The New Republic has just posted a statement by the editors on the continuing controversy about “Shock Troops” writer Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp ….
Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a U.S. Army private serving in Iraq. He came to THE NEW REPUBLIC‘s attention through Elspeth Reeve, a TNR reporter-researcher, whom he later married. Over the course of the war, we have tried to provide our readers with a sense of Iraq as it is seen by the troops.
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We granted Beauchamp a pseudonym so that he could write honestly and candidly about his emotions and experiences, even as he continued to serve in the armed forces and participate in combat operations.
This seems like a relevant piece of information to have mentioned earlier (while still protecting Beauchamp’s identity). It goes to TNR’s credibility, especially when it has been documented that Reeve has REPEATEDLY used Beauchamp in her stories in the past.
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.
Bull. This is completely ridiculous and laughable. ONE corroborating witness??!!! A friend of “Scott Thomas” no doubt.
FULL ANALYSIS OF STATEMENT CONTINUES…..
And “experts” — the experts outside the military that have never set foot in the places Beauchamp claims to have been and events he claims to have seen and not invented in his mind.
They had “faith in the writer” because they knew (as we now know from Beauchamp’s own pre-Iraq writings) that he had a (now documented) personal political axe to grind long before his boots hit the sand.
Beauchamp’s essay consisted of three discrete anecdotes. In the first, Beauchamp recounted how he and a fellow soldier mocked a disfigured woman seated near them in a dining hall. Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. (GP Ed. Note — Presumably the same “one corroborating witness”!)
He told us: “We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right.”The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp’s on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit’s arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.
TNR editors blow this off as if it were a minor nuisance. In fact, it is a huge blow to the entire story and Beauchamp’s credibility on all other items. “Scott Thomas” made it sound like the horrible American troops on the front lines in IRAQ were mocking this woman and also by inference that this woman was a victim of American weapons or military action. It is quite possible this woman has a genetic facial disease, but it hardly seems plausible that she was injured by American troops. And, most importantly, it sounds like only TWO people laughed at her — one of which is the author in whom TNR lent so much confidence and credibility.
In the second anecdote, soldiers in Beauchamp’s unit discovered what they believed were children’s bones.
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More important, two witnesses have corroborated Beauchamp’s account. One wrote in an e-mail: “I can wholeheartedly verify the finding of the bones; U.S. troops (in my unit) discovered human remains in the manner described in ‘Shock Troopers.’ [sic] … [We] did not report it; there was no need to. The bodies weren’t freshly killed and thus the crime hadn’t been committed while we were in control of the sector of operations.”
Again, TNR shrugs off another major blow to the story and to “Scott Thomas'” credibility. In his original account, Thomas uses slight of words to subtly allege that the bones were the result of American military action.
The last section of the Diarist described soldiers using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to kill dogs. On this topic, one soldier, who witnessed the incident described by Beauchamp, wrote in an e-mail: “How you do this (I’ve seen it done more than once) is, when you approach the dog in question, suddenly lurch the Bradley on the opposite side of the road the dog is on. The rear-end of the vehicle will then swing TOWARD the animal, scaring it into running out into the road. If it works, the dog is running into the center of the road as the driver swings his yoke back around the other way, and the dog becomes a chalk outline.”
Again the infamous “one solider” witness who is conveniently at every place that Beauchamp’s stories take place! Kind of like how Beauchamp is in every story that his wife wrote while in Columbia, Missouri!!
I’m sorry, but this explanation by the editors has more holes in it than the Titanic. The TNR statement then closes with blaming the military for not being allowed to continue their “investigation”.
Although we place great weight on the corroborations we have received, we wished to know more. But, late last week, the Army began its own investigation, short-circuiting our efforts. Beauchamp had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters. If further substantive information comes to light, TNR will, of course, share it with you.
How convenient. What they fail to mention is that Beauchamp has violated many parts of military policy the least of which is failing to report incidents that should have been followed-up on my military investigators. Beauchamp’s fiction may result in his own court-martial. Again, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
It is astounding that all wrapped up in one statement today, the The New Republic editors have cast the military as hero, victim, oppressor and instrument of Bush fascism. A perfect summary of all of the talking points that demonstration what the Left means by “supporting the troops.”
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Interesting that the one story that was provably false – the disfigured woman – has now been “jiggered” just enough to be serviceable again.
But he saw her EVERY DAY, right? Right at the same place he was writing the stories? And he couldn’t remember that it hadn’t actually happened there?
So, let’s get this straight: Some “eff’n noob” is going to come to a jumpoff base, where he will undoubtedly meet many soldiers who have “seen the elephant,” and he’s going to start making fun of a presumed IED victim? Is that what we’re supposed to believe? Does that fit into your worldview?
