Have any of you ever read The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist?" Check this out...

[in_cog_ni_to]

The repukes are after him because he reported the truth and as we all know, there's nothing the repukes hate more than the truth. What he wrote will turn your stomach. I've never read his column. He's married to a New Republic reporter-researcher.


Army Private Discloses He Is New Republic's Baghdad Diarist

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 27, 2007; Page C07

The New Republic's anonymous "Baghdad Diarist" identified himself yesterday as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private in Iraq, and disputed as "maddening" accusations that he had invented his accounts of cruelty by American soldiers.<snip>

<snip>"It's been maddening, to say the least," he added, "to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name."

Beauchamp did not provide any documentation for his three published columns. He is married to a reporter-researcher at the New Republic, Elspeth Reeve.

Beauchamp's writing was challenged by the Weekly Standard and conservative bloggers after he wrote vividly, and profanely, of soldiers mocking a woman disfigured by an injury, getting their kicks by running over dogs with Bradley Fighting Vehicles and playing with Iraqi children's skulls taken from a mass grave.<snip>

In his blog, called Sir Real Scott Thomas, Beauchamp quoted Vice President Cheney as explaining in 1991, when he was defense secretary, why the United States ended the Persian Gulf War without taking Baghdad. Beauchamp added that "we laugh harder at CSPAN than comedy central. Silly republicans."

Beauchamp, who was based in Germany when the blog entries were posted in 2006, described his career this way: "I shoot, move, communicate, and kill . . . the deaths that I inflict secure the riches of the empire."<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700037.html



edited to add his pic

[Old and In the Way]

1. He's becoming the Rights new Jamil Hussein.

It amazes me how quick they can turn on the troops when the troops don't support the Republican mission. He's reporting things pretty honestly, I have no doubts on that score....but the Warbloggers are calling him a traitor now. Just amazing.

Here's a post I put up at Confederate Yankee....for some reason, it got pulled. No swear words, no hate language....yet they seemed to have a problem with my suggestion which was only moving their argument forward. :rofl:

-----------------------------------------

We need to be extra diligent in allowing soldiers to communicate from Iraq. Maybe all missives should be cleared through Dep. Defense Secretary's Office? The last thing we need is to have the American people think that war is a dehumanizing experience. Perhaps we can retroactively ban all books that portray war in a negative light?

I think this would be a good place to start:

* All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
* Born on the Fourth of July - Ron Kovic autobiography
* Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
* Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
* Company K - William March
* For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
* The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
* From Here to Eternity - James Jones novel
* Generals Die in Bed - Charles Yale Harrison novel
* The Good Soldier Svejk - Jaroslav Hašek novel
* Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
* Lysistrata
* The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer novel
* On the Beach - by Nevil Shute
* A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
* Peace Is Possible: Conversations with Arab and Israeli Leaders from 1988 to the Present - S. Daniel Abraham, Bill Clinton
* Plumes - by Laurence Stallings
* The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
* The Short-Timers - Gustav Hasford novel
* Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
* Shabdangal (1947) - Malayalam novel
* The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
* The Thin Red Line - James Jones' novel
* Two Women (1958) - Alberto Moravia
* The War Prayer - Mark Twain
* War Is a Racket - Smedley Butler
* Lay Down Your Arms! - Bertha von Suttner
* Scapegoats of the Empire - Lt. George Witton
* Pat Tillman's diary+

+ scratch that one, the Pentagon already took care of it.

Obviously, the troops will have to stay in Iraq forever, we can't risk having a soldier, like Beauchamp, come home and dishonor Operation Iraqi Liberation.

Thanks for your homefront diligence, CY!

[PDJane]

2. That is funny as hell,

but you are shit disturbing, you know that. You can't make a conservative think, you know........

[Old and In the Way]

4. I take that as a compliment.

I don't ever try to be nasty or hateful when I post at places like CY....I prefer satire and ridicule from the viewpoint of their typical reader. Honestly, isn't that the case they are making with their attack on Beauchamp?

[hootinholler]

3. Classic! n/t