The Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga continues…plus: the STB writing contest
In case you missed the segment we did on Friday with milbloggers J.D. Johannes and Jeff Emanuel about the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story, here it is:
John Tabin has the rundown on the peculiar private here.
Newsbusters dissects the Columbia Journalism Review’s attack on TNR critics in the milblogger community. Milblogger Baldilocks slams CJR clown Paul McLeary. And Matt Burden of Blackfive e-mails:
I find it interesting that CJR’s Paul McLeary has such a skewed vision of military bloggers since he interviewed me last November about “The Blog of War” which includes 54 military bloggers and in which we discuss why military bloggers are important.
Maybe he just forgot he conducted the interview?
Update: Balidlocks reports that McLeary has admitted “stepping in it.”
Air Force vet Bryan Preston explains why military folks care about the STB story:
How important, in the grand scheme of the war, is the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story? By itself, it’s not all that important. But contrary to the opinions of those who can’t be bothered to care about it but nonetheless opine on it for whatever reason, and then mainly to downplay its importance, Beauchamp hasn’t happened all by itself and to those of us who served, its context and trajectory make it very important.
Starting with the Vietnam war, the American public has been divided on the military question. A majority before, during and even after that war will claim that it supports and respects the military, but words are cheap and the actions of some tell a very different story. Some of those who say in a poll that they generically respect the military were undoubtedly among those who called returning troops “babykillers” as they spat on them. Some of those who claim to support the military only support it when it isn’t being used to defend the country, and even then they spend their time trying to cut the defense budget even while international threats mount and multiply. Some of those who claim to support the military look down upon those who choose to join it as either children who joined solely for the benefits, or thugs who joined because they love violence. And some of those who claim to support the military mistrust it and its intentions and see its members as the weapons of a fascist state.
Somewhere in all those descriptions, you’ll find the motivations that led TNR to publish the writings of Scott Thomas Beauchamp but not J. D. Johannes, Pat Dollard, Michael Yon, Michael Totten or any of the writings published by those of us who have been to Iraq for whatever length of time and have things to say about the troops and the war. TNR sought out a war critic, but not any war critic: TNR sought out a war critic whose writings either smeared the troops or exposed serious discipline problems among the troops. And examining the details of his writings, it became clear to many veterans and non-veterans alike that Beauchamp simply wasn’t writing the truth, and was therefore letting the men in his unit down by exposing them to unfair criticism. He was also reinforcing several stereotypes that many of those who claim to support the troops hold: That they’re dehumanized animals. Beauchamp’s work is today’s equivalent of calling the troops “babykillers,” only from inside the military where presumably the person tossing the insult will be insulated by his having “absolute moral authority.” TNR got to take part in the awful anti-military activities of the last lost war, but in a new and more pernicious way, by replacing smelly hippies with a man in uniform in the war zone…
…Throughout the Scott Thomas affair, no one was saying that atrocities can’t and don’t happen — they do. But remarkably, in this war our troops have committed far fewer war crimes than in any other conflict. Far fewer. Military training is different now from what it was in previous wars, and the rules of engagement are far tighter than they were in previous wars. It was routine during World War II, for instance, to capture enemy soldiers, extract information from them, and then shoot them because the advancing US troops had no way to keep them. Gitmo was nearly unthinkable, and granting captured enemy troops access to our courts would have been thought insane (and still ought to be, imho.) This war has seen far fewer casualties for our side, far less collateral damage for the civilian population in the war zones, and far fewer atrocities committed by our troops than by any other force in any previous war in the modern era and probably in all of history. By historic standards, this has been one of the most antiseptic wars ever and our troops have behaved exceptionally well under grueling and often confusing conditions.
But even though all of that is true, we still have TNR’s out there willing to publish whatever unchecked smears against our troops they can get their hands on. If they still knew how to feel shame, I’d say “Shame on them.” But they don’t, or they would be aware of all I’ve said and would never have published Scott Thomas Beauchamp. They would have done more than pass his tales around to check them for smell. That’s not to say that they didn’t know what they were doing, though. They did. And when the smear merchants strike, it’s up to those of us who are in the best positions to refute them, to do so, or the smears will stand as fact. Beauchamp wasn’t the first to smear the troops as a veteran or former veteran, and he won’t be the last. Future Scott Beauchamps should always know that there are others out there, who have also worn the boots and uniform, who always stand ready and able to face them down. It’s the right thing to do.
