"Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine" questions story in "The New Republic, a liberal magazine"

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ap_on_hi_te/soldier_blogger_investigation;_ylt=And8Hvw1ETV_Xx3QXphpju6s0NUE

Army denounces 3 articles written by GI

By JOHN MILBURN and ELLEN SIMON, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

NEW YORK - A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym. The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured woman sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers. Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.


Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp. The stories, which ran under the name "Scott Thomas," were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.

Since then, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, has come forward as the author. The New Republic said that Beauchamp "came to its attention" through Elspeth Reeve, a reporter-researcher at the magazine he later married.

The Army said this week it had concluded an investigation of Beauchamp's claims and found them false.

[uberllama42]

1. Oh, well, if the Army says it isn't true, then that settles it.

They've proven how trustworthy they are. Pvt. Beauchamp just hates freedom. End of story.

[Felix Mala]

2. How can they issue a blanket denial? The author, ashamed as he was, admitted

that a couple of incidences involved himself and another soldier. How could the army confirm or deny that? I guess it depends on what your definition of "false" is.