The Beauchamp/TNR story is really over

The other shoe drops in the Scott Beauchamp/TNR scandal. If for some reason you are not familiar with this story, you can start here and here.

From a FOIA request, Confederate Yankee has copies of Scott Beauchamp's actual sworn statements during the Army's investigation of the incidents in his article. Beauchamp claims, contrary to his own article:

1) He never saw a dog hit by a Bradley vehicle

2) He never saw human remains in a mass grave being desecrated

He doesn't answer to any of the other improbabilities in his TNR article (like mocking a disfigured woman), probably because the investigators never asked (strictly speaking, even if it happened, it wasn't a crime).

The sworn statements of other soldiers in the investigation (with their names blanked out) are also on display here and here. They are rather lengthy, and the handwriting is difficult to read. But not surprisingly, none of them support anything Beauchamp said.

Think we'll get apologies from Beauchamp's cheerleaders in the blogosphere now?

Just for nostalgia's sake, let me once again remind readers what some of Beauchamp's supporters said last year:

Franklin Foer, editor of TNR (requires media player):

My magazine this last week has been subject of basically a smear job by the Weekly Standard and a lot of the conservative blogosphere over a piece that we published from a soldier in Iraq, which we have gone back and re-reported and it turned out to be aside from one mistake to be the case and I just wish that there was, and this sounds like a trite mainstream media criticism, but that those in the blogosphere who kind of move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation for once apologize when they get something wrong.”

(Mr. Foer never really apologized for the story, although the issued a kind of vague excuse-filled explanation here)



Andrew Sullivan:

Read TNR's accounting. It is as I predicted: honorable and, except for one small inaccuracy, it checks out. All the aspects aggressively challenged by the usual propaganda organs have been verified and corroborated. The military is now conducting its own investigation. Given the record of such formal investigations, I'm not as confident in the Pentagon as I am in TNR. Can we now expect apologies from the people who smeared and maligned the magazine and its soldier-reporter? I doubt it. The attackers are not the kind to acknowledge their own errors.

(Neither, apparently, is Andrew Sullivan. He has still never issued an apology for these statements)



Matthew Yglesias on 26 July:

as best I can tell nobody has yet brought forward any serious reason to doubt his story...
All these people [Beauchamp's critics] need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense.

And Yglesias again on 2 Aug:

Well, it looks like The Weekly Standard and the right-wing blogosphere really turn out to have the goods be full of shit... Nevertheless, despite being totally wrong, it's arguably mission accomplished for the right...And there you have it -- if the troops say things the right doesn't like, they get mau-maued into silence. Meanwhile, anyone who says the war may not be so fantastic hates the troops.

Ezra Klein on American Prospect:

these people are thugs. They freaked out about The New Republic's anonymous diarist because his words clashed with the childish mythology they've constructed around the US Military. Despite lacking any actual evidence disproving or even calling into question his story, they were able to make enough noise to spark an investigation and media attention.

Also, later:

If Beauchamp is indeed a liar, I'll be surprised

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

Imagining that every story that doesn't kowtow to the Bush personality cult is another Rathergate in the making, the rightwing blogosphere exploded with a wave of accusations and fabrications, all alleging in one fashion or another that the stories were made up. The charges even got recycled and trumpeted in the Washington Post.

Unfortunately for them, TNR did a in-depth re-fact-check of the pieces (which given the Glass backstory, was, I am sure, extremely thorough) and with the exception of one relatively minor error they all check out.

More quotes of the anti-war crowd embarrassing themselves by defending this guy can be found here.




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