Right Wing Nut House

My latest column is up at Pajamas Media. This one is about the decison of South Carolina to move its primary up so that it can still be “First in the South” by beating Florida who themselves moved their primary to top South Carolina.

If this keeps up, we may have Christmas Caucuses in Iowa:

It has even been suggested that presidents be nominated the old fashioned way – at the party conventions. This is how they were chosen for the 150 years prior to the party reforms initiated in the 60s and 70s which were supposed to make the process more “inclusive” and “transparent.” We’ve got inclusiveness and transparency coming out of our ears and look where we are now – Santa Claus and Hillary Clinton coming down the chimney together. Have the reforms improved the quality of candidates? Some would argue that the old wise men of the two parties who used to meet in smoke filled rooms to choose a nominee got it right more often than not. A debatable point to be sure and not relevant when discussing a process that cries out for openness and as much democracy as this poor republic can handle.

We Americans, being inveterate tinkerers, experiment with this primary process every four years. But instead of fixing the machine, we’re like the guy who takes the entire gizmo apart and looks helplessly at the pile of junk on his workbench without a clue how to put it all back together. He tries gamely, hammering away trying to make parts fit together that have no relationship with one another. When he’s finished, there are always a few screws and nuts he somehow couldn’t find room for.

Global warming skeptics have had it rough recently. I don’t know about you but when Al Gore says that the debate over global warming is closed, we may as well shut down all the laboratories studying the problem and simply give in to the inevitable - that a bunch of Luddites and anti-industrial, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization nitwits should take control of the American economy and bring us into a new age of carbon free living while bringing back the horse and buggy and steam powered locomotives.

But something happened on the way to creating this nirvana, namely Steve McIntyre.

Mr. McIntyre is a saboteur, an apostate, a living, breathing monkey wrench who has thrown himself into the global warming Juggernaut and caused the entire machine to stop dead in its tracks:

Steve McIntyre posted this data from NASA’s newly published data set from Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) These numbers represent deviation from the mean temperature calculated from temperature measurement stations throughout the USA.

According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is.

Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

McIntyre had discovered a slight error in NASA’s temperature calculations - enough to skew the results considerably and throw the global warming worshippers for a loop. In fact, since many advocates treat global warming more as a religion than science, McIntyre’s discovery would be like finding out that Jesus Christ never lived or that Moses never got the Ten Commandments from God.

Now, lest I be accused of denying other evidence for climate change - namely the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere whose measurements have spiked in the last 100 years and are at levels rarely seen in the last millions of years - I will state flatly that the data Mr. McIntyre has forced NASA to change only alters the debate over how serious the problem is and not whether the problem exists. In short, the alterations in climate data simply proves a point global warming skeptics have been making for more than a decade; that more research is needed before we crash the economies of the industrialized world in order to satisfy those whose agenda is more political than scientific.

Steve McIntyre will go down in history as perhaps the man who saved the global warming debate. By showing the true believers that they can be wrong, he has reminded the scientific community about their obligations to discovering the truth regardless of where it leads. And that goes for skeptics and believers alike.

McIntyre is, judging by his bio, a brilliant mathematician and has authored or co-authored several papers on temperature change. He is a confirmed skeptic about climate models that show a precipitous rise in temperature over the last 1000 years. He was one of the most vocal critics of the so-called “hockey stick” graph that showed a stable temperature record for most of the last 1,000 years until the 20th century which revealed a steep rise in temperatures in North America - a debate that rages in the scientific community to this day.

McIntyre is not employed as a climate scientist nor does he receive any funds for his research. His expertise is in running mineral companies, a job that he thinks has prepared him well for his research into temperature models as he explains in his bio.

In short, he is a citizen-scientist with no ax to grind save seeking the facts and holding scientists to a high and rigorous standard of research. What he has done is nothing less than bringing the debate over global warming back into the realm of science - for the moment anyway.

Consider the history of another controversial theory; the origins of the universe. For decades, cosmologists believed in the “Steady State Theory” as the best explanation for the creation of the universe. Those who disagreed with it were given short shrift and dismissed as cranks. Then a new theory arose in the 1960’s that challenged the primacy of the Steady State idea of the universe - an elegant mathematical construct we commonly call “The Big Bang” theory. Slowly, instruments became available that were able to supply observational proof for the Big Bang to go along with the complex mathematics until today, few cosmologists subscribe to the Steady State theory - even though it was gospel less than 50 years ago.

