More Disinformation from "The New Republic"
This week, The New Republic ran a piece called "Shock Troops" (available to subscribers only) which is a collection of outrageous lies spread by their "source" whom they call "Scott Thomas" (a pseudonym, of course, to protect his identity). I'm not going to go into great detail, because the claims have been thoroughly debunked here, here and here, among other places, but to summarize:
"Scott Thomas" claims to be a low-ranking infantry soldier based out of forward operating base (FOB) Falcon in Baghdad. Among other things, he claims:
1) On one occasion, a woman contractor or soldier, whose face and hair were badly burned from an IED, was eating in the dining hall when soldiers around her loudly began making fun of her appearance and making sexually suggestive remarks until she fled the dining hall in disgust.
2) The driver for "Scott Thomas"'s Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (see picture above for what they look like) was a reckless driver and loved to run his vehicle into walls, concrete barriers, and over dogs in the road.
3) His unit found a children's mass grave site south of Baghdad, and one soldier took part of a child's skull and wore it on top of his head, and thereafter enjoyed wearing it on missions under his helmet.
My Response: The first claim probably sounded credible to the civilians at TNR, but it is impossible. Anyone badly injured is evacuated out of the country. They aren't just left hanging around, especially on a FOB. A burn victim, particularly burns of the face and skull, requires very careful treatment, and FOB Falcon has an emergency medical clinic only. The closest thing to a real hospital is in the Green Zone, and for serious injuries they only keep soldiers/civilians there only until they are stable enough to be evacuated to Landstuhl hospital in Germany. Moreover, I just can't imagine a scenario where soldiers would be allowed to ridicule an IED casualty without getting their asses handed to them by someone in charge. In all-male units, soldiers are a little more tolerant of sexually suggestive remarks, but they damn sure take IED victims seriously and would never tolerate such a display. Add to all this that a woman burned like that would be fairly noticeable, and out of all the soldiers and official army sources who responded to this story, no one can remember a woman by the description at FOB Falcon.
The second claim is extremely improbable. First of all, outside visibility is poor in a Bradley (soldiers don't ride standing up in the hatch like they did back in 2003) and the things are loud, lumbering machines, so running over a dog is extremely difficult. But even more impossible is the claim that the driver regularly smashed his vehicle into people's walls and concrete barriers. Patrols wear down the tracks on these vehicles, and they constantly need to be replaced. Spare tracks are not easy to come by, and hammering them back together is long tedious work, which is done by the vehicle crew themselves (at least it was when I was there). Any Bradley commander would immediately replace someone who treated the vehicle like that, no ifs, ands or buts.
The third claim is equally impossible. First, an Army spokesman has said that no new mass grave sites have been found south of Baghdad. Second, I don't understand how a child's skulltop (or even most adults) would fit over a grown man's head. Plus, it would be impossible to wear something like that inside the Army's advanced combat helmet without causing pain. It just doesn't wash.
But people eat this stuff up. I can't help thinking about Jesse Macbeth, another soldier who made outrageous claims about Fallujah that were embraced by the anti-war blogosphere until he was uncovered as a fraud.
As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit said:
THE TROOPS USED TO BE HEROES. Then the media made them victims. Now it's making them evil, like the hordes of "Jenjis Khan." This will make betraying them more palatable.
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5 comments:
These incidents are completely plausible.
Compared to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib - what, forgot already? - they're a joke. Kids stuff.
At Abu Ghraib they had photos to back them up, and they didn't stretch credibility this far either. No one has even been able to verify the very existence of the woman in the article, or the mass grave site.
This article was a complete sham, and I predict it will be a big embarassment to The New Republic. Either they made the whole thing up out of whole cloth, or they were totally duped by someone else.
I like what you point out about replacing the track on the vehicle themselves. I have read a lot of commentary on the "Scott Thomas" stuff, but I hadn't seen that idea yet. My husband was Armor when he was in Iraq, so I get just how precious that track is.
Beauchamp's story is improbable, and the Army has about as much credibility as Baghdad Bob. Gee, it's a little bit like deciding who you believe, Iraq and Iran.
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