2046 wrote:Funny, that . . . he apparently
offered to recant his claims the very same day that self-defense posted on TNR, reportedly signing an affadavit to that effect. (TNR claims this is not so, though they also seem to leave out the fact that the Army's investigated and found nothing to support Beauchamp's claims.)
Meanwhile, the Army's investigation has concluded that "the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."
Furthermore, even if you put on your conspiracist thinking cap and presume that he was pressured into making the offer, isn't it odd that no independent sources can be found to corroborate his tales? Why can no one matching the description of the melted-faced woman he and his buddies supposedly made fun of be found, either in Iraq or Kuwait at locations he's been? (Iraq, Kuwait . . . take your pick, since even TNR expressed doubt as to the location, despite his standing by all his claims while recanting them.)
I'm hardly interested in the entire thing as I did not focus on the story when it was fresh, I will howerver post this paragraph from
Media Matters. Take it how you want.
Meanwhile, warbloggers are cheering because an Army flack announced that the allegations Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp made as a diarist in the pages of The New Republic about abhorrent behavior by some of Beauchamp's fellow soldiers serving in Iraq were "false." Actually, to be precise, the Army, in its statement, announced that Beauchamp's "platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims." Basically, the Army couldn't confirm Beauchamp's reporting. But really, how hard did the Army try? About as hard as it tried to nail down the Pat Tillman story days after his death? And oh yeah, the Army will not make public the findings of its Beauchamp investigation; we just have to take their word for it.
I'll make two quick points. First, the fact that warbloggers have spent such an enormous amount of time and energy trying to fact-check a couple of diary entries from a modest-circulation weekly magazine, while Iraq, four years after the warbloggers' beloved invasion, continues to descend into even further turmoil, says a lot about how desperate the pro-war bloggers are to claim even the slightest semblance of victory on any Iraq-related topic.
Secondly, I'm feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu because last winter it was Pentagon sources who were whispering into the ears of warbloggers about how an Associated Press police source named Jamil Hussein was a fake, that he was a phony the AP had concocted as a way to fabricate bad news from Iraq. (Because, y'know, we're winning over there.) Indeed, the Hussein story only reached DEFCON level 5 among obsessive, dead-end warbloggers because a Pentagon official went on the record and declared that U.S. forces could find no proof that Hussein existed. (Sort of like the Pentagon this week declared it could find no proof that Beauchamp stories were true.)
For warbloggers, who pretend to be quasi-journalists, the statement from the Pentagon represented the only source they needed to declare Hussein a fake and a fraud. End of story.
Of course, later, thanks to the Iraqi government, we learned that the Pentagon got it 100 percent wrong because Jamil Hussein did exist, he was a police captain, and he was an AP source. Given that fact, and that the Pentagon left the warbloggers hanging out to dry on the Hussein story, forced to sputter on in defeat about how they had raised "valid questions" in the episode, you'd think the warbloggers would tread more carefully this time around. But warbloggers are incapable of embracing logic. Not when there's a chance to smear journalists. So once again, they say the only source they need to declare Beauchamp a fake is a Pentagon report they're not allowed to read, and a quote from a Pentagon source who won't go on the record, but who has already been contradicted by the Army's point person on this story.
And trust me, in the world of the press-hating warbloggers, where anti-press conspiracies are haphazardly stitched together, this is considered an air-tight case.
P.S. Is it too much to ask reporters who are covering the current TNR controversy to give news consumers some context and mention that warbloggers pretty much launched the exact same press jihad against the AP this winter and that warbloggers were completely discredited in the process?
The Pentagon isn't always trustworthy, believe me, I've had first hand experience with so-called military intelligence, Ft Huachuca is the MI headquarters, NetCom but you did not hear that from me ;)