***
And now…sharpen your figurative pencils. Inspired by this terrific spoof, Cassandra at Villainous Company has launched an STB storyblogging challenge. The purpler the prose, the better.
Update: Haiku, anyone?
***
One last link for you–to embedded journalist Michael Totten’s latest dispatch from Iraq. A ground view of the counter-insurgency work our troops do every day. You won’t read it in TNR.
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Categories: Scott Thomas Beauchamp, They don't support the troops
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Hi Michelle:
Yesterday, McLeary sent a letter to Mudville Gazette in response to the pounding he’s taken over the weekend.
Thanks, Juliette. Just added.
As a veteran, it upsets me that a serviceman would write such things and that there would be such a rush to publish them. Why has it become chic or stylish to try to take down our military when these actions should be viewed as cowardly and treasonous?
The rule of law that govern this late great country are slowing becoming obsolete.
That is why.
As a Marine who served in Iraq, thank you MM for covering this story. Preston hit the nail on the head. Nothing more to say.
Ace has been running contests for a while re Scotty Beauchamp.
Haiku Contest
Blog Entry Story Contest
STB - Super Tropical Bleach, used in the decontamination of equipment after a chemical weapons attack.
/sorry but anytime you use 3 letter acronyms in front of a military crowd ya gotta be careful.
Journalists are envious and jealous of members of the armed forces for one reason. They earn respect just by their presence. Besides First Responders there is no other group of people who can do so. Academics hate them, journalists hate them, and most everybody else are simply envious because in their eyes, (journalists and academics), they are taking what should rightfully be theirs. The only way to strike back is to demonize them and in some sort of way thenfeel better about yourself. See they are not perfect!
Of course that is just IMHO
Air Force vet Bryan Preston explains:
…and in using Scott Thomas they did both.
Great article! Thanks for bringing it to the forefront.
Most if not all of the Scott Thomas stuff is true. You can’t refute it so you move to character assassination. How dare the main stream media, or anyone else, print something truthful but off message?
It seems to me that military personnel are about as divided on the war as the rest of the country. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to attack them for expressing opinions and sharing their experiences. Contrary information is good for discourse. If we’re going to win this war of public opinion we need a wide ranging and open debate.
One of the administration’s flaws in carrying out the war on terror has been it’s failure to level with the American people on its necessity. The rationale kept shifting. As things went wrong, the public abandoned the war because it never really invested in it. Most Americans have had to sacrifice very little. They’ve been mostly untouched.
Shutting up Beauchamp, which seems to be the goal of the current campaign, seems to me to be a continuation of these bad politics. We don’t want to hear anything that runs counter to our notion that the war is just and good and successful.
I think it better to let Beauchamp talk and talk and talk. He’ll undercut himself, not unlike Cindy Sheehan.
Are you serious? None of what he wrote is true. It is fiction, and you have just demonstrated the danger in allowing this type of story to go unchallenged. You want to believe it and you do, no matter all the evidence that exists to the contrary.
Sure questions have been raised about the author but many more questions have been asked about the incidents he writes about.
I may have missed it, but what was so crazy about what he wrote?
People do crazy things all the time in the military and outside. I think war time conditions only makes aberrant behavior more likely.
While we need to support our military and thank them for their service to the country, we should not elevate them to sainthood. That is impossible and terribly unfair to them–I believe the hagiographic treatment of the “troops” is more about our own psychological needs than it is about their interests or their lived realities.
It is about sensationalism. The deal is to scoop everybody with a horrific story. If the story is only mildly horrific – embellish. You know, show a building that took a bomb hit and throw some baby toys or a wedding dress into the mix and now you have “scooped” everybody.
Who wants to “scoop” our troops building schools or female children now going to school – too boring.
On what basis do you make that assertion? Or are you just trolling?
15.
Here’s my evidence: a whole pack of bushhounds has sniffed furiously over his writings and found nothing they could refute. If anything he wrote was provably false, you would have produced the proof. As it is, all you have is dander and spittle.
