The Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga: The fallibility of TNR’s fact-checkers Bumped with new developments
Originally posted August 02, 2007 @ 18:58
Bumped 8/3 11:21am Eastern.
Matt Sanchez at FOB Falcon reports that the Army has concluded its investigation.
Bryan Preston is following up.
Michael Goldfarb hears from a source at Camp Buehring.
Bob Owens hears from Kuwait.
Dan Riehl looks at TNR’s anonymous sources.
How’s that vacation, TNR?
Update 9:30pm Eastern. Dean Barnett boils it down:
Once again, let me restate the obvious – TNR ran Scott Beauchamp’s rubbish with obviously minimal (if any) fact checking. Their purpose to do so was to provide a “Troop’s Eye” view of the war. The “troop” in question was a sociopath who mocks disfigured women and who is now a known fabulist.
Two other questions linger while we await the Army’s more definitive report on the Beauchamp Diarists: First, the Army shut down FOB Falcon for media purposes about a week ago. Why did it take TNR so long to get this little editorial out there? Did it really take an extra week to get the Bradley expert and the forensic pathologist to express their opinions? Or was the delay a means to buy time for The New Republic to determine whether it can brass its way out of this mess?
Second, TNR now admits that they hired as their man in Baghdad a liar and uncritically published at least one of his lies, a lie that slandered every decent soldier in Iraq. Does anyone at TNR feel that such a misstep is grounds for tendering a resignation?
Update 8:49pm Eastern. This is Camp Buehring in Kuwait. In response to one of the commenters below, Camp Buehring is a separate facility/staging area and different than the Ali Al Salem airbase (the transit base that Bryan and I were in January before heading to Baghdad). But they share similar traits, namely their remoteness and transitory nature. An active-duty Army reader e-mails:
There is a good reason why Beauchamp chose Camp Buehring as the place to relocate his “disfigured woman” tale: it is a way station for units deploying into Iraq, and, besides a small cadre, very few people spend more than 2-3 weeks there, making it difficult for anyone to contradict him and the buddy who backs him up. It is silly, of course, since it means his cruelty towards his fellow man began before he heard his first shot, but most civilians would not know the transient nature of Buehring and it makes the water cloudier for those who wish to defend him.
Blogger Matt Sanchez is at FOB Falcon and e-mails:
Michelle:
I spoke with the Army PAO, they confirmed that prior to the publication in The New Republic, the PAO had never spoken to anyone from that publications editorial staff.
It’s difficult to imagine anyone could confuse a DFAC (dinning facility) in Kuwait, with one in Baghdad. I’d like to see the list of military experts TNR consulted prior to publishing the story.
I’m attaching pictures I took today of FOB Falcon. The DFAC has the Air Force band playing and the mood is upbeat despite today’s really bad 130, dust-storm weather.
Milblogger Baldilocks takes apart the TNR statement. Read the whole thing. Here’s her conclusion:
Look, no one is saying that every person in the military is an angel. There are too many incidents—well-known and anecdotal—which would refute that supposition. But nearly every endeavor in the military is a team effort—especially in a combat zone. And when one member misbehaves, it doesn’t just reflect on that individual (unlike civilians), it reflect on the entire US Armed Forces and the country it represents–especially when it is deployed to a foreign country.
Not only does the military encourage its leaders to correct infractions which can harm its image and, therefore, its mission, it demands this of them. Which is why I could possibly believe that these incidents occurred had the men been placed in settings in which they could have plausibly been unsupervised/unobserved by commissioned officers and/or NCOs.However I absolutely (still) do not believe that every single commissioned officer and NCO who would naturally be present in all cases stood by and let these things happen.
And nothing TNR has said today has convinced me otherwise.
***
On their way out the door for their August holiday, TNR’s editors have delivered another “statement” on the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy that is apparently meant to end the questions and scrutiny surrounding the Army private’s Baghdad diaries.
After several huffy paragraphs demonstrating how all of Beauchamp’s essays were “fact-checked before publication,” TNR’s fact-checking editors admit that a fundamental error slipped past their layers and layers of safeguards:
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. 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.
