Army Concludes Baghdad Diarist (TNR's Beauchamp) Accounts Untrue

[wellst0nev0ter]

Source: Washington Post

By Howard Kurtz

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.

The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.

"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701922.html

---

At this point, do we believe anything coming out of the Bush army any more?

[Hissyspit]

1. The Army says the Army didn't do anything wrong!

Um... yeeah.

[sam sarrha]

2. if an IED off near a village, they go thru house by house an destroy everything they have

... that is building support of the community..??? yea they love that shit... and chear us while we F them up..

[Bolo Boffin]

3. And that's the headline of that article?

:eyes:

The article itself is quite good as a neutral delivery of the facts and the issues involved. The headline is quite slanted.

Army: Baghdad Diarist Accounts Untrue would be better. That's the standard way of saying, "This is what they are saying - this is their point of view." It would be more appropriate, because the article shows just how Army says/TNR says this story is right now, and how the Army has clamped down on the whole situation. The use of Concludes gives the benefit of the doubt to the Army.

Boo, Washington Post.

[Ian David]

4. Anyone know if they've whitewashed-- I mean, investigated-- Deryk Schlessinger yet?

Dr. Laura son linked to lurid Web page
Site contained violent, sex-oriented images one official called 'repulsive'
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/23/2007 01:15:21 PM MDT

The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."

The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.

The site is credited to and includes many photographs of Deryk Schlessinger, the 21-year-old son of the talk radio personality known simply as Dr. Laura. Broadcast locally on 570 KNRS, "Family Values Talk Radio," the former family counselor spends three hours daily taking calls and offering advice on morals, ethics and values. She broadcast a show from Fort Douglas, in Salt Lake City, last week.

Military leaders have long grappled with how to balance positive publicity and operational security with technological opportunities for troops to tell their personal stories.

More:
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5934072

[Hugin]

9. I think I saw it on the scroller over at Fox News...

EXTREME :sarcasm:

[robcon]

5. I don't think this story is over yet.

I feel there will be new revelations about fraud by the author. The stories were too pat, and the number of incidents were too many for one guy.

[youngdem]

6. Read talkingpointsmemo....This is a pure coverup. Josh Marshall is all over this

www.talkingpointsmemo.com

[trumad]

7. From TPM--- The Weekly Standard is lying their asses off.

Uglier and Uglier

Earlier this month we brought you the on-going story of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a US Army private who published a series of 'Baghdad Diaries' in the New Republic under the name Scott Thomas.

Thomas told a dark story US soldiers in Iraq acting in various dishonorable and sadistic ways.

This brought forth a storm of charges from the right-wing blogs and the Weekly Standard claiming that the diaries were fabrications. Then TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out.

Post media critic Howard Kurtz has been writing about these criticisms in his column. And tomorrow he reports that now the US Army has determined that Beauchamp's claims were "found to be false."

Kurtz got a few more statements from an unnamed "military official" who would not go on the record "because the probe is confidential." And he was told that the investigation into the truth of Beauchamp's article will not be released. The unnamed official further explained that the Army will not prosecute Beauchamp but rather deal with the matter administratively "by having his cellphone and laptop confiscated."

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, the statement announcing the investigation and its verdict appears not to have been a public release but rather a statement released uniquely to the Weekly Standard. That's how the Kurtz article reads and some quick reporting on my part suggests this is in fact the case.

And it gets better.

The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge against Beauchamp, says another unnamed military official told the magazine that not only had the Army found Beauchamp's written accounts to be false but that Beauchamp himself has now signed a recantation of all his claims. So case closed; he fessed up. Yet when TNR contacted the Army public affairs a Maj. Steve Lamb told them: "I have no knowledge of that."

So what's up here?

Beauchamp makes his charges. The US Army allegedly investigates and finds the highly embarrassing charges to be false. But no information will be released about which of his charges were false, how they were false or how they were determined to be false.

They then punish Beauchamp by preventing him from having any communication with the civilian world. And if that's not enough, an unnamed military source tells the Standard that Beauchamp has undergone a successful self-criticism session and has recanted everything. But an Army spokesman tells TNR that he's not aware of any confession or recantation.

We can at least be thankful that the matter is being handled with such transparency.

Maybe Beauchamp was always a teller of tales. He wouldn't be the first nor even the first to have wormed his way into the pages of the New Republic. But it's hard not to have some suspicion that the Army has put itself in charge of investigating charges which, if true, would be deeply embarrassing to the Army; that it has provided itself a full exoneration through an investigation, the details of which it will not divulge; and it has chosen to use as its exclusive conduit for disseminating information about the case, The Weekly Standard, a publication which can at best be described as a charged partisan in the public controversy about the case in case.

This hardly inspires much confidence.

