Media Matters for America

In an effort to undermine a New Republic article by Army Pvt. Scott
Thomas Beauchamp about alleged inappropriate conduct by U.S. troops in Iraq, an article by
Weekly Standard reporter Matthew
Goldfarb relied on Marine Cpl….

What is it with liberals and their desire to undermine the very soldiers who are risking their lives to protect them?
Just who is the “Baghdad Diarist”?
It is a question that many people are asking The New Republic, the Washington political magazi…

The current issue of The New Republic contains an article called “Shock Troops,” which purports to detail barbaric behavior by American troops in Iraq. The author, writing under a pseudonym, claims to have been one of those soldiers. The article…

You would have to be a calloused buffoon to pull a stunt like that. Sounds like an engineered string of commentary by either a retired old fool or a Code Pink moonbat. (Remember the Target Stores/Veteran conspiracy? That wasn’t true, either)

I’m an Air Force Tech Sergeant, and a policeman. I highly doubt someone would act in such a capacity. If they did, it wouldn’t be repeated on the internet to brag about later after they had time to marinate on their stupidity.

This story was such an absurd caricature that I called BS right away. I’m not in the military anymore, nor was I ever in the army, but come on. This smacks of Jesse MacBeth/John Kerry reporting.

PRCalDude on July 18, 2007 at 10:42 PM

It reads like badly written fiction.
Jim Webb’s prose came to mind instantly.
(Now don’t all think I meant he probably wrote it – NOOOO. Just, same kind of lurid, phony macho … )

Question, would someone that badly injured still be on active duty or normally be sent stateside for reconstructive surgery?
Hmmm?

BadBrad on July 19, 2007 at 9:49 AM

Yeah, you’re probably right.

Whatever dude. You are the only one that thinks they are real, maybe you are the writer.

Now the Russians were more cruel. Our translators told stories of how they would tie chem lights to the tails and have night-time target practice. US/UK soldiers were universally disgusted by the thought of this and the lack of discipline displayed by those who would do such a thing. I frankly cannot imagine this being done or allowed and, if done, let go unpunished.

When I hear a name/unit then I’ll give this actual consideration. Until then… just another anti-war smear campaign.

I wasn’t in on an Iraqi deployment, but during my 2nd stint in the Oregon Army National Guard I spoke with a lot of Cav Scouts who had been there. Comparing the TNR “stories” to what the Iraq vets told me – and I spent many, many hours listening to them talk of their experiences – it simply doesn’t add up.

For instance, experiences with IEDs were uniformly traumatic. Even two years after he’d been in one such attack, in which he’d lost a man, my platoon sergeant would break down in tears on the rare occasions when he’d recall it.

Nobody – and I mean nobody – ever referred to an IED hit with even a small amount of humor for the event itself, or disdain or revulsion for anyone who had been injured. There’s simply too much sense of, “There but for the grace of God go I” for any such display of cruelty toward others.

As for dogs in Iraq, the vets I spoke with marvelled at how ill-treated those animals were even when they had owners, and at how many strays there were. One staff sergeant spoke of the time when he shot a dog, but only after it made a charge at him. Otherwise, the general concurrence was that it was hard enough winning over the locals to think of us as the “good guys” without randomly and pointlessly destroying their property or kiling their animals.

On another note … I’m frankly stunned that the editors at TNR didn’t notice any massive red flags waving when they saw ths story, replete with unnamed sources, unnamed locations and uncorroborated by anyone – in the era of Jesse MacBeth, “Jamil Hussein,” “flushed korans” and the “Massacre at Haditha” that apparently wasn’t.

That they ran with the story anyway speaks not of journalistic incompetence, but malice aforethought.

These are not “dispatches” from a war zone. There is a literary quality there — imagery if you will — (”staring intently” “He observed that” “smiling at the sun”) that suggests this was written by…well, by a writer. You know, like a magazine writer.

There are quite a few formally educated GIs in the service at present. However, this story smells for all the reasons mentioned.

Just about as believable as the stories in that article. Show me some proof (independent corroboration, dates and locations, pics) and then we’ll talk.

Not that this makes it any better, but it won’t take a thousand years to move back in. Most of the fallout will be gone within a year.

Tim Burton on July 19, 2007 at 12:35 PM

Depends on the type of bomb.

Just because it is a chow hall scenario doesn’t mean that there isn’t some kind of supervision. If not an officer eating, probably a senior NCO, or a chow hall NCO supervisor.

Any Officer or NCO, or for that matter a disciplined gentleman (which most soldiers are), would have stepped in and dressed this man down. Appologies, eviction from the facility, and maybe disciplinary action would ensue.

The fact that we even have to ask if this kind of nonsense is true, tells us a lot about how far we have fallen into the trap of biased media propaganda against the war.

PRCalDude on July 19, 2007 at 12:19 PM

Unfortunately were that to happen, I don’t even see a Giovanni Giustianiani in our country to even defend the battlements

It won’t go away until the terrorists bring a nuke across the southern border to Los Angeles and eliminate Hollywood for the next thousand years.

PRCalDude on July 19, 2007 at 12:19 PM

Not that this makes it any better, but it won’t take a thousand years to move back in. Most of the fallout will be gone within a year.

The third one I can see happening. I saw some footage a couple years ago of some soldiers using this poor dog for target practice. Seriously, the poor dog just wouldn’t die. They must’ve shot that animal about 5 or 6 times and it was just screaming and howling like crazy (understandably). Finally a soldier walked up and shot it in the head and put it out of its misery. Very disturbing.

Yakko77 on July 18, 2007 at 10:01 PM

I still don’t see it happening with a tracked vehicle.

Shooting them is different, a lot of dogs over there are wild. Many of guys that I know who have been there, have told me that they did shoot a lot of dogs, because they were wild and often were attacked by them and that some were used as warning devices to give heads up during raids.