Stunning. This wasn’t just a spelling error or punctuation flub, mind you.
The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb explains:
So just to be clear, the first line of the original piece stated that Beauchamp “saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.” That turns out now to be a blatant lie–and one that Beauchamp stuck with after THE WEEKLY STANDARD first asked Foer to reveal the base at which this incident occurred. Further, TNR says in this new statement that “Shock Troops” “was about the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war.” But now we find out that Beauchamp hadn’t even gotten to Iraq when this incident allegedly took place. He was, in fact, a morally stunted sadist before he ever set foot in Iraq.
After recounting this tale, Beauchamp asks a rhetorical question:
Am I a monster? I have never thought of myself as a cruel person….I was relieved to still be shocked by my own cruelty—to still be able to recognize that the things we soldiers found funny were not, in fact, funny.
Relieved that he was still shocked at his own cruelty? After his tour in Germany and the long flight to Kuwait? This whole essay was meant to demonstrate the damage war does to our own troops–but if this incident occurred at all, it only proves that Beauchamp was a vile creep to begin with.
The New Republic editors claim to have “granted Beauchamp a pseudonym so that he could write honestly and candidly about his emotions and experiences” in Iraq. The pseudonym seems to have had the opposite effect, enabling him to write dishonestly and less than candidly about the monstrous behavior displayed before he ever saw a shot fired in anger.
So we’re back to where we started: Has anyone ever seen a badly disfigured woman at Camp Beuhring, or any other camp in the Middle East which might subsequently be revealed as the scene of the crime?
Ace of Spades adds:
Error? Mistake? He was off by an entire country and something like nine months?
This is what TNR terms an “error,” a “mistake”? And when they “fact-checked” this beforehand, how did their “rigorous editing and fact-checking” miss the fact this took place in another country, before actual deployment?
I’m reminded of Steven Wright’s joke: “The other day I was… oh wait, that was someone else.”
Could happen to anyone, really. Common mistake.
What made this tall tale smell (and not “smell good,” per TNR’s standard of “fact-checking”) was that no one could figure out what the hell a badly disfigured woman — obviously a medical evacuation case — was doing wandering around a Forward Operating Base in the first place. A med-evac was there… why? In the thick of combat and high-tempo activity… why? What is FOB Falcon, a goddamned sanitarium/spa? Do they have lovely regenerative baths there?
It also didn’t help that no one — no one spoken to — could remember seeing such a woman on the base.
TNR calls this an “error.” As you like it.
Stephen Spruiell adds: “That’s a rather significant detail to flub, given that the author’s intent was to illustrate the morally deadening effects of war.”
Read Ace for more deconstruction of what TNR considers iron-clad “corroboration” of Beauchamp’s other smelly anecdotes–and a pointed Shattered Glass reference.
The icing on the cake comes in the final paragraph of the TNR editors’ statement. They’d love to hang around and tell us more, but, uh, the damned Army is getting in the way:
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.
Maybe, instead of shifting blame and heading for the hills (or the Hamptons or whatever), Franklin Foer and his minions would care to join Blackfive’s Laughing Wolf on an embed tour of FOB Falcon and meet the troops there face to face?
***
More reax:
Milblogger John Noonan: “I’m reserving judgment until the Army wraps up their investigation.”
Bryan Preston still wants to know: “Where is the stratified mass grave?”
Geoff at Junkyard Blog:
So all of Beauchamp’s moral decay occurred before he ever saw combat. Before he entered the theater. Before the grind and inhumanity of war had its way with his tender soul.
This story was not about a cynical, war-weary soldier losing sight of humanity - it was about a newbie who had just finished training and was on his way to his first duty station. His behavior wasn’t a result of the hardships of the combat environment - it was a result of his being an innate asshole. A huge, insensitive, loutish asshole.
TNR sure knows how to pick ‘em.
