Right Wing Nut House

Conservatives will make more of this than it is. Liberals will make less of it than it should be.

And me? It’s a big deal because the honor of the military has been saved from being dragged through the mud by this lying twerp. But in the large scheme of history and the short skein of political importance, it is neither relevant or vital.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

Franklin Foer is out the door - or at least being handed his hat. He lied. He said some of Beauchamp’s buddies had confirmed parts of the story. They didn’t. Or if they did, they obviously didn’t mind lying to TNR but thought better of it when it came to swearing an oath and telling the military the truth.

I’ll have more on this tomorrow. But the way this thing is going to explode on the left and the right after daybreak, I had to get a few thoughts out there before the explosion.

Do atrocities in Iraq occur? Yes. What’s the point of lying about them? There are plenty of real idiots out there - people who are regularly picked up and charged with crimes by the military. We read about them all the time. They are doted on lovingly by the left as examples of what we are doing to our “children” by making them fight. They are thrown in conservatives faces whenever a fantastic fabulist like Scott Beauchamp steps forward and anyone dares to question his story.

Remember Jesse MacBeth? For a couple of days, the left celebrated the atrocities this guy was fibbing about. Then it turned out he was a liar and you could have heard a pin drop in the lefty sphere.

No one has ever said “Don’t investigate atrocities” on the right. All anyone should be asking - right or left - is that the press gets the story right - and right the first time. The slip shod reporting from Iraq (much of it due to the extreme danger of the place) is not being confronted by the press. There is no self-critiquing that I can see. There are no questions being asked like “Can we do a better job?” There is only a monumental effort to cover their asses when it hits the fan as it has in the Beauchamp caper. The disservice to history, to the American people, to the institution of the press is incalculable. But they will continue in this way because no one is telling them to do anything differently.

Tell the stories of atrocities committed by American soldiers. And while your at it, would it be too much to ask that you mention the life of an Iraqi one of those soldiers touched in a personal way? Personal acts of kindness - the small, simple decencies that mark the American serviceman and set him apart from so many others in history - may not be sexy in a news sense. But more than Hadithia, more than Abu Ghraib, more than the tragic, stupid, deadly confrontations between Iraqis and Americans that fill out and color the daily coverage of the war, there is the smile, the reassuring pat on the shoulder, the respect and deference shown by our boys that in small, important ways, are as effective as a bullet in creating a new Iraq.

I’m not sure what kind of Iraq these soldiers are going to be allowed to help build. It does not appear to me that their sacrifices and service will be fully validated. The Iraqi government and the sheer madness of bloodlust and hate in Iraq will see to that. But they are trying their best in impossible circumstances. And the story is not - repeat not - being told.

I don’t know what can be done differently to prevent a Scott Beauchamps from smearing the military and getting away with it for so long. Confirming news in a war zone is always difficult and in Iraq, damn near impossible. But it seems to me any fair minded person would come to the conclusion that TNR did not do enough to get it right from the start. Whether it was bias or, as many speculate, a predisposition to believe the worst of soldiers they will have to answer themselves.

For now, they are in journalistic hell. And there they will stay until they can convince us they deserve to be let out.