Well, some of what he wrote is just physically impossible, like maneuvering a Bradley precisely enough to run over stray dogs or wearing a baby’s skull under a form-fitting helmet.
But what made his stories so implausable was the sheer number of people that would have to be invovled in them. Yes, the US Military like all organizations has some bad apples. But in order for these stories to be true dozens (if not hundreds) of people up and down the chain of command would have to be depraved to the point of clinical illness without anyone noticing. The improbability of that, combined with a complete absence of evidence and Beauchamps obvious leftist / self-aggrandizing agenda, makes the stories very hard to believe.
Oh, so you’re just trolling. Thanks for answering my question.
Virtually everything he’s written has been thoroughly debunked. Even if it hadn’t I’d like to remind you that the burden of proof lies with the person making the accusation.
If, for example, I claim that the headache I have right now is the byproduct of mind control rays beamed at me by Karl Rove you can’t prove that it isn’t. That doesn’t make it true.
Although you probably think it is.
Yup. I guess the lad is just much too young to know that very basic principle; if someone claims to be Napoleon, it’s up to him to prove it, not to anyone else.
From evrything that’s been said about this loser it sounds like he was what my bros who served in the USA would call “the company sh-tbird”.
Evidence? I’m not sure what evidence he could have presented that would convince some people.
I had friends who looked at Abu Grahib photos and tried to tell me that it wasn’t torture.
When people are that committed to “unreality” there’s not much point in conversation. Rational discourse loses its meaning. This young man’s assertion’s should be checked, but what is taking place here is a smear campaign. There’s no real willingness to check his facts.
Um… how about a corroborating witness? How about proving the woman with the melted face even exists? How about one single shred of documentation? I’d be happy to entertain all these things as evidence if they existed.
I’m going to have to agree with your friends. In a world where our opponents routinely mutilate, rape and murder the people unfortunate enough to fall under their power I don’t think making someone wear a leash or women’s underwear rises to the level of “torture”. It was, however, mistreatment to a criminal degree. That’s why we publicly tried and punished the offenders. When any member of the Arab league does the same let me know, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
No argument there. Now please tell the Left to knock it off so we can have a meaningful policy discussion.
This young man has smeared himself by claiming to have taken part in war crimes. If he’s the liar we say he is then he’s actually a good deal less evil than he claims to be.
I am a vet (12 years). When I read the mess this Scott Thomas wrote what bothered me about it was that it didn’t make sense. It didn’t add up. Of course I’m not there and I have no way to disprove what he wrote but from my own experience it did not make sense. I was in the Army too.
When his identity was revealed and I read his blog from the time he was in Germany all I could think of was how it sounded like the musings of a young John Kerry if we would have been privy to such a thing.
I have read several comments on this fellow referring to him as a college graduate but I don’t know where they are getting that. I get the impression he did not graduate. I get that because he mentions going to SIU (Southern Illinois University?) and being recommended for the Green to Gold program. Then says he doubts he will get a scholarship because his grades are crap. This tells me he did not graduate University of MO. He is talking ROTC for prior service, enlisted people. I think he mentions this as a sort of flattery. Just because he knows about the program doesn’t mean he would actually get a recommendation for a scholarship. This guy is a slug.
The people I know with this name pronounce it beech-um. I’ve heard a lot of funny pronunciations on the news.
Hey Michelle, I did a full piece on Beauchamp’s blog. Its got nearly every important post and comment of his linked and copied. Here you go.
If the lefties can’t see why Beauchamp is getting questioned after reading through, they’re choosing not to.
“I’m going to have to agree with your friends. In a world where our opponents routinely mutilate, rape and murder the people unfortunate enough to fall under their power I don’t think making someone wear a leash or women’s underwear rises to the level of “torture”. It was, however, mistreatment to a criminal degree. That’s why we publicly tried and punished the offenders. When any member of the Arab league does the same let me know, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”
This is the same repugnant cultural relativism we get from the left. Just because the enemy does it, it’s ok for us. Ghastly logic.
That’s not what I said at all, and I think it takes a willful misreading of my comment to say it is.
First of all I didn’t say it was “ok for us to do it”. I think it just and proper that the people responsible for that episode were punished.
