This brought forth a storm of charges from the right-wing blogs and the Weekly Standard claiming that the diaries were fabrications. Then TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out.The story links to this one, by Howard Kurtz, at the Washington Post.
Kurtz doesn't say that the "disclosure" was to The Weekly Standard and just The Weekly Standard. But things get a little muddier. From TPM:Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.
The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.
"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."
But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.
The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge against Beauchamp, says another unnamed military official told the magazine that not only had the Army found Beauchamp's written accounts to be false but that Beauchamp himself has now signed a recantation of all his claims. So case closed; he fessed up. Yet when TNR contacted the Army public affairs a Maj. Steve Lamb told them: "I have no knowledge of that."Huh?
Beauchamp makes his charges. The US Army allegedly investigates and finds the highly embarrassing charges to be false. But no information will be released about which of his charges were false, how they were false or how they were determined to be false.Kurtz drives right down the middle:
Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, called the Army's refusal to release its report "suspect," adding: "There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests."Maybe Beauchamp was lying. But the Army, keeping all aspects of the investigation - details, context and conclusions - under wraps, hardly inspires any confidence.
3 comments:
"There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests."
Why is it that there is no cloud hanging over the Weekly Standard and Howie "Confict Of Interest" Kurtz?
The messhall charge was false. It was located in Kuwait.
So the entire thing was false because the location was wrong? Try again, please.
Personally, I don't care one way or another whether the charges he made are true or not--the soldiers' conduct doesn't have any bearing, to me, on the validity of the war itself.
However, your logic, well...isn't. This isn't a grade school true or false test. One incorrect piece of the account does not invalidate the entire account. If I told a story about something really great that happened to me last Monday and you found out it was actually last Tuesday, would that mean that I was lying about the whole thing? Not necessarily. I might be, but it could just be a mistake, too.
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