TNR:
Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp’s article and has found it to be false, it has refused our–and others’–requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What’s more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants “to protect his privacy.â€Â…
Scott Beauchamp is currently a 23-year-old soldier in Iraq who, for the past 15 days, has been prevented by the military from communicating with the outside world, aside from three brief and closely monitored phone calls to family members.
We are not stonewalling anyone. There are official statements that are out there are on the record from several of us and nothing has changed.
We are not preventing him from speaking to TNR or anyone. He has full access to the Morale Welfare and Recreation phones that all the other members of the unit are free to use. It is my understanding that he has been informed of the requests to speak to various members of the media, both traditional and non-traditional and has declined. That is his right.
We will not nor can we force a Soldier to talk to the media or his family or anyone really for that matter in these types of issues.
Seems Scott Beauchamp is standing by his stories in the same way he promoted them: allowing partisan apologists to find “significance” where there is only dishonesty, and to find rogue heroism where there is only opportunism.
It is clear — to me, at least — that TNR and many on the left almost certainly realize by now that they’ve backed a bad horse. And yet they are so invested in maintaining the narrative that they simply cannot and will not admit to their own mistakes — which tells you everything you need to know about “progressivism” and its uneasy relationship with “truths” of the kind that aren’t merely contrived by some willful consensus.
****
via Hot Air.
Just last night I was rolling down US1 and swerved with the intent to kill an animal. At the last moment I realized it wasn’t a animal. The fog of darkness deceives the senses.
Michael Vick count your blessings!
TW: kill, FitzThomas
Inspirational cicumstance
Have you read the comments on that TNR thread? Hoooo boy! The most important things you need to know are that everyone on the right is bad, and that Matt Sanchez is all sorts of things…accurate not making the list.
It has gone way past “admitting their own mistakes”. TNR is now an active participant in perpetrating a fraud they know to be untrue. TNR’s dishonest follow-up investigation has proceeded to further obfuscate the facts and lays waste to their claim of seeking the truth. The worst part of this whole debacle is that TNR’s entire editorial staff and management are actively involved in this deception which has turned out to be a monumentally failed attempt to burnish their liberal bonifides. The Stephen Glass debacle was survivable because he was apparently a lone ranger. The Beauchamp episode however covers the entire TNR publication with an indelible radioactive stain that is terminal.
Fraud and corruption, the media twins.
From the comments at TNR, we find:
The corollary to fake-but-accurate is, I would suggest, even-if-it-were-true-you’re-a-piss-poor-manager-who-has-irretrievably-
botched-this-fiasco-and-indelibly-stained-your-mag’s-reputation-and-you-
need-to-get-yourself-gone-with-as-much-grace-as-your-ginormous-cranium-
allows…
Check it
Simple duh test… You’re at your job. You cause a fiasco. The fiasco escalates. You decide the best thing you can do is on vacation. Do you…
a.) share a knowing pool-side chuckle with your boss about those over-wrought right-wingers?
b.) line up interviews.
As it has before, the left uses the rules of an organization against that that same organization. The Army cannot force Beauchamp to talk and cannot release administrative hearing testimony so they will be accused of “stonewalling” and a “coverup”. If they do release the information then they are breaking the rules and will be attacked for that.
The same kind of mess that happened in the Wilson/Plame thing with reporters source secrecy and in the 90s with the Clinton’s Grand Jury secrecy and attorney client privilege. The unprincipled can use the rules against the people of principle while breaking the same rules themselves with impunity.
TW: capitalism laws, that fits.
At this point, attacking TNR is like shooting fish in a barrel. On Monday Foer is fired or TNR is finished as a credible source for anything. It is utterly juvenile for him to continue this lame defense.
OTOH the story was hardly as damaging as the false tales in Newsweek(Koran flushing), Time (Haditha “massacre”) (“War Against Wilson?”) which truly caused horrific consequences for specific people.And so far, both thse mags have sailed thru without paying for their conduct.
TNR is a shitty little mag with little influence which published a stupid story by a liar and refuses to accept the consequences. Time and Newsweek have printed partisan propaganda , which sounded more credible than Beauchamp’s fantasies ever did,and caused far greater damage.
Let’s start directing some of this truth seeking to the big boys.We won this one already.
Ya gotta wonder why TNR would choose to go the mat for this particular narrative. No sane adult does not understand that war is hell. It’s a commonplace. No sane adult thinks the troops are depraved monsters. No sane adult does not know that there are isolated atrocities in war, and that our troops are sometimes guilty.
