# The New Republic taken in again? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 22, 2007, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553 "2007-08-22T20:42:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/61 "2007-08-24T11:19:46Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] This is all quite interesting. How exactly does a “journalist” differ from a “reporter”? 🙂 [/QUOTE] Sorry. Late night typing. Meant to say soldier and journalist. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/62 "2007-08-24T11:34:34Z")
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves] > [@Shodan](#): > > Rather like Kerry waiting until he was safely back in the States before making his claim that he witnessed war crimes in Viet Nam on a daily basis. I grant you, he only spent a few months in Viet Nam, but if he really witnessed this, and wanted to make a difference for the better instead of self-aggrandization, he should have reported the alleged crimes to his superiors. Someone as supposedly brave as he claimed to be should not have been fearful of following the proper chain. In the sense that that description of his claim is fabricated as well? Link > [@](#): > > I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command… > > They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. Care to acknowledge you told a falsehood there? :dubious: [/QUOTE] No, I am afraid there are no falsehoods in my post. I said Kerry made the allegations; he did. I said he waited until he was in the States; he was in Detroit. I said he claimed to witness daily atrocities; such was his claim. I said he should have said something at the time that he witnessed it; he failed to do so.I said he should have followed the chain of command instead of using this for his own political advantage; he should have. Same for this Beauchamp person. _:shrugs:_ If you can’t read, I can’t help you. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/63 "2007-08-24T12:51:19Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] Sorry. Late night typing. Meant to say soldier and journalist. [/QUOTE] I figured as much, hence the smiley. But I was particularly amused that it still made perfect sense as it was, all the way through all three paragraphs. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/64 "2007-08-24T18:18:00Z")
I wonder why it’s so hard to find coverage on this. The first I had heard about it was Bricker’s link. The article triggers my bullshit detector, though. Especially this line > [@](#): > > The Army statement did not specify what were described as Beauchamp’s falsehoods and does not plan to make its report public. “The matter is considered to be closed,” said Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa, an Army spokesman in Baghdad. The army is basically saying “we know he’s lying. We did an investigation and everything. Just take our word for it.” No thanks. If you want me to get outraged, you’ll have to give me a little more than that. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/65 "2007-08-24T19:27:24Z")
I’ll give you more: [“A War Over War Stories”](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001275.html) written by Phillip Carter for the Washington Post. Carter was in Iraq. Like me, he is skeptical over some of the Beauchamp stories, but isn’t going to dismiss them. And he had many of the same concerns I had about sources being backed up, and soldiers being caught in the middle of a pissing match: > [@](#): > > How, then, should journalists tell the story of what happens in wartime? > > First, journalists must expect that their truths will be challenged when writing about a subject as divisive as Iraq. They must do everything possible to bolster their own credibility prior to publication. The New Republic erred in granting Beauchamp a pseudonym. His personal credibility as a combat infantryman would have bolstered his reports immeasurably. > > Second, when journalists do use anonymous sources to report critically about the military, they must do so with the greatest care. Seymour Hersh could not have broken the Abu Ghraib story but for anonymous sources, but he also took great care to obtain photographs and documents to corroborate what he was being told. > > Fewer than 1 percent of Americans serve in uniform, and fewer still have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. At best, the American public is getting a filtered picture of the battlefield today, and at worst, it’s getting garbage from both sides of the aisle. The American public needs to know the truth about the wars it sends its sons and daughters to fight – even when it’s ugly. > > The Beauchamp dispatches show the extent to which the discourse over Iraq has been poisoned. No one cares anymore about the troops, the truth of their reports from Iraq or the serious issues of professional journalism raised by these dispatches. The troops have become pawns in this debate, their stories a kind of Rorschach test that reveals more about how we view the war than its reality on the ground. I don’t agree with Carter all the way down the line, but for most of this we are in agreement about the credibility of the publications involved. We differ in the pseudonym issue - I don’t regard that as a big deal. I think the notion of getting writing like this from an active duty soldier in the first place was fatally flawed from the start. It would have been better for _TNR_ to cultivate its own inhouse Ernie Pyle, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Embedding is tough to do these days, and expensive, and soon enough you are sent home when the funds run dry. I think it would be worthwhile for the government to foot the bill to some degree, like it did in Pyle’s day, but in this day and age there would be massive cries of cronyism, favoritism, access and control, so it won’t happen to the degree that it probably needs to. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/66 "2007-08-24T22:23:03Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] No, I am afraid there are no falsehoods in my post…If you can’t read, I can’t help you… [/QUOTE] How refreshing it is to see a blatant lie posted in simplicity, with no needless adornment such as citations or facts. The Swift Boart sank, **Shodan** , its greasy rats long since swum for shore. In these very fora, in your presence, this same collection of horseshit was offered, examined, and dissected back to its sources, and found to be lies. You test the bounds of Board propriety and patience when you post such as this. It is false, it is provocative, and you don’t even pretend to offer substantiation. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/67 "2007-08-24T23:04:30Z")
