turn the Iraqis' strengths into our tactical advantage. Today, the powers that be tend to view the adversary as a bunch of bumpkins; not worthy of any serious consideration that they might just be pretty damn good in a few key areas to cause us no end of problems.

So, while Saddam's guerilla army and its Al-Qaeda partners judiciously use laptops to send operational traffic, and turn cell phones into efficient detonators of IED's, we flood the combat zone with gizmos and doo-hickies for entertainment purposes on base camps. The military command has willingly manufactured a target rich intelligence-gathering environment for the enemy with huge numbers of computers and cell phones, whether we need them for legitimate operations or not. This is counter-intuitive to any number of communications security principles regardless of the protection measures employed.

After several security breaches provided information to both the media and the enemy, the British Ministry of Defense has finally issued restrictions on service members' use of computers and other high-tech devices:
Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel will not be able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

They also cannot release video, still images or audio - material which has previously led to investigations into the abuse of Iraqis.
Just like us, leave it to the Brits to recognize the symptoms, but not address the root cause and its solution. The enforcement of these new restrictions is problematic at best. The more practical method is to prohibit the extravagant number of computers and cell phones in theater to reduce the electronic signature and to mitigate the misuse of communications, intentional or not. We cannot underestimate the enemy's ability to obtain intelligence, or the media's ability to wage information warfare on our own troops. And ultimately, I don't think it can be argued that we need fewer Soldiers carrying laptops and hanging out at the base camps and more combatants carrying assault rifles and crewing tanks - a lot more.

The Army is now looking into the Beauchamp matter, and pending the results of the investigation, they have seized his laptop and cell phone. (Oh, the torture, the inhumanity!) In an earlier age, if he were sincere about criminal abuses on the part of fellow Soldiers, he would have been forced to put his statement in writing up through the chain of command, the inspector general, or write a letter to his congressman. Any one of these procedures would have ferreted out the falsehoods.

Now, disgruntled Soldiers and wannabe lefty propagandists get a free ride to their 15 minutes of fame thanks to the soft, but well-intentioned garrison-oriented policies of the Army and an unserious view of the abilities of the enemy. "Loose lips sink ships" is definitely not the order of the day.

It's time to tackle the problem at the source, and focus our time and resources on defeating the terrorists instead of providing guilt driven technical luxuries.

Joe Crowley contributed research assistance for this article.

Ellie