The reason cosmologists were able to change their thinking was the compelling nature of the observational data that matched up almost perfectly with the mathematical proofs. Even those scientists who had a heavy intellectual investment in seeing that the Steady State theory remain gospel were forced to alter their own theories in order to acknowledge the facts at hand.

McIntyre’s work will do something similar; it will force those scientists with a vested interest in seeing their theories about global warming validated by their peers to alter their models to reflect the new data. Those scientists who truly seek the facts about global warming will swallow their pride and perhaps come to new conclusions. Those scientists more interested in riding the global warming gravy train will denounce and obfuscate McIntyre’s work, hoping politicians like Al Gore come to their rescue by loudly proclaiming that the debate is still “closed.”

And we, the lay public who know next to nothing about the many scientific disciplines that are engaged in climate study, must ourselves keep a more open mind in order to decide the right course of action for the future. If nothing else, McIntyre has shown once again that scientists are as fallible as the rest of us.

Perhaps the scientists themselves need to be reminded of that from time to time.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “NEA Also Confused About SCOTUS Decision Regarding Race & Schooling” by The Colossus of Rhodey. Finishing second was yours truly for “Whose Freedom? What Is Speech?”

Finishing on top in the non Council category was “Baghdad Raid Night” by Michael Totten.

If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers Vote, go here and follow instructions.

They all invoke his name with a reverence that the down to earth Reagan would probably have found amusing if he were alive. They identify their policies with his. They promise to emulate his strength, his purposefulness. They all promise to be true to his legacy.

Republican candidates for President vie with each other on the stump and during the debates to prove which one of them deserves to wear the mantle of successor to Reagan because not to do so - to reject the icon and strike out on your own - would be suicidal. As one wag put it, it would be “like asking the Vatican to give up St. Peter.”

Indeed, there is almost a religious element to this Reagan worship in the Republican party. And the fact that true believers in the former President’s legend will make up a large percentage of primary voters means that it is simply a given that GOP presidential candidates must pay lip service to the Reagan legacy in order to have a chance at the prize.

And it isn’t just Reagan’s legacy to which these candidates pay homage. All the major players find it necessary to adopt the Reagan agenda of lower taxes, smaller government, and a strong national defense as their Ur issues. This despite the fact that most Americans - thanks to the Reagan revolution - pay little or nothing in taxes already and the GOP Congress spent an entire decade making hash out of the idea of “smaller government,” going on a spending spree that, as John McCain will eagerly tell you, “gives drunken sailors a bad name.”

No matter. Ronald Reagan’s presence in the Republican party still overshadows all who seek to lead the GOP. And this raises an interesting question: Is it time for Republicans to move beyond the memory and legend of Reagan and re-invent the party and re-tool conservatism to more realistically reflect the times in which we live?

The Cold War is over. Ruinously high marginal tax rates are a thing of the past. The language of debate over the size of the federal government has been permanently altered to the point that even Democrats hesitate to advocate Washington-only solutions to social problems like health insurance. Welfare reform has changed the way we look at entitlements, although real reform of the welfare state has not been attempted in any serious way.

In short, the issues and conditions that gave rise to Ronald Reagan either no longer exist or have already been changed to reflect the success of the revolution he initiated. And yet Republicans keep pushing issues like “tax reform” despite the fact that, according to The Tax Foundation, a whopping 52 million American households paid no income tax whatsoever in 2005. That’s up from around 30 million in 2000.

Today’s debate over taxes has been reduced to elimination of the death tax or making the Bush tax cuts permanent - important issues to be sure but hardly the across the board cut in rates that seemed so radical back in 1980. There are various schemes to completely overhaul the tax system - as there has been in every presidential election since the end of World War II. But outside of The Fair Tax proposal that seems to be picking up a little steam in the grassroots, there is not much chance any proposals to abolish the IRS or impose a flat tax will see the light of day in Congress.