See what others have said
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Trackbacks
- Political Animal
- Bill's Bites
- Wake up America-More Lies from TNR
- Solomonia
- Some things don’t seem coincidental « Bookworm Room
- TNR finally realizes that Scott Beauchamp wasn’t telling it quite like it happened « Volunteer Opinion Journal
- Gubatron
- Ankle Biting Pundits » Blog Archive » Friday Follies
- Two Scott Thomas Beauchamp investigations, two results « Cadillac Tight
- Double Tap Blog » TNR claims Beauchamp’s tale are kinda, sorta accurate
- TNR’s pathetic penance « Likelihood of Success
- Classical Values
- The Crossed Pond » The Ugliness of Fisking
- The Latest on Scott Thomas Beauchamp - The Fighting GOP
- Michelle Malkin » Winter Soldier Syndrome
- Random-American - News, Comments, and the Rantings of an Ordinary Citizen » Fake and Inaccurate
- The Carolina Fabulist « his vorpal sword
- Democratic Convention Party Political Local Advertising Presidential Campaigns » Blog Archive » The Carolina Fabulist
- Ride It In » Blog Archive » **Updated: Scott Thomas Beauchamp now uses a Colostomy Bag…
- Random-American - News Analysis and the Rantings of an Ordinary Citizen » Phony Soldiers Brouhaha
- Double Tap Blog » New Republic delivers its mea culpa on Beauchamp
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Vets for Freedom Heroes Tour spurned by Minneapolis high school; Update: VFF’s David Bellavia speaks
Categories: Scott Thomas Beauchamp, They don't support the troops
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» We lied
The scarred woman comment caused me to think, if she was on the base that long she had to be a fellow soldier, a combat soldier.
That this twerp slangdered a fellow troopie, a troop who experienced combat and not had his teeth pounded down his throat so far he could chew his turds in inimagineable to me.
The rest of the story wasn’t worth pursueing…
Aside from the factual discrepancies,don’t the editors regret letting someone with so little class, and who lacks even a little bit of adult like behavior writing for them? Maybe instead of fact checking, they should do background or psychological checks on writers before publishing them.
Well, all you had to do was look at his myspace to know that he was already a prick before going into Iraq. This just ‘confirms it’, thank God for the fact checkers over at TNR!
And curse the evil Army for stopping the tireless investigatory efforts of the Free Liberal Press!
Then the horribly scarred woman wasn’t seared into Beauchamp’s memory?
Woah, posting issues here. Let’s try again:
Assuming that you believe there is nothing suspect about Scottie and TNR happily changing the location of the melted woman myth to Kuwait, let’s take a look at Kuwait.
For those who haven’t been through Kuwait (Ali Al Salem AB or the surrounding facilities), you need to know that hundreds of thousands of troops and tons of equipment filter through there on their way to points north and east. It is a logistical hub and, by virtue of its relatively safe and well-appointed facilities, a great place for soldiers to relax enroute to theater, or de-stress while redeploying home. Aside from the insane heat, Ali Al Salem AB is basically a vacation spot for soldiers who are in a transient status.
Knowing that FOB Falcon was small enough to debunk his story, perhaps Scottie conveniently remembered that he actually saw this melted woman in Kuwait. If it weren’t so transparent, it would be a smart place to have claimed to see this woman because there would be no easy way to verify her existence amongst the -thousands- of military personnel and contractors. In fact, the DFAC at Ali Al Salem (his most likely location) is monstrous. I don’t think I saw the same person twice outside of my own group the few times I ate there.
Bottom line, he may think the switch to Kuwait makes his story plausible, but it raises even more suspicion in my eyes. No, I think the only thing Scottie had time to do in Kuwait was hone his sea stories while hopping between the MWR tents, the internet trailer, the DFAC and the “Green Beans” cafe.
No surprise that TNR is going to insist on the “veracity” of this stuff; after Stephen Glass, to admit that they got snookered again would permanently destroy what little credibility they have left.
Given the way that Foer is bobbing and weaving in his “defense” of Beauchamp’s Amazing Stories, it wouldn’t surprise me if he already knows that the accusations don’t pan out. But the Ghost of Stephen Glass is looking over Foer’s shoulder. He’ll ride this story straight into the ground, spluttering to the last that it was true, all of it.