But why choose STB as the messenger? His prose is second rate. His diaries were laughable. There was nothing to win and everything to lose.
Strange.
uh ohs
poor little monkey, him’s oppressed
I recall (vaguely) an anti-war press release; pictured were soldiers in the desert waiting in line for food. The picture had been photoshopped so that the soldiers all were wearing pants instead of shorts. It had nothing to do with the picture’s veracity (aside that I think the soldiers were Brits) in regards to the accompanying words, so why the importance of attempting to deceive?
The more I see the Left in action, the more I believe that the deception itself is important to them. My time in Eastern Europe revealed that some of the overt deception was the love of power, not the striving for it, but the actual power of deceit:
Imagine being able to lie overtly, and yet nobody dares challenge you. Now THAT is power. More powerful than the tedium of striving to be right (and the possibility of being wrong).
Imagine deceiving people and them not catching it; that ‘proves’ your intellectual superiority, in a twisted way, you have altered opinions through the power of your own mind, your dexterity, your acumen (and they are proven to be Lesser than you).
So perhaps there was indeed something to win in this for the New Republic.
I was kind of playing, with a permutation of that idea yesterday… I think deception itself is important to them, integral, even.
Jackass…I like that.
You can always count on Charlie Rangel.
clarice is right. If anything one should look at this and realize that this is the exact playbook the big media used to slide out of any blame for Jamilgate. It shouldn’t have worked then, either. But it did. Mostly becuase we were content to leave the reporting to the media. Thank goodness Bob Owens and Ace didn’t do that. Thank goodness they didn’t listen to the folk who wanted them to leave the reporting to the media, either. Hoepfully more people won’t listen in the future.
clarice wrote:
True, but TNR could not have known that in advance, any more than we could know how damaging STB’s next fable would have been.
I do agree. Part of it may be the narcissistic frisson of getting away with deception. That’s why everyone should shoplift or copy someone else’s test paper when they are in middle school, get caught and get cured of it. At a later age, the frisson comes at a much higher price .
So, has anybody told Elspeth that her husband’s a liar yet?
Let me fix this for you:
That’s better.
Whoever photoshopped that really shouldn’t have. It was wrong to do so.
Wait – that doesn’t make sense. Did you post the right image? Comparing the one on the right to the one on the left, I don’t think a case for photoshopping is made – the pictures are different, so it’s not really a before photoshopping and after photoshopping comparison. If the idea is that after photoshopping, there were more soldiers in attendance, you sure can’t tell that from the way the pictures are cropped. Do you have a better link?
How is the ad deceptive? Splain to me.
Cause, absent evidence that the photoshopping actually made the crowd larger than it was, how is it deceptive, and how can we tell that someone didn’t just photoshop the ad?
TNR, on the other hand, printed lies designed to lower the esteem the public has of those soldiers, photoshopped or no. It was wrong to do so.
43
A campaign ad is not a news magazine, you moron.
When the President shows up at a military post to speak there will be enough soldiers to fill a photo. Weird though, that they would photoshop in some soldiers that aren’t in the original photo. I know white guys all look alike to some, but more than a cursory glance is called for when claiming photoshopping.
Just to turn things around for a bit:
If STB wanted to screw TNR, what would he have done differently?
He was in a position to know they’d bite.
He wrote a series of lies that ordinary people–but not TNR, he would have known–would catch.
He was in a position to know the personalities of some of the actors and might bet they’d be as stupid as they have been.
High price for STB, if he cares.
Richard – Jules Crittendon laid out an idea like that in considerable detail today here. Start at “To understand exactly how full of crap TNR’s dodge is…”
Personally I don’t think your idea works. My read on the three stories kinda suggests he was just sketching in the details without a whole lot of thought so he could get to the parts about how everything made him feel. For example, the mise-en-scene of the dining hall is so sloppy, I’m left with no idea of who was sitting where. Lots of other examples like that, but when he starts talking about himself and his feelings, it becomes pretty unmistakable what he’s trying to convey..
My view of STB’s possible double agenting is based on the lies he told.
As a soldier, he would have known that many of them were impossible. Not just unlikely, physically impossible.
He also would have known, if he had any familiarity with TNR, not even counting his spouse, that TNR wouldn’t have a clue.
And he would further have known that normal people would catch this in a heartbeat.
For example, the skull piece could have been worn on the harness. Possible, impossible to refute. The dog maniac could have been trailing a baited hook from the Bradley. Might have worked, possible, impossible to refute. Etc.