And while the need for a strong defense is more vital than ever, we are already spending nearly half a trillion dollars to defend this nation - not including emergency appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little room for the 30% increases in spending advocated by Reagan back in 1980. Nor is there a need for those kind of increases. It is a different military today, asked to perform a very different mission. Rather than massive increases in spending, most defense experts are looking at targeted increases in the size of the army, of Special Forces, and other areas vital in fighting the War on Terror. In other words, the kind of bold, world altering changes that Reagan managed in the 1980’s are neither possible nor necessary.

And what of reducing the role and shrinking the size of government? In an age where the political pendulum is swinging back toward the center rather than reaching its apex on the right, in order to get elected, Republicans are going to have to stress more efficient government while addressing the growing concerns of the American people with such non-Reaganesque issues as health care, child and elder care, and other middle class quality of life matters. There are conservative alternatives to federal funding of these programs and Republicans ignore these issues at their peril.

The Democrats faced a similar dilemma back in the 1960’s and 70’s with the haunting presence of Franklin Roosevelt hanging over the party. The perceived commitment of FDR to the less fortunate among us allowed the Democrats to invoke his name while opening the floodgates of government spending on social programs. The debate back then was not whether a program for the poor should be passed but rather how much we should be spending to fund it. And the party continued that kind of suicidal rhetoric well into the 1980’s until the Reagan revolution squelched it for good.

Might the Republicans be in similar danger with their reliance on the Reagan legacy to win elections and run the government? The Reagan leadership personae has moved from fond memory into the realms of myth and legend. This makes us forget certain inconvenient truths about those years such as huge deficits and the leadership failures brought to light in the Iran-Contra imbroglio. There is much good to take away from that time. But how much of the good can be transported to the present and grafted on to the current Republican party and the ideological movement that is conservatism?

Reagan stands a silent sentinel over the modern GOP still evoking powerful emotions and loyalty among conservatives. Perhaps it is time to carefully place his legacy and memory in our national treasure chest, taking them out on occasion to examine them for the lessons we can learn rather than pushing that legacy front and center in a futile attempt to recapture the power and the glory of days long gone and a time that will never come again.

UPDATE

Several emailers have made the excellent point that taxes, reducing the size of government, and national defense are not just Reagan issues but Republican issues as well.

I fully acknowledge that. However, the point I was trying to make is that those issues should be reframed - perhaps receive a new coat of paint - that would more accurately reflect the realities of 21st century America.

Barry Bonds has broken Hank Aaron’s all time home run record. That’s why I am not going to write about him or the record 756th home run he hit.

Nope. I am not going to write about Barry Bonds. I am not going to write about his steroid use, his mistresses, his scowling, brutish treatment of fans, the media and even some of his teammates.

I am not going to write about his tax problems, brought on by his unreported cash income from signing balls, bats, and anything that isn’t nailed down in a ballpark.

I am not going to write about his personal trainer Greg Anderson, languishing in jail on a contempt charge because he refuses to testify against Bonds and confirm that he and Victor Conte of BALCO helped Bonds bulk up.

I am not going to write about Barry Bonds because Barry Bonds is a cheat, a scoundrel, a woman abuser, and a tax dodge.

He is also the greatest baseball hitter who ever lived. But that’s another story for another day. For now, I think we should all boycott Barry Bonds coverage.

Do not read any articles about Barry Bonds.

Do not watch any TV shows about Barry Bonds.

Do not listen to radio programs talking about Barry Bonds.

This is why I am not writing about him. Giving Barry Bonds publicity of any kind will only encourage him.

My friend Richard Baehr of The American Thinker writes an article in which he makes one of the best cases I’ve yet seen to not think, dream, read, or watch anything about Barry Bonds:

There is no other player among the baseball greats whose career took a sudden and dramatic turn for the better at age 35 and over. All of the single season records highlighted above occurred from 2001 to 2004 when Bonds was between 36 to 40 years old. During those 4 years, Bond put up numbers never before matched in baseball history. A career .290 hitter, Bonds batted .328, .370, .341, and .362. A hitter whose highest single season slugging percentage had been .688 recorded the following slugging percentages: .863, .799, .749, and .812. Bonds’ on base percentage, never before higher than .461, rose to these season marks: .515, .582, .529, and .609. As for the OPS or SLOB, Bonds’ single season high had been 1.135 before 2001. His figures for the four seasons were :1.378, 1.381, 1.278 and 1.421.