TNR also established that some troops did, in fact, run over and kill a dog with a Bradley. How, you ask? Well after consultation with Bradley manufacturers and with numerous veterinarians, they have determined that if you run over a dog with a Bradley, it will die.
They also confirmed the existence of a mass children’s grave after finding 2 yo-yo’s, a popped balloon and a Kurdish edition of Dr. Seuss.
These guys are the pros, people, don’t question them.
The editors should be *FIRED*. End of story.
The New Republic has holes in its chonees over this one.
Goodnite, Irene, and good luck.
Is chonees that restaurant in the south with the really decadent breakfast buffet, which also happens to be the world’s best hangover remedy?
Scott Beauchump
Religious fanatic here! With all the yelping going on about hate/derogatory comments on internet postings, could not at the least, the use of God’s name in vain have been deleted. It certainly did not add to the comments of Ace of Spades?
Pboilermaker - Beauchamp says now that he was at Camp Buehring–separate staging area from Ali Al Salem, but same transitory nature and remoteness. See my update above with the e-mail from someone familiar with Camp Buehring.
P.S. The coffee at the Green Beans cafe on the Ali Al Salem airbase hit the spot. Bryan and I spent quite a few bleary-eyed hours wandering between the DFAC, fast-food stands, and Internet cafe while we waited for a flight to Baghdad. Also played a few games of ping-pong with troops and contractors.
Yeah, I saw the gal with the disfigured face, but it wasn’t a gal it was Tom Berrenger, and it wasn’t Kuwait it was Viet Nam, and it wasn’t real it was a movie — Platoon. But otherwise all the facts checked out…well, except that part about making fun of the scars, ’cause he would have kicked your butt. Know what I mean?
Aye Michelle, my mistake. I missed the part about Udairi. Still, like you said, nearly identical as far as amenities (and lack of combat) go. I see your Army emailer and I share the same theory about why Scottie switched his location to Kuwait. Too easy.
Ali Al Salem was a surreal experience, especially that freaky USO tent with the psychedelic interior design cues (the “leave your shoes in the cubby hole” place). Still, it had self-serve laundry trailers, some of the best Latrine graffiti ever and (my personal favorite) readily available ice cubes. Of course, who could forget the ubiquitous “Green Beans”.
Glad to hear you were able to experience all of it, good and bad, during your trip to Iraq.
I think it is safe to say Beauchamp is fully exposed for what he really is…an agenda-driven fraud.
There is not time to fact check. When you are trying to scoop a hot stroy with all of the press there trying to get the same story, you just do not have time.
/sarc off
So will TNR now officially rechristen Scott Beauchamp the “Buehring Diarist”?
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
My theory from all that I have read about this so far:
Beauchamp joined the Army and went to Iraq expecting to witness atrocity after atrocity, write about them, and get famous.
To his surprise & chagrin, however, he didn’t get to witness anything he felt was worth writing about. But, he began to hear rumors (which abound in the military) about things he could send back home. He embellished upon these second-hand stories and put them into first-person.
His sins in this are legion, but the one that results from assigning these atrocities to the experience of one G.I. is that it gives the appearance that they are a common thing among the U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq, rather than rare incidents that may, or may not, have happened.
How many more of these fabricated reports are we going to have to endure?
I find it amazing that TNR and the MSM can consider these inconsistencies and out-and-out lies as “errors” … right … wrong country and 9 months off on the calendar … but they hold “Scooter” Libby guilty of perjury because his memory of certain conversations a year or so later weren’t totally clear … no chance of an “error” in his case? …
Double Standard Anyone?
Desert Lover,
Your statement is the real story here. The MSM exaggerating to the point of utter falsehood over and over and over again - while attacking Fox News to keep try to keep the heat off themselves - to mangle conservative election prospects with the intention of helping Democrats win majorities, fill the courts with ultra left activist judges and make that impossible socialist workers paradise utopian vision a reality with all of them - the elites - at the top, and the workers, naturally, where they rightfully should be - beneath them, as is the case in all socialist utopias.
This story is a very simple example of a long-running leftist tactic: holding up the exception to disprove the rule. It’s bad logic, bad science, and a very, very dishonest way to attempt to reshape the world as you think it should be.
