Busted: Scott Thomas Beauchamp claims bebunked by Army internal investigation, TNR’s credibility takes severe hit

Confederate Yankee has the details. In summary, he writes:

Let’s look at that once more: “members of Thomas’ platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.”

Presumably thorough, in-person interviews of all of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and Beauchamp’s platoon within Alpha Company by military investigators, and not one of those soldiers could confirm Beauchamp’s stories as told in The New Republic.

Note that the investigation didn’t just stop by stating that the claims were uncorroborated; Col. Boylan states categorically that Beauchamp’s allegations were false. Not a lot of wiggle room there.

It appears that the proverbial ball is now in The New Republic‘s court. It will be interesting to see what their next move will be.

Lawhawk writes:

TNR has a lot more to worry about since they claim to have substantiated matters with a bunch of anonymous sources. If they want to stand by the story, they’re going to have to do more than provide anonymous sources. They’re going to have to name names – who supposedly corroborated these stories for them and how did they come by such knowledge. How is it that TNR was able to obtain this information and the US Army, who interviewed members of Beauchamp’s unit, was not.

They’re now on vacation, which doesn’t make this any easier for them. Perhaps hoping that things will blow over in the interim will not make this go away either. ScottScam is a stain on the publication, one on par with the Stephen Glass incident. They should have known better and it will be interesting to see how they respond to the latest email from the US Army on the matter.

Franklin Foer, editor of TNR, has stood by this story, knowing full well that the facts were running against him. He’s claimed that the magazine had vetted the story before publication and its reexamination of the story found corroboration other than the relocation of the dining hall incident from Iraq’s FOB Falcon to Kuwait’s Camp Buehring, a not insignificant matter, even though it was passed off as such.

Yep.

TNR’s credibility was seriously in question already. This revelation damages it even more in the eyes of people who are more interested in truth. Those who are only interested in being told only what they want to hear about our military in Iraq – even if what they’re being told is an outright lie – will remain defiant and outright indignant even in the face of the obvious deception that has been perpetrated by TNR. Once more, I’ll ask:

If conservatives and members of the military are so awful, why do liberals continually have to either make up or at the very least embellish stories about them? I mean, shouldn’t the material they have on us be so voluminous that there’d be no reason to make up or embellish stories?

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