Bonds SLOB or OPS (slugging percentage + on base percentage) numbers are ungodly. He obviously made a deal with Satan to be able to hit so well. This is another reason not to write about him; he is evil.

Contrast the personae of Barry Bonds with that of the man whose record he broke. There are few athletes in the history of sport who have exhibited more class, more courage, more humanity from the time they first stepped on the field to the day they hung them up than Henry Louis Aaron.

And Aaron has continued to be one of the finest gentleman in sports during his front office stints with the Atlanta Braves. He could have taken the easy way and not paid any attention to Barry Bonds. He could have refused to acknowledge Bonds accomplishment.

No one would have thought any less of Aaron if he had expressed his displeasure with Bonds’ cheating by ignoring him. But there he was, up on the big screen at AT&T Park graciously congratulating him. But what must he have been thinking? Whatever it was, the classy Aaron will keep it to himself.

Barry Bonds was the best player in baseball before he took steroids. I would have written about him back then. During the 1990’s, he was a three time Most Valuable Player, the most complete athlete in the Majors. He could do it all - run, throw, hit, hit for power, hit to the opposite field, and steal bases. He was a one man wrecking crew of a hitter who opponents feared facing with the game on the line.

But he was never a feared slugger. Bonds’ hits were screaming line drives that made it past the infielders before they could react. His homers were also of the line drive variety, the ball tending to find gaps in the outfield rather than make it over the fence. Only after he put on all that muscle did his home runs take on the rubric of majesty; towering fly balls that reveal the true power hitter. And now, he is one of the immortals, a deathless presence hovering over the sport for years, his achievement always stained by his own arrogant belief that the rules weren’t for him.

No, I won’t write about Barry Bonds. Tomorrow. Today, I, like anyone else who loves baseball, can’t think about anything else.

The idea is seductive to the left. Bring the troops home from Iraq in dignified retreat, patting ourselves on the back that we did the best we could while that country explodes in sectarian conflict. Bravely, we take the blame before the world, say three our fathers, three hail Mary’s, and go about the business of turning America into a bastion of democratic socialism.

The only problem is, it isn’t even remotely possible:

These are unpleasant realities for a nation that prefers all of its solutions to be simple and short. The reality is, however, that even if the US does withdraw from Iraq, it cannot disengage from it. The US will have to be deeply involved in trying to influence events in Iraq indefinitely into the future, regardless of whether it does so from the inside or the outside. It will face major risks and military problems regardless of the approach it takes, and it will face continuing strategic, political, and moral challenges.

Anthony Cordesman went to Iraq recently. His travelling companions were none other than Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack - the Brookings Boys whose Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled “We Maybe Could Be, Just Might Possibly, Conceivably, Perchance Win This Thing (Depending On The Breaks)” was touted as “proof” that not only was the surge working (a fact confirmed by even some of the most jaundiced observers of Iraq who have come back from there recently) but that its success could lead to “sustainable stability” in Iraq and a sort of “victory.”

Now there’s a rallying cry for you; “Remember Sustainable Stability!” Or perhaps “Onward to Sustainable Stability!”

At any rate, Cordesman is one of those hard eyed military men who works for think tanks as kind of the “Warmonger in Residence.” He doesn’t have quite the take on the Iraqi situation that O’Hanlon and Pollack brought back. In fact, it is quite a bit more pessimistic (which is bringing huge sighs of relief to some on the left this morning)

From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq’s ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq’s politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.

Gee…where have I heard that before?

If I were an anti-war lefty, I’d hold off on embracing this report too vigorously. Yes, it may offer some counterpoints to the O’Hanlon-Pollack piece. But you’re not going to like this:

The US has some 160,000 military personnel in Iraq and a matching or greater number of civilians and contractors. It has between 140,000 and 200,000 metric tons of valuable equipment and supplies, and some 15,000-20,000 military vehicles and major weapons. It is dispersed in many of Iraqi’s cities and now in many forward operating bases.

