Three Strikes…

…and The New Republic is out.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Utter and complete vindication of our soldiers.

So now we know that Beauchamp made the whole thing up. We know he volunteered the information, under oath, on the very first day of the military’s investigation into his allegations. We know that TNR fell for the stories of rampant soldier cruelty as easily as a fish falls for a chunk of rubber that smells like another fish’s rear end. And we know exactly what it takes for our fellow Americans to believe the absolute worst of our soldiers.

It takes a guy whose only qualification as a writer is that he’s married to one of your staffers.

And that last sentence is the worst part of it. This entire story broke because folks read the story and it didn’t even closely jibe with what they knew of soldiers. Beauchamp’s fictional Monsters in the Mess Hall or the Skull Cap Kids weren’t the same people they served with, or knew as brothers and fathers and sons. Beauchamp’s stories didn’t seem plausible and, as it turned out, they weren’t even a little.

Oh, but they were plausible to the folks at TNR – those vaunted guardians of truth and the narrative. Beauchamp’s stories passed what Franklin Foer called “the small test”. In other words, when they read about a soldier digging up a child’s skull cap, complete with chunks of flesh and hair, and wearing it on his head like a party hat while his fellow soldiers guffawed and his superior officers nodded sagely, they thought, “Yup. I could see our soldiers doing something just like that”. And they passed it around the office and everyone thought the same thing.

What absolute crap. How low does your opinion of our soldiers have to believe that story, or any of the other two Beauchamp fictions, held not only a grain of truth but the whole stinking silo? Couldn’t they have taken these stories to another soldier – one they knew had served in Iraq recently and asked them if they seemed plausible? Sure, they could have, but it never occurred to them to do so, because the stories fit so nicely with their vision of a soldier in Iraq. It’s the same for those bloviating chowderheads like John Cole who scoffed and sneered and in whose mouth these stories have turned to ashes. Oh, Cole and the rest of his ilk will find a hundred reasons why this utter repudiation of Beauchamp and TNR is no big deal, but that carries as much water as a little kid who says that it didn’t hurt to fall off his bike even while he’s rubbing his skinned knee and sniffling back tears. Jeff Goldstein has the best word for folks like that:

John Cole will go back to noting how the story never mattered — and that the “nutters” only seized upon the story to begin with because it enables them to ignore the Iraq quagmire. And to give improbable credence to a guy who did gay porn. With his gay porn cock. Of lies.

But as I wrote earlier in response to Cole’s hysterics, it does matter (sorry, Uncle Jimbo) — and those who were instrumental in preventing Beauchamp’s fictions from becoming established “truths” should feel proud that they pestered and needled and investigated and fact-checked until the bogus tales were revealed for the opportunistic fictions that they are.

Of course, that’s exactly what Cole is contending today. Instead of trying to spin his brain into a rationalization of why he chose to believe the absolute worst of our soldiers based on a whiff of a puff of nothing, he should be apologizing to Matt Sanchez. Or asking him out for coffee or something, perhaps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The Long War Here At Home