He could have done that but he didn’t.
He chose, instead, to tell lies that he must have known would have been 1, sucked up by TNR, and, 2, busted in an instant by the rest of the population.
I don’t agree, Richard. I have little to base my opinion upon, other than general impressions, but I think that Beauchamp did not really know that his stories were impossible. I don’t think he’s a very good soldier, and I am guessing he’s been the butt of practical jokes and tall tales by his squadmates.
tw: imbeciles – oooooo, that’s scary.
Richard, it seems to me that we have two possibilities here:
1) Beauchamp is a genius-level disinformation agent.
2) Beauchamp is a fuckin’ tard.
I know which of the two my money is on.
Ya gotta wonder why TNR would choose to go the mat for this particular narrative.
Because. STB. Is. Married. To. A. TNR. Staffer.
End of story. They can’t hang him out to dry the way they could an ordinary schmo. And they can’t afford to have more shattered glass in their wake.
TW: Just soldering. AAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH! Get out of my head, infernal machine!
Bad riposte, 43.
I’ll re-relate a vast swath of Earth as an indicator, Eastern Europe: deceit as narcotic is an ideological problem they’ve had to personally deal with (much like you having to “live with” the current administration, Laura) and their problem was on the Left.
However, I am intrigued as to why this deceit keeps happening: I recall some polar bears who are trapped on melting ice, floating out to meet North Atlantic shipping…only to discover that the photos were tourist pics of polar bears on an ice flow in the Arctic. Not that these particular Leftists could have used other photos in their piece on warming–or argued without the pics–and could have had a the argument, such as it was, undiminished. Yet…here we are again.
I don’t know if it is integral to the Left, or if it is integral to a set philosophical points that, once adopted, inevitably lead to this path, or gather up adherents eager for these acts.
Hegelian epistemology refined by Engles and Marx is what the left embraces as truth. Anything interfering with the inevitability of the outcome of the dialectic is implicitly and emphatically false or morally wrong.
Anything that increases dialectical turbulence moves political context closer to the outcome, the inevitability of history, the communist state and then, with the complete radicalization of all individuality into the collective, anarchy.
Lies are not lies if they create dialectical turbulence: they are fodder for change. Shoveling them in creates havoc, and from the dialectic will come opportunity for greater power to advance civilization to its ultimate and inevitable end. In that case, lies are good.
It’s the same reason KOS claimed on national television yesterday that he has successfully dragged the national Democrat party so far left that it’s now in the mainstream(!!). His vision is set upon what he believes to be inevitable and which, therfore, must be mainstream (at least eventually).
The left is founded upon great falsehoods, evidenced by the fruit their policies bear (visited an inner city lately?). The TNR debacle is certainly welcome evidence of the left’s love of lies that fit the mold, but they cannot cast off the mold. Its foundation is set in a philosophy of inevitability.
A liberal society cannot silence the far left, even though it’s crazy, of course. But we can surely marginalize it by exposing it. Thinking people won’t vote far left. The DLC knows that, and their strategy is to hide their leftism until they are in power and can try to advance their agenda incrementally.
Funny how little the truth matters to the folks who so value “speaking truth to power”.
Swen – Their “version” of the truth matters to them. Not much else.
Spies. I tend to agree with the ‘tard view.
However, it is hard to think he would not have known that Humvees have run-flat tires, that helmets have no room. Come to think of it, the room that used to be in a helmet was above the webbing. We used to carry various items there. The webbing rested directly on the head.
I am suspicious of the lies he chose to tell. Too dumb. I was right, though, when I noted that TNR could be expected to swallow them whole. But nobody else.
I think if you’re of a conspiratorial mindset, the ground is more fertile in speculating as to what degree Beauchamp was delivering themes tailored for TNR’s editorial stance. If you broadly contextualize the three pieces into the broader MSM narrative, they fit hand in glove. In his first piece he underscored that US troops were a catalyst for the violence, in his second piece he resonated with the “we can’t police a civil war†meme. In the third piece he dovetailed with the damaged soldiers memes which are a part of the subtext of the WaPo’s endless Walter Reed coverage and NPR’s post-traumatic stress fetish. So the question is to what degree TNR was commissioning pieces expressly tailored for a particular viewpoint.
IF you are of the opinion that much of Scott’s work was contrived and untrue, then you have to wonder what governed his decisions to contrive the particular tales he did. “I’s gonna be a famous writer†does not square particularly well with anonymity.