But more importantly I think it’s important that words maintain some semblence of their meaning. Most of what was done at Abu Grahb happens routinely in frat houses across the country as run of the mill hazing.
To use the same word to describe that as we use to describe mutilation, electrocution, gang rape and summary execution just doesn’t make sense. Frankly I think you’re the one practicing cultural relativism by suggesting that the relatively minor offenses of a handful of American criminals is of a piece with the institutional barbarism of our enemies.
To call what happened at Abu Grahb “torture” insults the victims of actual torture by belittling what they’ve endured.
Appalling? Yes. Criminal? Yes. Worthy of punishment? Yes. Torture? Not by a long shot.
ALERT! Maybe some of MIchelle’s war bloggers and perhaps even some of you commenters here on this thread could take a crack at debunking this case of so-called atrocities taking place at the hands of U.S. troops:
“FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (7/30/07) - A Fort Campbell soldier accused of acting as a lookout while his colleagues attacked and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family pleaded guilty to some lesser offenses Monday as his court-martial began on rape and murder charges.
Pfc. Jesse Spielman pleaded to conspiracy to obstruct justice, arson, wrongfully touching a corpse and drinking.
Two soldiers have told investigators that Spielman, 22, of Chambersburg, Pa., knew of the plan to rape the girl in Mahmoudiya, a village 20 miles south of Baghdad, and was present when they set the details over swigs of whiskey.
During their courts-martial, Spc. James P. Barker and Sgt. Paul E. Cortez testified they took turns raping the girl while then-Pfc. Steven D. Green shot and killed her mother, father and younger sister. They said Green, who is accused of being the ringleader, shot Abeer in the head after raping her. The girl’s body was then set on fire with kerosene to destroy the evidence, according to testimony and military documents.
Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, who stayed at the checkpoint to monitor radios, testified during a hearing in March that he overheard Spielman and the others discuss the rape beforehand.”
This just reeks of fabricated anti-war nonsense, doesn’t it? Our troops would NEVER do anything like this, it’s just impossible and anyone who says otherwise hates America and wants us to lose the war. Let me know when you guys debunk this pack of liberal lies!
Good luck!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070730/ap_on_re_us/army_rape_slaying
Wow. If I had to invent a pure expression of self-satire, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything better than the above statement.
Let’s see: Take someone like Beauchamp, who writes an article smearing his fellows, and when others scrutinize his allegations and find them incredible, claim it’s the skepics who are “unwilling to check the facts.”
Follow it up with a claim that the skeptics are the ones doing the smearing, not Beaushamp.
Wash it all down with some high-brow sniffing about how other people are “committed to unreality” and not worth conversing with.
And do it all in a single short paragraph. Amazing.
The emerging standards of left-wing journalists and their believers -
“Fake But Accurate!”
“It Might Be True!”
“Too Good to Check!” and
“Prove It Didn’t Happen!”
- are how Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair committed career suicide and disgraced their employers. It’s how Reuters ended up getting snookered with doctored photos from Lebanon, how the New York Times let Joe Wilson turn it into a megaphone for his serial lying and how the AP got taken in by “Jamil Hussein.”
Beauchamp’s shaky accusations, TNR’s inability to back them up, and the alternative-reality crowd’s credulousness in swallowing them whole are looking like the latest expression of the left’s “Narrative-uber-alles” mindset - the mindset that goes a lot farther than the criticisms of the skeptics toward explaining why “rational discourse loses its meaning.”
Not so. Actually, derek, it’s this very disturbed individual’s own words that are “smearing” him if anything - you have read the insane ramblings on his blogs, correct? That’s even setting aside the enrries where he gave away troop deployment plans, putting many American lives in danger.
LOL, JF - that’s the entirety of the defense.
It reminds me of the epilogue of “Plan 9 from Outer Space” where the “psychic” The Amazing Criswell demands of the audience re: aliens raising the dead to attack the living, “Can you prove that it didn’t happen???”
So, are you saying that the uncorroborated, unsubstantiated assertions of some guy on the internet should carry the same weight as a the findings of an investigation, confession and trial?
Or are you saying that the findings of an actual court martial should be held as questionable as unsubstantiated assertions?