Why should The New Republic be embarassed that an anti-war propaganda piece they published as true didn’t really happen? As long as their intentions are good, ie to end the war by defeating America by slandering the troops, what’s the problem? Sure, it’s fake, but it’s accurate, isn’t it? I mean in spirit, not in fact. By spirit, I mean the way things happen in the imaginations of lefty radicals. And really, isn’t Truth just a bourgeois construct used by the corporate fascist state to oppress progressive elements like The New Republic? The conservative, patriotic, pro-military, pro-American realists have their version of the truth and the liberal, anything-but-patriotic, anti-military, anti-American fantasists have their version of reality. So there you are.
On-my-soap-box: “There is not time to fact check. When you are trying to scoop a hot stroy with all of the press there trying to get the same story, you just do not have time.”
Sometimes, when you have a really hot story, there’s not even time to witness it happen. You have to write it before it happens because there’s just no time for reality to catch up to your imagination.
The whole story was an agenda driven lie. The agenda? To smear the troops. Franklin Foer is the new Steven Glass. Scott Beauchamp is the new Jesse Macbeth.
TNR really needs to be shut down. A second “Glass” incident proves that a housecleaning won’t work; they have to go well beyond firing Foer.
You would have thought they would have learned from Rathergate that false stories
TNR doesn’t worry about facts. MSM doesn’t worry about facts.
They stopped reporting the news and starting making it a couple of decades ago.
Back when I was a kid the National Enquirer was a scandalous, lying rag. These days I’d trust it before the NYT.
This whole thing just goes to show how politically driven the media are. It is more important for them to embarrass our military or our country in hopes of getting their candidates into office. It’s shameful. What happened to the days when all Americans banded together against a common enemy? I can’t believe all of the nit-picking, ankle-biting and back-stabbing that the media do just to further their agenda.
Fire Franklin Foer.
And if TNR is so all fired anxious to cover the war from a grunt’s eye view, might I suggest engaging someone who doesn’t mind putting their name to what they write and has a reputation for brutal honesty and keen insight?
Michael Yon, where are you when TNR needs you.
Isn’t Scott Beauchamp the husband of a writer at the New Republic?
If so, it sounds just like the Valerie Plame episode: Hire a spouse of a liberal to go overseas and provide an “unbiased” account that no one can question.
It appears that Scott Beauchamp is a liberal who joined the military just to get “infallibility” to smear the troops.
I grew up in the military and had access to bases while working in Korea, and these charges by Beauchamp have no ring of truth to them at all. In fact, they sound just like Hollywood type stereotypical falsehoods, which is why they couldn’t possibly be true.
Amen, Rick.
You would think that there are real soldiers out there who would write about real experiences, real pain, real triumph.
Unfortunately - positive doesn’t sell anymore. ( Or at least they don’t think it does, so they won’t try )
Matt Sanchez says the investigation is complete and the BS has been “refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false”
link
To put the behavior of our soldiers in proper perspective, read the column of Ralph Peters in today’s New York Post.
http://www.nypost.com
From Sanchez’s site, a commenter states:
“Posted by: Artista | August 03, 2007 at 11:10 AM
While Beauchamp’s claims were not factually true, they illustrated a greater truth about the American military and the insidious effects that Bush’s illegal war has on the troops.”
Sounds like Rathergate….”While the story is false, we still believe it”
To imply that the War caused him to do this neglects the fact that his strange mind is evident before entering the battlefield on his own blog postings. It is also discredited because his story of the scarred female, it seems, takes place ( allegedly ) before he ever sees real ‘war’.
How typical of the left.
Over at Blackfive, Uncle Jimbo grows weary of this affair, and now yawns at it. heh.
Beauchump is a liar. Next!
I sincerely hope the JAG takes appropriate action to make sure this young man’s career ends with nothing less than a “Bad Conduct” discharge reduction to E-1, and some time to get in touch with himself for the next couple years in a Military Detention Facility.
Of course the left wants to believe that his missives were all true and if he couldn’te exactly remember where he was, well it must be the fog of war. If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny!