I suspect it was a combination of Beachamp’s own con-man cunning and TNR’s wicked greedy pleasure with a “credible” source to back its themes that led one to tailor writing and the other to “work with” Scott to “select” experiences to focus on for any given publishing period. The dovetailing was probably not a conscious collusion with Beauchamp, but an organic conspiracy of con artist and dishonest victim.
TW: pouvoir failing I cn Haz “Fail”?
All you need to know about the pimpage practiced by 43 to The Narrative™ is that his response to numeropus examples of altering news reports is to come up with a (possibly) photoshopped campaign picture.
So 43’s point, I guess, is that campaign photos should carry the same weight of ethics as news stories.
Oh, wait a minute!
Now I get it! What 43 is really contending is that news organizations need only meet the standards of campaign literature! Well, that’s a very different thing!
I declare that TNR has achieved this standard and all of you should stop dumping on them!
From #33 the geezer:
Bingo, geeze! Repeat a goal with enough force of screechy conviction, slander any opposing view and, voila, created narrative as revealed truth! The problem is when the rubber meets the road, like when you tie your entire premise of influence to a Conn. congressional campaign and get smoked in the election.
OR…
When you’ve thoroughly crowed about ending the war in Iraq because of your netroots magic getting all of those Dems elected in ’06 and then having the Dem congress understand a leettle more lcearly that the majority of the American people don’t share your exact view of “60 days and out!” So your “netroot elected” majority plays lip service to your fringe but eventually folds like a cheap card table when it comes down to being on the record denying troops in war the funds they need to operate. This is what happens when legislatures actually have to legislate as opposed to making pompius, arrogant pronouncements on blogs or network news shows.
Nuance, it’s what’s for dinner.
I hardly think that Beauchamp could ever be viewed in a double agent category. He laid out his plans, in advance of his writings. His politics were on the far left back to his college days, so unless he had been planning this for years, I fail to see the possibility. Deluded leftist? Yup. Poor writer? No doubt. Double agent? Not a chance.
His stories were rife with errors because he was writing about something before it ever happened, and writing about something that he only had a passing knowledge of. When you couple that with the fact that he likely knew that given their track record, the Left would view his writing with acceptance and an uncritical eye, the veracity of what he was writing was but an afterthought.
BJ – The nutroots will not sit idly by for too long.
I also agree that Pelosi and Reid are finding out that actually running the show is a bit more complex than tossing out BS statements to talking heads that nod in agreement. They still toss around the BS rhetoric, but like with the terrorist surveillance program, know as domestic spying when the R’s were in charge, actually doing the work is a bit more complex that complaining about the work being done.
“However, it is hard to think he would not have known that Humvees have run-flat tires, that helmets have no room.”
That is because you use your own powers of observation and rational thought to come to logical conclusions. Surprisingly, this ability is not as common as one might hope.
Actually, they will as long as both the polling results and the Blue Dogs continue to withhold support for the “immediate” pullout option. In truth, the Dem leadership is in a tough spot, something that the kos kiddies and others of their ilk willfully refuse to see. The noisiest wing of their party, drunk on some 60’s era spiked lemonaide, will continue to settle for nothing less than immediate pullout by whatever means necessary. While a slight majority of Americans support a pullout of some kind a larger majority won’t support it if it leads to a perception of “losing” or “retreating.
No matter how many times Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, et al attempt to color the language by using “redeployment’ a majority of Americans know the difference. That’s what’s holding up Dem’s chances to dictate the pace and scope of the war. I suspect that a reasonably good report from General P will make it even harder, despite fevered attempts to declare “failure.”
I’m more damn worried about the political situation than I am about the military. But then again, like Luis says, I achieved a level of joygasm when I watched those two 500LB’ers flatten Zarqawi’s hiding place.
Because I hate the brown people.
From prior to the commencement of this war, I always thought that the PR and political battles at home would be exponentially more difficult than the engagement in the sandbox, which has proven to be true every step of the way.
BJ – Wouldn’t it be an absolute pisser if the nutroots get all pissed at Pelosi, and Mother Sheehan beats her in a primary?
“Because I hate the brown people.”
BJ – This type of phrase always makes me chuckle, as it is almost a given to the Leftist that we do, in fact, hate not only brown people, but all minorities, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, etc … If we do not, it is just because our true racist selves have yet to be revealed.
Oh, don’t do that, JD! Just the thought of it sets me to wriggling like a puppy and forces me to suppress an urge to roar with laughter until I hurl.