Or are you suggesting that because some US servicemen were convicted of a crime that means there should be a presumption of guilt for the other 400,000 of them?
Whichever of those you’re suggesting, it’s absurd. And to use your logic, we can point to Glass, Blair and Rather and say that no reporter is ever telling the truth. So by your own logical standard, STP is lying.
I’d also love for you to point out where one single blogger/commenter of any political persuasion suggested that no US military people ever commit crimes. Until you can do that your juvenile sarcasm just comes off as, well, juvenile sarcasm.
Which is truly odd considering how many of these guys have been exposed as utter frauds. In fact, have any of them ever held up under scrutiny? That’s not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know.
Very good question. They should be held up to the intense scrutiny. The extreme fear in having this guy and his tales checked out top to bottom is indeed very telling. Hence the very desperate diversion tactics by the anti-America types.
Congratulations, you have completely missed the point. Another fine example of leftist mental laziness on display.
The question has never been “whether” our military servicemembers are capable of committing bad or even heinous acts. Some of them can, and some of them have, in every army, in every epoch.
To falsely imply that others are in denial about that unfortunate reality is classic, bad faith, red-herring sophistry from the left that, far from being surprising, is actually what’s come to be expected these days.
The issue with Beauchamp and TNR is the standard of proof in connection with those making accusations of such behavior.
We’ve seen too many examples of the left’s journalistic equivalent of “Shoot first, and ask questions later,” such as:
- Jesse Macbeth-style wannabes;
- “Flushed Korans”;
- Mass beheadings that weren’t;
- Torched mosques that weren’t; and
- A “cold-blooded” massacre at Haditha, which apparently wasn’t;
- To simply accept accusations by someone like Beauchamp on their face, with no physical evidence, no corroborating accounts, and apparently no attempt by the magazine printing those accusations to investigate them beforehand.
Especially a magazine that has, it must be remembered, already similarly disgraced itself with Stephen Glass.
To hear someone accuse another of committing wrongdoing “A,” and when proof is demanded of “A” to refer to the fact that “B” was committed by someone else somewhere else, is weak-mindedness that ordinary people would be loath to reveal. Yet from the smarmy and sarcastic tone of the writing, the commenter in #26 above seems to be pleased with himself for it.
Hahaha, Grunt - that reminded me of the time someone mentioned “Section 8″ housing to to my USA MP lefier bro. “Section 8″ meant a whole ‘nother thing to him!
James Felix -
You mean to say we should withhold judgement on the truthfulness of Beauchamp’s essay until an official military investigation has been held which can verify his claims one way or the other?
Okay, if you say so!
I guess I agree with you, no one knows whether what he claimed is true or not, and until the results of an official military nvestigation are in any and all speculation is pointless and baseless.
I’ll wait while you tell the other commenters on this thread to cool it with the rampant speculation.
If so, all members of every branch of the military have long had the means to inform superiors (chain of command) of such violations of the UCMJ or anonymously alert other authorities of same, should the chain fail to take action. One wonders whether Beauchamp (that’s his actual surname) availed himself of these methods to help prevent further violations from occurring before he began spilling his guts to TNR.
No comment. STB brings back shades of John Kerry. It kills me that the rat is a member of THe Big Red One, my old outfit.
Well done Regulas!
I see that Capt. Howdy has slunk back into the shadows. He only comes out once and a while when he can celebrate some American defeat or gloat over things like that court martial.
Pathetic.
Rick,
You think I would gloat over the fact that some US troops raped a 14 year old girl, and then murdered her and burned her body, and then killed her family? You think I’m GLOATING over this?
I would never presume to know anything about you except what you explicitly say about yourself. Since you’re unwilling to extend me the same courtesy, let me disabuse you of whatever delusions of omniscience you’re suffering.
Gloating? No.
Horrified, saddened, repulsed? Yes.
Hope that helps. Jeez.
Capt Howdy
There are about 158,000.00 American Troops in Iraq, those are all the crimes you could come up with- per capta 25, million people living in Iraq…this isn’t counting what the enemy is doing to our troops or the citizens of Iraq. What are the statistics in America everyday for the same crimes by Americans and non Americans- committing crimes like these in our own Country? Why just this past week Michelle had a blog about a man from Liberia, that need an interpreter didn’t get one in what the Judge felt was a timely enough manner and she excused a case of him alledgedly raping a 7 year old. He spoke English well enough, he went to school in this country…so you want to match atrocity for atrocity? In and out of Iraq by Americans and non Americans.