This does not mean that the US cannot leave quickly. It can rush out quickly by destroying or abandoning much of its supplies and equipment, and simply removing its personnel and contractors (and some unknown amount of Iraqis who bet their lives and families on a continued US effort). The more equipment and facilities (and Iraqis) it destroys or abandons, the quicker it can move. Under these conditions, the US could rush out in as little as a few weeks and no more than a few months.

A secure withdrawal that removed all US stocks and equipment and phased out US bases, however, would take some 9-12 months or longer [estimates of this vary but if it was 10,000 military plus 10,000 civilians and all equipment each month in Kuwait, that would likely take 16 months minimum; 2 years is what many military experts think would be a rapid, but deliberate pace].

So if, as many of you propose, we leave Iraq in 90 days, it would be Saigon, 1975 times ten. Not only military stocks but what becomes of the $20 billion in aid projects? Or the new US embassy being built there?

And for many of the rest of you liberals, what does this information do to your carefully thought out and “practical” redeployment of troops under the Democratic plan in Congress? You know, the one where we’re out by March, 2008?

And for all my conservative friends who talk blithely of “victory” as if there is any strategy or tactics we can employ that will change the perception out there in the world that Iraq is nothing short of a defeat for the US, Cordesman has this:

It is important to note in this regard that while Americans are still concerned with finding ways to define “victory” in Iraq, virtually the entire world already perceives the US as having decisively lost. Every international opinion poll that measures international popular reactions to the US performance in the war – Oxford Analytica, Pew, ABC/BBC/ARD/USA Today, Gallup, etc. – sees the US as responsible for a war it cannot justify and which has caused immense Iraqi suffering. Virtually every internal poll of Iraqi opinion with any credibility — Oxford Analytica, ABC/BBC/ARD/USA Today, ORB, etc. – has produced similar results.

The US probably cannot entirely reverse these attitudes in Iraq, the region, allied states, and increasingly in America. It may well, however, be able to greatly ameliorate them over time. It seems likely that the US will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq. The global political image of the US – and its ability to use both “hard” and “soft” power in other areas in the future, depends on what the US does now even more than on what it has done in the past.

What you are advocating - even though noble and desired by all patriots - is simply not possible.

Time to rethink Iraq - for BOTH sides.

The situation cries out for a bi-partisan solution between Congress and the White House. In order for that to happen BOTH sides have to recognize that neither of them can achieve their goals. The Democratic left is not going to be able to cut and run from Iraq. The Republican right is not going to be able to stay indefinitely, endlessly engaged in a struggle against ghosts.

(Parenthetically, Middle East and military expert Doug Hanson, speaking on my radio show yesterday, put the number of insurgents and potential insurgents in Iraq at “several hundred thousand.” These are former Saddam loyalists who were placed where they are and given instructions just for this kind of scenario happening in Iraq today. What is blood boiling about this number is US intelligence has known since 2005 that we are facing hundreds of thousands of fighters and potential fighters while Rumsfeld was assuring Congress there weren’t more than 20,-25,000.

We can’t kill them all.)

We can’t leave precipitously and we can’t stay forever. What’s the solution? The situation doesn’t lend itself to the easy talking points of either side which is why both my right and left leaning readers and commenters will not be pleased. Believe me, I’d love to write a post on Iraq just once where only one side gave me hell. But the times and situation in Iraq demand a little bit more out of all of us.

The only way out of Iraq that least harms our national security interests (interests made very plain and spelled out in English by Cordesman in his report) and that would leave Iraq with a chance at peace is together. And after we leave, the hard part begins. Staying engaged also would demand a bi-partisan consensus with the acknowledgement by both sides that there may be certain circumstances where we would have to send troops back into Iraq to save it from external threats or other disasters.

Cordesman’s report forms the basis for a long term commitment to Iraq and its people. Do we have the political will to make it happen?

I can dream, can’t I?

Join me from 3:00 - 4:00 PM central time for “The Rick Moran Show” on Blog Talk Radio.

My special guest today is Doug Hanson, frequent contributor to the American Thinker whose article on Russia today is a must read.

We’ll be talking with Doug about that as well as Iraq and the Middle East.

Don’t miss it!

