Oops

[P/N]

A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Looks like the 'reputable' New Republic was publishing lies about the Iraq War and it's effects on the soldiers. Tisk, tisk...

[ballz2wallz]

You know why they were reputable and continue to be? Becuase they posted this story THEMSELVES.

There are FAR too many examples of 'reputable' liberal bloggers, 'reputable' papers, etc that refuse to ever comment on changes or corrections they make, or sometimes flat-out refuse to publish the truth.

Kudos to TNR for publishing this themselves.

[P/N]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

You know why they were reputable and continue to be? Becuase they posted this story THEMSELVES.

There are FAR too many examples of 'reputable' liberal bloggers, 'reputable' papers, etc that refuse to ever comment on changes or corrections they make, or sometimes flat-out refuse to publish the truth.

Kudos to TNR for publishing this themselves.

I agree. This is more than CBS did when Dan Rather wanted to believe a story so bad that he didn't verify anything beforehand. I think TNR wanted so badly to believe his stories were true that they jumped the gun (ala Dan Rather). It's a shame that there are so few honest journalists left. Everyone has an agenda or an angle. It also doesn't help that the press rushes to judgement before all the facts come out (ala Duke Lacrosse players).

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by P/N

I think TNR wanted so badly to believe his stories were true that they jumped the gun (ala Dan Rather).

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. 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 questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

I think they explained themselves pretty well, and did a good job researching afterwards when there was question about his credibility. This happens to everyone, and I would hope that all would respond in like.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we 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. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by P/N

A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Looks like the 'reputable' New Republic was publishing lies about the Iraq War and it's effects on the soldiers. Tisk, tisk...

I don't see that at all...anywhere

[P/N]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

I don't see that at all...anywhere

Take off your blinders maybe?

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

I don't see that at all...anywhere

Uh, they admitted to false information being published...

[JaJae]

Beauchamp signed a sworn statement on the first day of the investigation admitting that all three of his articles were exaggerations and falsehoods, reported the Weekly Standard's online editor Michael Goldfarb.

ABC News: Pentagon: Baghdad Diarist Writes Fiction

[Thorgrim]

Getting a guy to sign a statement after taking away all his property and cutting off his contact with the outside world != proof of lies

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Getting a guy to sign a statement after taking away all his property and cutting off his contact with the outside world != proof of lies

[RMNIXON]

I posted this over a week ago and was ignored:

More Trouble Down at The New Republic?

Credit does go to New Republic for paying some attention if rather late and admitting to mistakes.

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

Imagine people changing their story after they get in trouble with authority!

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by RMNIXON

Imagine people changing their story after they get in trouble with authority!

Anyone who has ever known a city's judicial system knows that whenever someone gets in trouble, they tell them exactly what the police want to hear in exchange for lessening of the charges or no charges

Ofcourse, this backfires in the cases where the person is telling them what they want to hear "oh no that never happened" and then facts come forward that IT INDEED HAPPENED, ive seen it dozens of times

[Thorgrim]

We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations."
--The Editors

The Plank

Looks like we're back to square one...not that I really care how this turns out

[RMNIXON]

Krauthammer takes New Republic to School:


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.

[Stylerod]

Great article here. Pajamas Media: How The New Republic Got Suckered


Seems this story gets more and more interesting as more facts are uncovered.


One of the so-called New Republic "Fact Checkers" was actually Beauchamp's wife!!!

And the person that made this fact public was fired, yet no one else that allowed the false stories to get published have been let go. Amazing! (not)

Also, in the usually liberal doctrine, the person that was fired for disclosing the "Fact Checker" as being his wife was vilified in the Huffington Post and they tried to "Out" him as punishment for telling the truth. But he seems to be taking it in stride as per this post.

“It was funny, making an attack that was pointless. Actually, doubly pointless — not only is my homosexuality a complete non-secret, but in any case, the factual claim that I’d made about Ellie’s [Elspeth Reeve’s] link to STB [Scott Thomas Beauchamp] had already been publicly confirmed by The New Republic. Also, I think it’s worth pointing out that [the author] was clearly attempting to ‘out’ me not as merely gay, but as a ‘gay conservative.’ In other words, someone who ought to have no credibility on either the left (because of my self-loathing politics) or on the right (because of my unbiblical fondness for cock).”

All in all a really great article. They did some excellent research. Another good one is here Confederate Yankee: When Hidden Experts Are Found that shows how the New Republic didn't "Fact Check" at all but made a quick call to a source but asked no specific questions. All so they could say they "Fact checked" without getting anything that might show the Husband of an employee was lying.

[Stylerod]

This evidence of dishonest war reporting by the liberal media is getting about the reaction I would expect from our more left-of-center friends.

[Stylerod]

Isn't the website Crooks and Liars used here quite often. I found this quite funny:

Baghdad Diarist Sheds His Pseudonym
By: Nicole Belle on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 3:45 PM - PDT

Since the wingnut blogs are scrambling to try to discredit him, good for Scott for coming out from the shadows. Will he get apologies for all the ugliness they’ve thrown at him? I don’t think so either…

Crooks and Liars » Baghdad Diarist Sheds His Pseudonym

Will the wingnut blogs get an apology from Crooks and Liars for this post??? A search of their site reveals they have not mentioned anything new with this story. I guess ignoring it will make it go away. Interesting......

[JaJae]

It's sad how quickly people jump to harp on the negativity.

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Isn't the website Crooks and Liars used here quite often. I found this quite funny:




Will the wingnut blogs get an apology from Crooks and Liars for this post??? A search of their site reveals they have not mentioned anything new with this story. I guess ignoring it will make it go away. Interesting......

Why would you expect a site like this to behave any different? The issue is not how far left or right your bias might be. It is a question of simple honesty. When people won't admit to a mistake and simply grab for the next partisan rock to throw it tells you a lot about them.