Inspired by the STB Contest at Villainous Company.
…
Undercover Ambassador: First Meeting
by “Joe O’Hair”
“This coffee tastes like crap!” I said, and scowled. I wrote down MEETING on the top of the page in my notebook. Then I wrote BAD COFFEE underneath.
“Florida does the best she can, Joe,” Princess Valiant said. “She comes from a deprived background.”
FLORIDA DEPRIVED, I wrote.
“Kept down by the man,” I empathized. “Fight the power.”
“Fight the power!” she murmured. “Poor downtrodden minority.”
“Downtrodden like gravel under the man’s boot”, I agreed. I sipped the bad coffee again. “Still tastes like… Hey guys, I’m glad you’re here.”
The door swung shut and two desk spooks sat down at the conference table. They glared at me with inscrutable expressions. One was her boss. He looked like a low level spook boss. The other was just another desk spook. Neither one had as good hair as mine.
Her boss said, “So you’re Valiant’s husband.”
“Yeah, I’m a lucky man, maaaaan,” I replied suavely.
She gave me one of those dreamy looks that convinced me to marry her in the first place. She’s such a foxalicious fox of the foxy tribe of foxes. She added, “and an ex-ambassador with experience in Niger.”
“I guess you know what we need. Right, Joe?” he asked.
“We need to find out if Saddam bought any Uranium in Niger.” I responded. “I heard Darth and Der Fuhrer are trying to lay a frame-job on him.”
“Yeah those dillweeds,” he said. “They think we aren’t doing our jobs, and we have to cover our asses or we’ll have to go back into covert work. And I like coming to work at Langley everyday.”
“Me too,” agreed the other spook.
I wrote DILLWEEDS in my notebook.
“Me three,” said Princess Valiant.
“Me four,” said the boss spook. He snorted with laughter.
I laughed. And they laughed. We all laughed. Man we laughed, slapping our knees, bumping foreheads on the table, crying tears of bemused amusement. I laughed, leaning back in my chair until I lost balance and fell backwards on the floor.
“Hoooo haw, tee hee hee hee,” I snurfled.
…
More at my site and at VC.
Capt. Howdy:
Liar.
This just reeks of fabricated anti-war nonsense, doesn’t it? Our troops would NEVER do anything like this, it’s just impossible and anyone who says otherwise hates America and wants us to lose the war. Let me know when you guys debunk this pack of liberal lies!
Good luck!
Wow! I can just tell how HORRIFIED you are! The compassion drips from your pen. You treat the incident as just one more way to stick it to conservatives.
And then you have the unmitigated gall to turn 180 degrees around and claim that gloating was the farthest thing from your mind.
I’ll say it again.
Liar. And I’ll add “hypocrite” for good measure.
There is no way to reasonably interpret what I posted as saying that. Yet another of your attempts at cleverness has fallen flat.
Well, I’m not sure the full extent of what happened there, and I’m glad those guilty of violating policy were/are being tried for it. But based on what I have read, Igotta agree with what you say there.
Same goes for the whole Guantanamo Bay detainees. Based on what I’ve read, suspects arrested by our police are often treated less gently.
CNN Anderson Cooper 360 just did a segment last week, about sadistic prison gaurds, in Biloxi. My point is, there is a percentage of crime and criminals everywhere. Someone thinks a War Zone won’t have criminal activity going on? Why, wouldn’t the criminals take advantage of the chaos?
Scott Thomas Beauchamp, is about discipline in the 118th Infantry, my opinion of this guy- He’s a Pud.
The idea that you can take criminal incidences and try and apply it to 158,000.00 troops, in a country of 25 million and extrapolate that this is the norm for all those troops is at the very least, bad math.
RE: RickMoran#42
I don’t know Captain Howdy from Doody. Nor do I have an opinion of his opinion.
But I am wondering about something as a newbie to this blog.
As the moderator of this discussion, to what extent do you have the obligation to model the type of discussive behavior you expect of the others who debate and engage in passionate discourse with others here?