If you want to call in and ask Doug a question, (718) 664-9764 is the number.

Here’s a podcast of the show:

Michelle Malkin links to my last post on the Blogs and Beauchamp, showing her disagreement by linking to this eloquent, dignified post by Bryan at Hot Air on why, in fact, the Beauchamp story is considered very important by the military:

How important, in the grand scheme of the war, is the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story? By itself, it’s not all that important. But contrary to the opinions of those who can’t be bothered to care about it but nonetheless opine on it for whatever reason, and then mainly to downplay its importance, Beauchamp hasn’t happened all by itself and to those of us who served, its context and trajectory make it very important.

For the record, my downplaying of the importance of the story doesn’t mean that I believe it to be inconsequential. Nor, as Ace believes, does it mean that I am denigrating the efforts of those who brought elements of the story to light that eventually debunked Beauchamp’s claims. Why must everything in blogs be all or nothing? Is there no place where proportionality matters? A little nuance? A little deeper look at something rather than the raw, emotional primal scream of irrationality?

I read Ace’s post with a growing sense of perplexity. It’s impossible to respond to because he is criticizing what I was thinking while writing. He confidently ascribes motivations to me when he doesn’t know me from Adam and I doubt whether he’s read me in a year - maybe two. Maybe never.

Criticizing what I write is one thing. Criticizing what I believe is fair game. Smearing me for being reasonable? For having an original thought? Divining my “true” intent how? Does Ace have a window into my soul? Is he a mind reader? If you can read that post at Ace’s without scratching your head in wonderment at how someone who doesn’t know me, never met me, rarely, if ever, reads me can accuse me of all that perfidious thought, then perhaps you would be good enough to come back here and explain it to me. It is simply and literally, beyond belief.

Perplexing, indeed.

But Bryan’s points deserve a response.

There were few who stood up for the troops after Vietnam, but that’s a shame that shouldn’t be and won’t be repeated. The Beauchamp story comes down to a simple thing that most who never served in the military may not understand, and that’s the linked concepts of service and honor. It’s an honor to serve in the US military. With that honor comes responsibility not to besmirch the uniform or let down your comrades. Some obviously don’t live up to that honor. It’s up to the rest of us to protect that honor, keep its value high and keep the traditions of the service worthy of honor.

No, I have never served in the military. I have written in the past about my associations with soldiers and how they were different than most people I knew - especially when I was younger. Military people have a sense of duty and honor that that they have no problem wearing on their sleeve. They don’t brag about it. But they are obviously proud that they have a strict code by which they live their lives. I came to respect that aspect of my military friends enormously. In a very real way, I was jealous of that kind of commitment.

So it is not surprising that military bloggers would take the Beauchamp story personally. I understand and agree. I said in the post that it was important to debunk the claims of Beauchamp in order to undo the damage done to the military.

What more should I have said? And herein lies the concept of proportionality. Is it that I’m not sufficiently triumphant? Another MSM scalp nailed to the lodgepole so break out the drums and let’s party? Alright, allow me to express my pure joy at sticking it to TNR - they deserve the shellacking.

But no. It appears that because I point out that all of this amounts to a hill of beans outside Blogdom by making the ridiculous claims that it won’t win the war or mitigate the effect of Abu Ghraib all of a sudden, people want links to bloggers who actually make those claims? What? Where do I say any bloggers say those things? I am deliberately blowing out of proportion the effect of claiming Beauchamp’s scalp to illustrate the futility of taking it too seriously when contemplating the larger picture of the war and even fixing the black eye given to the military by TNR’s lies.

Yes it is important to the military folk that this is done. And for the reasons so eloquently written by Bryan. And yes it is important to debunk false claims on anything made by the media. I hope blogs will always do this.

But not surprisingly, no blogs or commenters below have addressed the thrust of my argument; that these blogswarms blow things out of proportion until the story takes on an importance far beyond anything having to do with the world outside of this cliquish little circle of blogs and blog readers. Is there another way to accomplish exactly the same thing without this happening? Is that such a ridiculous question?