And once again, good triumphs over evil
Michelle, thanks for helping shine the light of truth on the loony left.
Anyone else notice the deafening silence from Capt. Howdy and lgm?
I don’t suppose there’s any chance you guys will express any kind of embarrassment at being taken in by this stuff… again.
I don’t suppose you feel any remorse at your eagerness to believe the worst about the people that risk their lives to keep you free?
No, of course not. Based on your earlier comments I suspect you’re going to hide behind the twisted logic of “fake but accurate”, and just wait for the next outrageous liar to come along so we can do this dance again.
Wonder if you’ll ever learn.
I’m reminded of Kevin Drum’s attempt at clearing John Kerry’s winter soldier remarks by saying that he’d simply “gotten the date wrong” during his Christmas in Cambodia story.
You can’t buy that kind of dishonesty…but, hey, they’ll keep going to the well as long as it works. And there are a lot of of folks in Chicago attending the ‘loserfest’ to back that up, too.
This is how the left supports the troops:
from hewitt’s townhall blog
Hmmmm.
This would be relatively easy to confirm.
1. Determine the time period that Beauchamp and the rest of Alpha Company of the 1/18 were in Kuwait.
2. Ask the medical facilities at this Kuwait base if they have a record of a civilian contractor recuperating from severe facial wounds during that same time frame.
None of these questions should violate either OpSec or medical privacy and would go further in either debunking or confirming Beauchamp.
BIG.CHICKEN.DINNER. Heh heh…
How soon do they spin this to say “See? John Kerry was right!”
Of course you realize that Fauxchamp (to steal a pun from the lefties) is going to head up the DNC or run for president in a few years.
Oops! The main source contradicting Scott Thomas Beauchamp turns out to be a
swindler in trouble with the law and a
gay porn star.
Sorry, left out the link.
First of all, you’re like twelve hours late with that news. We all know.
Secondly, I love your implication that being a gay porn star makes one a liar. Glad to see that the famous progressive selective tolerance is alive and well.
Finally, there has been a complete investigation and STB’s nonsense has been thoroughly debunked…including the stuff he told multiple versions of.
In your relfexive anti-military frenzy you backed the wrong horse, again, and fell for a pack of lies hook, line and sinker…again.
I really hope I’m working the day one of you progressives needs to buy a used car.
- lgm
And here I thought the main source contradicting him was, well, HIM (regarding the scarred woman incident). . .until I saw a story today about the official investigation by his unit refuting the rest of the allegations.
I’ve never even HEARD of the guy Time mentions.
James Felix brings up a very salient issue, though perhaps indirectly:
“Anyone else notice the deafening silence from Capt. Howdy and lgm?
I don’t suppose there’s any chance you guys will express any kind of embarrassment at being taken in by this stuff… again.”
The MainStreamMedia would be considerably less effective if it wasn’t for their dishonest foorsoldiers in the field, spreading the same way little girls pick flowers in May. Another good reason to dispense with “diversity” on Conservative blogs when Liberal bogs dispensed with such notions ages ago.
“Based on your earlier comments I suspect you’re going to hide behind the twisted logic of “fake but accurate”, and just wait for the next outrageous liar to come along so we can do this dance again.”
Exactly. Which is why such voices need to be put out the door. They waste our time on sites like this one while on their sites they cut off dissent and spend their time planning ways to win. We conservatives have been the nice guys who finished last for far too long, and with the extreme left gaining control of mainstream politics, it’s a luxury we can no longer afford.
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/235889.php
Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for U.S. Army Commanding General in Iraq David Petraeus, just emailed me the following in response to my request to confirm an earlier report that the U.S. Army’s investigation into the claims made by PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp made in The New Republic had been completed.
Nice, so ALL of what he said was B.S.
Confederate Yankee has the official nail in TNR’s coffin:
here
That would require a smidgen of decency.
In other words, not a snowball’s chance in hell.
Here’s a classic quote from a subscriber to the rag formerly known as The New Republic”
Beyond parody.
Furthermore, Tantor, you are brilliant. If you start a blog, I’ll read it.