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.

If they couldn’t contact him, how were they able to say that this is the case? No contact means no information. Who told them the “closely monitored” detail if noone is talking to the press about this? File under “fraudulent copy” with the rest of TNRs releases on this issue. How to destroy your credibility in one easy step, indeed.

As far as TNR, this won’t taint them a bit, unfortunately.

The cached TNR article:

Scott Beauchamp is currently a 24-year-old soldier in Iraq

C’mon. Do you realize how difficult it would be for the TNR staff to find someone with that level of personal detail about his life?

It’s not like they can just ask his wife.

I remember when the left had intellectual standards. Now we find TNR making errors that could have been caught by a phone call to any ROTC program in the Tri-State area — hardly a difficult task for a fact-checker at a (formerly) prestigious cultural magazine. A simple “We got punked” editorial would do them a world of good, but their extreme case of BDS apparently makes that impossible.

It’s not just TNR, either. The same behavior, in less extreme forms, is apparent at the Times, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, etc.

Snark all you want, but it can’t be good for the nation when the intellectual vanguard of roughly 20%-30% of public opinion is, in the most basic sense, decadent and corrupt.

Just rereading a comment thread over at The Plank at TNR is a revealing exercise as to the mindset of the participants over there.

CommentGuy on August 12, 2007 at 1:49 AM

The commenter over there called ‘Ochieng’ is me, BTW. I just wanted those folks to know what it going on. :-)

That being said unless Thomas was under orders not to call home, it would have been easy for him to dial home.

Should be

That being said even if Thomas was under orders not to call home, it would have been easy for him to dial home if he wanted to.

So much for the posters over there who try to put on airs of being such elite ponders.

One poster basically cut and pasted the Confederate Yankee debunking of the TNR review of fact with BAE.

That person was called by many others a troll simply because of pointing out the obvious.

There amazing willingness to attack the poster without even considering the issues posed by the content of the provided information says volumes.

In my experience trolls rarely provide verifiable fact and mainly only snarky commentary, and when the do, it is to some less than credible source.

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.

I wondered about this and glad to see a military spokesmen setting the record straight.

I can not speak about the MWR tents that Thomas has access to, however when I was deployed to “Al’s Garage” in 1996 the MWR phones were generally packed, to get a phone you had to wait/come back later. (After midnight worked best).

Rather then wait for an MWR phone; I generally called home on an office phone. Regardless…

Once you got a phone, it was easy to call an Advon operator stateside, and from there they would re-route your call to loved ones at home. (You called the Military base operator closest to you loved ones, and the operator would fwd your call to your loved ones phone #.)

That being said unless Thomas was under orders not to call home, it would have been easy for him to dial home.

It would be interesting to see, if any Advon calls were made from Iraq to his wife or TNR phone numbers.

At this point though , TNR is probably considering each additional data point they put out since they have seen how the Army of Davids have all sort of connections available to check various details out.

They probably had a big pucker moment when Confederate Yankee found the same guy at BAE they talked to about BFV.

That really showed the depth and quality of their fact checking.

Yes you can have lesser requirements for day to day stories, but just from the nature and potential outrage with this one, they really showed poor judgment not fully getting their ducks all in a row.

As for TNR, is he not talking to his wife? Is she not talking to him?

Oh, and it’s time to fire Franklin Foer.

Christoph on August 11, 2007 at 7:35 PM

I admire your attitude, and agree.

Ok in the forties it was a good comeback. But now that phrase is just silly, and fitting for this thread.

but at least they can tell their supporters and subscribers, as well as their future editors and writers, that it won’t mean they’ll knuckle under at the first whiff of controversy

You’ve got a point, BUT it would have been more useful to them to demonstrate they take journalistic integrity seriously.

As if.

Oh, except for the part about TNR not “burning” its writer. Beauchamp has plainly burned them with his statement he wasn’t telling the truth and refusal to communicate with them.

I’ve been following this story closely since it broke, and I’ve been as critical of TNR and even more of its defenders as anyone. They showed ludicrously poor judgment in assigning the stories, in publishing the stories, in lashing out at critics (calling Goldfarb and THE WEEKLY STANDARD “reckless” and accusing them and others of launching “smears”), in repeatedly mis-characterizing criticisms, in withholding important information from their own readers, and in attempting to shift the blame to others (now it’s the Army that’s at fault). Still, even acknowledging all of that, and in keeping in mind that a full accounting should probably include Franklin Foer’s resignation, TNR does at least owe it to their writers – any writer, even and especially ones at the center of controversy – to stick by them until they’ve had a chance to respond to claims against their integrity. An editor has to give a writer like Beauchamp a chance at least to speak for himself, and can’t seem to place greater trust in third parties who may or may not be acting selflessly.

Many people have also asked where TNR’s publisher, its most prominent writers and editors, and its gray eminence Marty Peretz have been in all this. I think their relationship to Foer is similar to Foer’s relationship to Beauchamp. They may have concluded early on, on a simple reading of the disputed stories, and possibly after reviewing Beauchamp’s personal connection to TNR staff, that Foer had blown it on this one, but simply cutting an editor or writer loose as soon as they come under fire from hostile parties isn’t an option. It was in their interest to give Foer a chance to defend himself, to rectify the situation if possible, or, failing that, to give himself enough rope to hang himself.

They’ll have a lot of work to do if they hope to recover their credibility (and any right to the snidely condescending tone that dominates most of their articles), but at least they can tell their supporters and subscribers, as well as their future editors and writers, that it won’t mean they’ll knuckle under at the first whiff of controversy. TNR may or may not be ruined by this fiasco – I have no idea – but a political magazine that’s afraid of its critics really would be utterly worthless.

Unfortunately, TNR is surrounded by even worse examples, who lie much more cleverly and subtly, and to a wider audience.

I ask you, how did our free press become the most effective weapon of the enemies of freedom?

One would hope fighitng along side his fellow soldiers would disabue him of that notion. you ultimately dont fight as much for your leaders or your country as you do for your freinds beside you.

But then this is also a guy who bragged that his fellow soldiers would frag him one day. With that goal really have to wonder how screwed up mentally this guy is

The best thing for our side is to get beauchamp to talk. He sounds incredibly stupid and sticking him in front of cameras would do far more to discredit him than anything else