It doesn’t mine.
I am content to wait for the official report, where a proper investigation with threats of courts martial will get these guys to tell their stories.
Beauchamp gave an intentionally one-sided account: one that Beauchamp had wanted (as we now know) to “score points” for his extreme left-liberal, anti-military politics. We now know TNR is thrilled to publish such accounts.
This whole thing reminds me so much of John Kerry. For those not aware, Kerry’s start in public life was his 1971 testimony before Congress in which he painted U.S. troops in Vietnam as the baby-killing army of Genghis Khan. In the decades since, Kerry’s account has been largely if not entirely discredited. But at the time, Kerry went on to lead an “anti-war veterans'” group, some of whose most public faces were not at all veterans, but “wannabe” liars/phonies (what we would now call Jesse Macbeths). Read all about it here: http://wintersoldier.com/
Kerry did the above while still in Naval Reserve uniform, i.e., he did not wait to be discharged from his unit. Moreover, it turns out that the only person in Kerry’s unit who acted like Genghis Khan was Kerry. In his memoirs, he recounts shooting a fleeing Vietnamese in the back and personally setting fire to a village with his “Zippo lighter”. Kerry’s comrades, even those who support him politically, state to a man that no one else in their unit acted like that. And Kerry should have been reporting such incidents, if they did happen. Not helping create them.
Now we learn that the only one-of-two to laugh at the disfigured woman – in Kuwait, not Iraq – was Beauchamp. Like Kerry before him, Beauchamp knew the story he wanted to tell well in advance, and in some ways, set about himself creating it.
Beauchamp’s actions are less spectacular and less dramatically false than Kerry’s. But the basic intent and action is the same as Kerry’s: Make a public name and score cherished political points, by slandering one’s comrades in the unit.
Re-write: “Now we learn that the only two people who laughed at the disfigured woman – in Kuwait, not Iraq – include Beauchamp himself… “
Hell if the price is right, I can get experts and corroborating witnesses to testify to anything. BTW, are these the same “experts” who are always “surprised” when the monthly and quarterly economic news is “better than expected”?
That the woman was in a DFAC in Kuwait changes the dynamics a whole lot.
I didn’t believe that soldiers at a FOB where people they knew faced IED’s every day and people they knew may have been killed by IED’s would taunt an IED wounded person. (It’s a rather large assumption that was how she got hurt. There are a whole lot of other possibilities but it made a better story that she had a melted face from an IED instead of any other sort of accident.) And if someone was enough of a jerk to taunt a wounded lady I felt that other people in the DFAC would contrive an attitude adjustment. (Not that Beauchamp would include that part even if it happened.)
But at a base with a whole lot of people just passing through the dynamics change. First, did they speak loud enough for other people in the DFAC to hear? Second, did those other people hear enough that was rude enough to either… beat the crap out of someone outside of their CoC… or… motivate them enough to locate the *sshole’s chain of command and tell on them so they could do something unpleasant like that latrine burning thing from Jarhead?
At a FOB I would expect (rightly or wrongly) that most everyone knows everyone in a very short time. I would expect that there would be NCO’s or officers in the DFAC within Beauchamp’s CoC or who knew exactly what unit Beauchamp and his buddy were part of. The chances that those overhearing are aquainted with the woman go way up. The chances of immediate and creative unoffical correction go way up. The chance of someone with the duty to apply official correction go way up.
Very different from a place where those overhearing would have to go to a great deal of effort to do something about it.
Probably more importantly… that the woman was in Kuwait utterly destroys the narrative of “the dehumanizing affect of war.” They hadn’t *been* to war yet. They were what they were before they ever got there.
So the sum total of things proven wrong or false is: one story did happen, but happened in a different place.
But, TP…. Beauchamp blames the “inhumanity of war” on his actions… that took place before he was even in the war theatre.
This guy is a joke and a fraud.
Matt Sanchez reported from the FOB Beauchamp is at that the Army has completed the investigation and found that all allegations have been proven false.
Those who have been defending Beauchamp are, of course, admitting they were wrong…
… well, actually they aren’t admitting they were wrong. Mostly they’re acting offended and superior and oh so scrupulously careful of the facts by concentrating on the fact that Sanchez is a former gay porn star and simply can not be trusted.
…whereas, if Sanchez were still a gay porn star (and thus a presumed semi-corrupt or semi-decadent gay leftie), then he could be trusted.
Will TP stop licking Beauchamp’s arse and admit that he’s wrong, or will he squeal like Ned Beatty of an Army cover up?
This is the second major credibility scandal for TNR is less than a decade. Anyone else remember the Stephen Glass fiasco?