Allow me to post Bryan’s summation:

Besides all of that, truth matters. “Fake but accurate” amounts to a lie, TNR. And in a post-modern war such as the one we’re fighting, and especially as we place more emphasis on the morality of our actions in war than on actually winning it by defeating the enemy, Beauchamp represents an informational attack on our ability to wage war. Words are weapons. Loss of morale leads to loss in war, by the way we fight wars now. Letting his smears stand has the potential of letting another toilet-Koran story to get out there into the infowar zone unchallenged. So again, stopping that from happening is just the right thing to do.

To read my post and say I disagree with any of that would mean you should be working on your cognitive skills, gentle readers. And if my lack of enthusiasm for this victory upsets you, I’m sorry. But there is no need for the kind of wild denunciations made by Ace nor some of your comments below which put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that simply aren’t there.

Getting caught up in a blog swarm on a particular topic can be hazardous. The very fact that so many are writing about the same thing can generate its own momentum, its own “narrative.” Each succeeding blogger who writes about the subject feels compelled to attach just a little more meaning, a little more importance to the story until the original subject has been blown so far out of proportion that it becomes lost amidst the cacophony of dramatic “revelations” and “gotchya” moments.

It is a phenomena of our media that continues to make us look like a bunch of idiots. Dissecting a topic until the short hairs are showing solves nothing, reveals nothing except our contempt for proportionality and the truth. Is it any wonder real reporters and editors are a little perplexed when they observe something like the outburst that accompanied Jill Carroll’s release from captivity or the huge to do over the Jeff Gannon episode?

Regarding Scott Beauchamp, everyone take a step back, inhale deeply (put the bong DOWN first), and let’s look at what the blogs hath wrought.

Blogs have exposed a military fabulist in Scott Beauchamp. His lies did not contribute to a lessening of war fervor among the American people. George Bush, the Pentagon, the left, and the Iraqi government have all seen to that little detail, thank you. Nor did Beauchamp’s fairy tales embolden al-Qaeda, the insurgents, the Iranian backed militias, or any of the other bloody minded, murderous thugs who are making Iraq a living hell for the people there. And while Beauchamp’s fibbing did not do the reputation of the military any good, Jesse Spielman and his 4 compatriots, the soldiers just convicted of raping and murdering a 14 year old Iraqi girl and her family, harmed that reputation on a scale that poor little Scotty Beauchamp and his stories of dog killing and teasing disfigured women could never approach in a million years.

This is the reality outside of Blogdom. Exposing Beauchamp was a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But holding TNR and their soon to be ex-editor Franklin Foer to account for their laziness, their bias, and their incompetence is enough. That and putting a poultice on the black eye Beauchamp deliberately gave the military is all the victory that blogs can claim in this matter.

Decloaking Beauchamp will not bring us closer to “victory” in Iraq - if such a thing existed outside of the fevered imaginations of an ever dwindling number of conservatives. It will not make up for Abu Ghraib - another story whose perceived importance far, far outweighed any relationship to the reality of what actually happened. It will not induce the American people to change their minds and embrace the war effort. Nor will it shut the left up which, while something devoutly to be desired, is alas an effort doomed to failure.

This medium, we have to keep reminding ourselves, is still fairly new. And as more and more people enter the blog universe - many looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - it is inevitable that they too, wish to get in on the fun of scalp hunting. One way to climb up the winding stairs to the top of the ziggurat is to outshout your competitors while attaching more importance to a story than it deserves. This will get you traffic, links, and the admiration of your fellow bloggers.

I understand the game. I’ve played it for three years, shamelessly piling on and then shooting off emails to big bloggers hoping they would find my insightful, pithy comments about the swarm du jour good enough to link. There’s nothing inherently dishonest in this method of self-promotion - unless what you write isn’t what you truly feel in which case you won’t last long anyway. But I truly believe now that blogs have to move beyond this phase. To what end, I have no idea. I couldn’t have foreseen where blogs are now 3 years ago when I started so my powers of prognostication when it comes to blogging and internet media are practically nil.

I only know a growing sense of unease elicited by the notion that by overhyping stories like the Beauchamp caper, the credibility of the medium suffers. For that reason alone, it may be time to put down the blood stained hatchets and begin to seriously examine just what we should be doing that will increase our influence rather than make us look like a bunch of one dimensional attack dogs.

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.