[gratuitous]

8. But the Army still hasn't quite figured out how Pat Tillman died

Odd how quickly the Army moved to find its alleged one significant error. But as for who ordered the hit on Pat Tillman, and the burning of his uniform, and the concoction of the cover story? Golly, but we can't figure that out at all!

Someone tell me again what an honorable profession the military is, because I keep forgetting for some reason.

[atreides1]

10. The Honor is in the Individual, Not the Organization

The honor of the military is in those who wear the uniform, not in the organization. Unfortunately honor, which is part of the USMA motto of "Duty, Honor, Country", has lost any meaning and just like the oath of enlistment, has become nothing more then words that have little or no meaning to the majority of the military.


Unfortunately the courage to do the right thing also does not exist in the majority of the military and just like the German army of World War II, and other armies throughout history, the common excuse is "I was following orders", which was used as a defense at Nuremberg, and was used as defense by the Marines who killed 24 Iraqis.

[sanskritwarrior]

11. There are very few soldiers that believe this guy

he changed a couple of his stories, and some things he described re not possible:

A. A burned military woman would not be on any FOB anywhere, she would be evacuated the day of the wounding and not allowed to return. Even if she wanted to come back, a badly burned woman would be bad for morale, and thus the Army would not allow it.

B. No mass graves were found where Beauchamp said they were, there was one cemetery, but Beauchamp referred to his supposed mass grave as a Saddam era dumping ground for bodies.

C. The things he said a Bradley can do might be feasible except for one key thing, there is a huge blindspot on one side, making it impossible to see dogs approaching......

This guy is a liar, if Army PAO believes he lied, that's good enough for this soldier........

[Pastiche423]

12. How does it feel to have

your brain washed? Did it hurt?

[sanskritwarrior]

13. I'm sorry can you provide me an example where a burned American

service person lives on a FOB in Iraq? So all the military people that know things he said cannot be true are also brainwashed?........

Is your way of supporting the troops calling us brainwashed when we can spot a liar in our midst?........

How many times have you been to Iraq?

So when TNR is forced to recant it's just going to burn you isn't it?

Or are you just going to call me brainwashed and run away again...........

[Pastiche423]

14. I can't runaway

I'm paralyzed.

Btw, I wasn't only speaking about you.

[sanskritwarrior]

15. Hmmm

avoided the questions?

As for your paralysis, I do apologize I did not know.

[Pastiche423]

16. None of your questions

in any way relate to what I said in my post, keyboardsanskritwarrior.

[sanskritwarrior]

17. I gave you an apology

when I start posting pics from Iraq at the end of the year I expect the same courtesy........

And you still aren't answering the question..........

Do you believe all people in the military are brainwashed? Or just the ones that disagree with you........

[Pastiche423]

18. WTF?

I owe you NO apology for anything.

Re-read my last post.

[sanskritwarrior]

19. Oh

so you called me brainwashed.......You have no proof yet you throw it at me...... Yeah nothing to apologize there, accuse someone of not having a free mind, a troop you don't know for his opinion, yeah nothing to apologize for there.....I would advise you against calling me out.......

and again you are failing to answer the question.......

[robcon]

20. Your brain-washed smear is disgusting, IMO.

disagree with Pastiche423 = brain-washed. That's an ignorant post, Pasatiche423.

[Onlooker]

21. Just out of curiosity

What Beauchamp wrote about seems to be over-the-top pranks, the kinds of things that you can find parallels to on any campus. Wearing a skull as a hat or making tasteless jokes seems entirely plausible to me, and bad, but certainly not terrible. After all, with 200,000 troops in Iraq, there are sure to be a few immature and tacky individuals. Don't you think it's possible that Beauchamp made some wrong assumptions, such as the skull didn't belong to a child or wasn't art of a mass grave, but his general point was accurate? Again, I don't see Beauchamp's "diaries" as reflecting on the whole military or being a reason for ending the war. They are simply typical stories that come out of any war.

[robcon]

22. The AP story suggests a pissing match between the Army and TNR.

Both claim "all" those interviewed agreed with their differing conclusions. "All" is a pretty broad word, and someone is not telling the truth, IMO.

"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 Web site that it has conducted its own investigation and stands by Beauchamp's work.

In its note posted Aug. 2, it said, "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 the pieces were questioned, the magazine said it extensively re-reported his account, contacting dozens of people, including former soldiers, forensic experts, war reporters and Army public affairs officers.

The New Republic said it also spoke to five members of Beauchamp's company, all of whom corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes but requested anonymity..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080900008_pf.html

[RadiDem]

23. This is a RW DIVERSION to move the focus off Tillman, the 14 YO girl gangraped and killed, etc

[sanskritwarrior]

24. So Beauchamp is a RW shill?

Can you prove that? Is TNR in on the conspiracy theory???? Any proof of that???

Or are you just going to hurl wild rants around.......