Army says soldier's claims untrue, magazine defends story
 An Army investigation has found no truth in a soldier's claims of inhumane conduct by US troops on the battlefield, which were published in The New Republic earlier this year. But the magazine is standing by its story, and debate over Scott Thomas Beauchamp's honesty continues to rage in the blogosphere.
The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge to debunk Beauchamp, on Tuesday reported that the U.S. Army private serving in Iraq had signed a sworn statement admitting three articles he wrote were exaggerations and falsehoods. The Standard also reported the investigation's conclusions.
In its response to the Standard, TNR editors stood by the reporting and reiterated the findings of an earlier investigation into Beauchamp's work, which uncovered only one significant error in the piece. The New Republic so far has not reported on the military investigation's results, although an editor from the magazine contacted the same Army spokesman as the Weekly Standard.
"A senior editor from The New Republic ... asked if I had knowledge of a sworn statement where Beauchamp recanted his statements in his blog," the spokesman, Maj. Steven F. Lamb, said in an e-mail to RAW STORY. "That I have no knowledge of and even if I did I couldn't discuss it as because we are not discussing the details of the investigation at this point.
"The bottom line is that we investigated the allegations and found them to be false," Lamb told RAW STORY. "PVT Beauchamp's platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims."
The New Republic claimed to have "talked to military personnel directly involved in the events Scott Thomas Beauchamp described," but the magazine is protecting the confidentiality of its corroborating sources. The Weekly Standard is standing by its story that Beauchamp recanted.
"Thus far, we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have," New Republic editor Franklin Foer told the Washington Post Wednesday.
Beauchamp's "Baghdad Diaries" for the magazine described a range of inhumane treatment by US soldiers. In one scene Beauchamp describes running down stray dogs with military Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and he says troops played with children's bones at a graveyard they discovered. The only correction TNR has issued to the piece involves Beauchamp's story about he and fellow soldiers making fun of a woman who had been disfigured by chemical weapons; the scene happened at a military base in Kuwait, not Iraq as originally reported.
Right-wing bloggers have ganged up on the magazine in questioning and criticizing Beauchamp's articles, but some said TNR's credibility is shot after Tuesday's back-and-forth.
"This has become a very stupid story, because TNR isn't interested in telling the truth and its spin is so far below the Clintonian gold standard that it has become pathetic," wrote Bryan Preston on HotAir Tuesday.
The Army is not planning to pursue criminal charges against Beauchamp, preferring instead administrative punishments such as confiscating his cell phone and laptop, the Post reports.
"It is not clear whether investigators might have pressured Beauchamp into disavowing the articles by indicating that charges might otherwise be filed against him under the military justice code," writes the Post's Howard Kurtz.
The case and its aftermath is not sitting well with some liberal bloggers, who question how effectively the Army can investigate allegations that -- if true -- would be extremely damaging from a public perception and morale standpoint.
"[I]t's hard not to have some suspicion that the Army ... has provided itself a full exoneration through an investigation, the details of which it will not divulge," writes Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, "and it has chosen to use as its exclusive conduit for disseminating information about the case, The Weekly Standard, a publication which can at best be described as a charged partisan in the public controversy about the case."
|