Calling Captain H-D a “liar” seems less dignified than just illuminating his fault(s).
At risk of being censured, or at the least excoriated, I will express my hope that you will take what I say to conscience and review your list behavior in order to perhaps *modify it* for the sake of your own credibility as moderator.
Thank-you for reading, Sir.
I didn’t withold anything waiting for the military to waste its time on an investigation of *journalistic allegations* without evidence aside from the specious claim ‘i was in the army at the time’.
I wrote to the Publisher (not the editorial flunkees) of TNR and let them know I would never purchase or read their publication again.
I let them know that as an American with a *personal* set of values comprised of principles, beliefs and sentiments which either RIGHT or LEFT could claim as their exclusive political province at any given moment, I used to read TNR to see and interpret for myself what my usual adversaries on the LEFT are thinking and doing about the important issues of the day.
I let them know that I found that to be an important exercise in a vital struggle for the soul and future of the Greatest Nation in Human History.
I let them know that I used to find them to be one more credible source in my endeavour to inform myself.
But now I can no longer trust the TNR to play its role in my personal political information gathering process.
TNR has lost me as a reader and patron.
I read and purchase alot of magazines on a host of subjects.
But TNR no longer gets my sheckels nor does it have my recommendation to others. They no longer have my *applied respect*.
And that seems more important as a use of my mind and mouth than to prattle on endlessly about how they do not share my value set, opinions, or beliefs- and what a shame that is.
Hit our adversaries where it hurts: our applied respect for what they do as a media asset.
I refuse to be frustrated by the Left; to besot myself with the negative coagulants they brew to pour over the heads of us who share Lady Liberty’s grip of the Torch; to swallow continuously the reactionary bleating they craft for us to swallow and hyper-react to in spite of our better nature.
The Left is standing in a swamp of their own making. We don’t belong in that muck with them. You don’t want to go there: because you never know when somebody like me is going to lob a an activated electric motor into the mix and fry all who are standing in it.
(For the record, I *do not* fish with dynamite! It makes the salmon taste bad.)
Bear1909 out.
Just as John Kerry reported to Congress that he saw atrocities and didn’t report them, this slug reported the atrocities in TNR and not to his chain of command. You can’t be held accountable if you are reporting atrocities in TNR or to Congress - after the fact. Who is culpable? John Kerry? STB?
Fry the editors at TNR once the veracity of Zippy the WonderSlug’s commentary is discredited officially.
Make the editors pay just the way Dan Rather ended up being exiled to some Tijuana cable station.
Every attempt of the Liberal Media Establishment to foment lying propaganda by using “the guy in the trenches” should result in the perpetrators losing their jobs in very public ways.
We have the power.
Bear:
I call ‘em as I see ‘em.
The fellow is typical of many lefty commenters who will say something outrageous and then turn around and try and convince you that they never said it or they never meant it that way or more often, they’ll throw up a strawman.
He is a liar and I called him out on it. Whether that is “dignified” is besides the point. By letting him know that someone is paying attention, he will be a lot less likely to pull that kind of crap in the future.
I am not an impartial observer here, btw. I have been engaged by Michelle to moderate and comment on her posts. When I disagree with her or another commenter, I say so. I pull no punches nor do I expect anyone to pull any on me. I have not banned anyone for criticizing or disagreeing with me nor will I ever do so.
I wish I could spend more time commenting but other duties keep me from responding and engaging others in discussion. That may change soon but for now, accept by lightening bolts of logic and thunder claps of wisdom for what they are:
THE VOICE OF THE MODERATOR.
Rick Moran:
You have asked us to refrain from being personal as in the case of MikeB.
For the moderator to call somebody a liar is contradictory and in poor taste, IMHO.
So I disagree.
I will not make a point of it further, but it appears that on another thread you are running into some judgement calls that will require more consistency on your part in order to remain credible.
Best regards,
Bear1909
PS: Tough job and my intent is not to make it tougher or to call you out.
Which is a bigger Hell? War or bad writing?
I say all those fallen into that circle of Hell where and eternity passes in a library full of books of the level of Mr. Thomas’s perfervid prose, beg and pray whatever glimmer of grace left them to be moved to that circle of Hell called War.