How about if STB left the Army early and decided to take on John Murtha? He could trumpet his “moral authority” and run on a platform to bring real Earmark reform at the same time.
Ah, I love to dream big…
BJ – How long until the moonbats turn against Mother Sheehan, or will they just sit by in silence (right) during the primaries? If Mama Sheehan cannot win in that district, she doesn’t have a chance anywhere. So, their choice will be between absolute moral authority, and the womyn who returned them to power after years in the darkness. Delicious.
And yet, JD, you have managed that pretzel twisting of personal bias that allows you to be married to a “non-white.” You really need to explain yourself someday as you are screwing up syncronicity of The Narrative%trade;!
Sort of like me; Religious
Godfascistconservative who loves his lesbian sister-in-law and embraces the Iranian Jewish family of my niece’s husband.Wierd.
They are already distancing themselves form the “absolute moral authority.” Sheehan will be left with the Code Pink whiners and a few fringe supporters. The rest of the far left knows who butters the bread and, besides, she has no politcal credibility with teh gay movement, which gives her exactly zero chance to prevail.
She’ll end up being no more than a pathetic footnote in history.
BJ – I have a Vietnamese wife, an Iranian aunt, and 3 lesbian cousins. Suffice it to say that our family reunions are more diverse than Yearly Kos, yet the Caric’s of the world would continue to insist that I married in spite of my prejudices, and that my latent racism, sexism, homophobia has simply yet to reveal itself.
BJ – Let’s use Pelosi vs. Mama Sheehan in the primary as a case study. Simply imagine the difference in coverage afforded the race as compared to the coverage had Newt or Hastert been challenged in a primary by an equally outspoken figure?
Come to think of it, now that Mama Sheehan is trashing Democrats as well, I have not seen her on TV nearly as often. When she goes on a hunger strike in Haight-Asbusy to protest Pelosi’s imperialist Zionist agenda, do you think the media will cover it in the same manner in which they did her public stunt in Crawford?
TNR and the creation of a fake “truth 
Cross-posted at Protein Wisdom:
By: Jeff G.
TNR:
Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp’s article and has found it to be false, it has refused our–and others’–requests to share any information or evidence from its investigatio…
JD: Yea, not to mention the fact that I’m, ah, Portuguese, which sort of makes me a brown person.
Does this mean I hate myself? Must commence self-loathing. Or maybe I’m just a wannna be Caucasian and will project my own racial shame onto others.
Oh, well, it could be worse. We could be like Jeff who provides intellectual air cover, like a flight of F-22’s, for racists and gayists all over thre world.
Can you imagine that burden?
Sheehan’s campaign ads write themselves:Just do clips of all the Dems and nutrooters insisting she has “absolute moral authority”.
clarice;
Dems and MSM giveth, Dems and MSM taketh away, ignore or demonize.
How can the folks publish their latest “Stand by Our Man” with a straight face? They have been objectively proven to be wrong every step of the way, and now they outright lie about being denied the chance to talk to him, and that Beauchamp has been cut off from the rest of the world.
It makes me think about Collins’ Third Rule of Holes, something about quit digging.
“It is clear  to me, at least  that TNR and many on the left almost certainly realize by now that they’ve backed a bad horse. And yet they are so invested in maintaining the narrative that they simply cannot and will not admit to their own mistakes  which tells you everything you need to know about “progressivism†and its uneasy relationship with “truths†of the kind that aren’t merely contrived by some willful consensus.”
Bringing to mind Newsweek editor Evan Thomas’ line as to why the press kept alive the Nifong (Duke) version of events for so long.
“The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.”
Translation: Even tho’ this particular sh!t was made up, the story is still true.
“Lies are not lies if they create dialectical turbulence: they are fodder for change. Shoveling them in creates havoc, and from the dialectic will come opportunity for greater power to advance civilization to its ultimate and inevitable end. In that case, lies are good.”
Similarly, inside the Islamist strategy, lying to the infidel is a good and recommended thing in service to Allah’s grand plan. So much for the strength of deals and accords.
Geez, Islamism and Marxism, whoda thunk it ?
“Translation: Even tho’ this particular sh!t was made up, the story is still true.”
Better translation: Even tho’ this particular story was made up, it still truthfully reflects the mindset and behaviors of American troops in Iraq.
[…] the midst of the still-lingering controversy over the truthiness of The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist,” more […]
[…] the midst of the still-lingering controversy over the truthiness of The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist,†more than a few […]
[…] the midst of the still-lingering controversy over the truthiness of The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist,†more than a few […]