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red states rule
08-08-2007, 06:59 AM
One again, the lefts attempt to smear the US military has blown up in their face


Beauchamp Recants
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--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.

Separately, we received this statement from 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.


According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

The magazine's editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety--meant to illustrate the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war"--took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been "melted" by an IED.

Nothing public has been heard from Beauchamp since his statement standing by his stories, which was posted on the New Republic website at 6:30 a.m. on July 26. In their August 2 statement, the New Republic's editors complained that the military investigation was "short-circuiting" TNR's own fact-checking efforts. "Beauchamp," they said, "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."

Now that the military investigation has concluded, the great unanswered question in the affair is this: Did Scott Thomas Beauchamp lie under oath to U.S. Army investigators, or did he lie to his editors at the New Republic? Beauchamp has recanted under oath. Does the New Republic still stand by his stories?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/beauchamp_recants.asp

Gaffer
08-08-2007, 07:44 AM
It just interfered with his future plans to run for senator in mass.

red states rule
08-08-2007, 07:45 AM
It just interfered with his future plans to run for senator in mass.

or Hillary's running mate

red states rule
08-10-2007, 04:40 AM
'Please Don't Read This' Headline Leads Incomplete AP Beauchamp Story
By Tom Blumer | August 9, 2007 - 14:49 ET
One needs to look no further than the Associated Press's story on the Scott Beauchamp saga to understand why the general public not following the news closely doesn't "get" just how biased and antagonistic towards the war, the military, and American soldiers Old Media outlets are.

In the case of Scott Beauchamp, now that their brethren at The New Republic (TNR) have been caught red-handed publishing made-up stories, John Milburn and Ellen Simon of the Associated Press appear to be doing everything they can to cover for them -- first, with a headline (probably determined elsewhere within AP) that fails to communicate anything resembling the essence of the story, and second, by struggling mightily in their reporting to make it appear that this is a "he said, she said" dispute, instead of a situation where Beauchamp and TNR have been thoroughly discredited.

Here's the headline:

Army denounces articles written by GI


Trouble is, Paragraphs 4 through 7 of the story make it clear that this is no mere denunciation -- it's a complete repudiation that the person the Army is supposedly only "denouncing" agrees with:

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, based at Fort Riley, Kan., 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 website that it has conducted its own investigation and stands by Beauchamp's work.


This is rich -- TNR is standing by work its author has refuted.

And even the paragraphs above aren't right. Separately, and before the statement ascribed to Timmons, The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb (who, quite rudely, isn't named by AP) didn't merely "say" that Beachamp recanted (as if it were just a rumor). Goldfarb had, and has, at least two sources (bold is mine):

Beauchamp Recants

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--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.

Separately, we received this statement from 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."


Although a deeper look at Google News shows that the deceptive headline in USA Today is not being universally used, it is at multiple places. The following shows Google News results as of about 2PM on a search for the words in the USAT headline ("Army Denounces Articles Written by GI," without quotes):

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2007/08/09/please-dont-read-headline-leads-incomplete-ap-beauchamp-story

red states rule
08-10-2007, 05:19 AM
I am amazed the libs have not commented on one of their talking points being exposed as a lie

The Baghdad Fabulist

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 10, 2007; Page A13

For weeks, 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 whom 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 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 that 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 similar 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 caused not only 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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080901900.html

PostmodernProphet
08-10-2007, 07:02 AM
It just interfered with his future plans to run for senator in mass.

not at all.....he will simply scream 'Swiftboat' a few times and win by a landslide.....

red states rule
08-10-2007, 07:07 AM
not at all.....he will simply scream 'Swiftboat' a few times and win by a landslide.....

or he will make up more stories to defend his already proven lies

red states rule
08-11-2007, 04:30 AM
Since when does the liberal media care about the facts in a news story?


Reuters: Fooled by Another Fake Iraq 'Massacre'
By Warner Todd Huston | August 10, 2007 - 13:21 ET
How many times do we have to see the MSM reporting on a "massacre of Iraqi civilians" that turns out to be a false story planted by our enemies before we can definitively say that the MSM is purposefully aiding and abetting the terrorists? How ever many that may be, the tally is certainly on its way to overflowing and here we have another galling example of the same thing. This time Rueters is caught taking directions from the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq with the tale of "60 decomposed bodies" supposedly found in Baquba by the never identified, amorphous "Iraqi police."

BAGHDAD, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Iraqi police said on Sunday they had found 60 decomposed bodies dumped in thick grass in Baquba, north of Baghdad.

There was no indication of how the 60 people had been killed, police said.

No indication of how they were killed? Try no indication that they were killed!

According to an Aug. 8th letter from Major Rob Parke of the U.S.Army that was sent to Bob Owens of the confederateyankee blog, the Army has not been able to find a single ounce of proof that this story is true.

Bob,

This story is false. We have had coalition soldiers looking for the last two days at the locations that IPs reported these bodies. We've asked all the locals in the area and they have no idea what we are talking about. We've gone to areas that might be close, gone to suspicious locations, all turned up nothing.

Most of the news stories all say the report stated decomposing bodies which would indicate if it was true, it happened before we arrived. Considering we discovered an Al Qaeda Jail, courthouse, and torture house in western Baqubah, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 60 bodies buried out there somewhere. Bottom line is we have done some extensive looking and found nothing.

There have been quite a few of these fake massacre stories that the MSM have pawned off as "news" when all they turned out to be was propaganda promulgated by our enemy insurgents in Iraq. There was the fake "6 burning Iraqis" story from last November, and the "20 beheaded bodies" in June, just to mention a few.

The MSM claims that this is because it is so hard to gather news in Iraq because of the danger to reporters and media folk. This is certainly a true statement, but it is no excuse for merely reporting just any old tale that is handed to them on a silver platter as they sit in the comfort and relative safety of the U.S. protected green zone.

Danger in no way absolves them from printing the truth. But, then, all these tales of woe that can be used to prove how evil the USA is would happen to be their true agenda. Truth need not apply.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2007/08/10/reuters-fooled-another-fake-iraq-massacre