[QUOTE=Evil One] Based on the New Republic’s political bent and that of its target audience, the “facts” of these articles fell under the category of “too good to check”. [/QUOTE] [_The New Republic_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic) has a “liberal” reputation, but, at least WRT foreign policy, it has actually had a neocon slant since the '80s. It strongly supported the Iraq invasion in 2003. And the Gulf War. And U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/68 "2007-08-24T23:13:31Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] I said he claimed to witness daily atrocities; such was his claim. [/QUOTE] Where, exactly, did he claim that he witnessed daily atrocities? The quote is of him talking about what other people, collectively, witnessed. He’s not even claiming that any one individual, let alone himself, witnessed the alleged daily war crimes. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/69 "2007-08-25T01:12:17Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] Probably both. Soldiers watch out for each other on small infractions, and a certain amount of “extra military instruction” (this is what we called it in the Navy) is often applied when small infractions are noticed by a soldier’s immediate superiors. Thus discipline is applied without a black mark landing on someone’s record. Large infractions should be reported up the chain of command, not to someone’s editor in Washington, DC. [/QUOTE] Can you clarify further? 1. If the superior doesn’t notice a large infraction, should a soldier of the same or lower rank report the infraction? 2. What exactly is the delineation between a large and small infraction? Is, say, destruction of property (outside the course of battle) or theft of property a small or large infraction? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/70 "2007-08-25T02:06:00Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] I said Kerry made the allegations; he did. [/quote] You quoted your own self in your own post: > [@Shodan](#): > > Rather like Kerry waiting until he was safely back in the States before making **his claim that he witnessed war crimes in Viet Nam on a daily basis.** As the old blues song, goes, “Keep Your Lies Straight”. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/71 "2007-08-25T02:14:34Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] If these flaws were in a White House report, or from a conservative magazine, I am very confident that we’d see post after post blasting them for their lack of truthfulness. [/quote] > [@](#): > > But frankly, it’s not too hard an inferential jump to imagine that a GD forum that’s seen complaints about integrity and approach like “Petraeus report will actually be written by the White House ,” You \*know \* tu quoques are fallacies. You \*know \* contrafactual hypotheticals are proof you have no evidence to support the conclusion you wish to draw. You \*know \* you’ve been called out for exactly that here on numerous occasions. Yet once again you’re telling us that if the facts were the opposite of what they are, you’d be right, and somehow you expect that to convince somebody else of something this time. There’s really no reason for anyone here even to be offended by that shit anymore. It isn’t an argument or a debate at all, it’s a pathetic cry for help. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/72 "2007-08-25T03:56:24Z")
[QUOTE=BrightNShiny] Can you clarify further? 1. If the superior doesn’t notice a large infraction, should a soldier of the same or lower rank report the infraction? 2. What exactly is the delineation between a large and small infraction? Is, say, destruction of property (outside the course of battle) or theft of property a small or large infraction? [/QUOTE] A theft would be a large infraction. Few things are as poisonous to morale as a thief running through a unit, placing everyone under suspicion or even worse taking the property of his buddies. As such, a soldier ought to report it. A soldier ought to report small infractions, too, but do so in a way that they can be solved at the lowest point in the chain of command. In the Navy, we would nudge sailors to work out certain problems, so that they wouldn’t come to the attention of the leading petty officer or division chief. If these individuals got word of discipline problems, they could apply the extra military instruction I alluded to earlier. This was done so that the captain didn’t have an opportunity to apply his own administrative punishments, which could be severe and also left a mark in the service record. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/73 "2007-08-25T14:04:28Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Where, exactly, did he claim that he witnessed daily atrocities? [/QUOTE] Kerry speaks thru out his Winter Solder testimony as “we”. > [@](#): > > **We** who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel **we** have to be winter soldiers now. **We** could come back to this country; **we** could be quiet; **we** could hold our silence; **we** could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but **we** feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which **we** are committing that threaten it, that **we** have to speak out. > FEELINGS OF MEN COMING BACK FROM VIETNAM > I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn’t know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned With a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped. > > **As a veteran and one who feels this anger** , I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this country. Emphasis added. He claimed 'war crimes committed by the American military against Vietnamese civilians were “not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis…” ’ and '“with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” ’ He handed out flyers that claimed > [@](#): > > “American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are ‘Gooks.’” And, of course - > [@](#): > > [Later investigators were unable to confirm any of the reported atrocities, and in fact discovered that a number of the witnesses had never been in Vietnam, had never been in combat, or were imposters who had assumed the identity of real veterans.](http://www.wintersoldier.com/index.php?topic=Keys) > [@](#): > > The quote is of him talking about what other people, collectively, witnessed. He’s not even claiming that any one individual, let alone himself, witnessed the alleged daily war crimes. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Kerry claims that 150 people witnessed these alleged crimes on a day-to-day basis. But you don’t think anyone of them in particular witnessed them. How does that work? All of them saw something that none of them saw. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/74 "2007-08-25T14:53:39Z")
IOW, as you \*now \* say, Kerry did \*not \* claim that he witnessed these things himself, unlike what you said earlier. So what is it you say he should have brought to his superiors at the time it happened, having been done by other people he didn’t personally see or even meet until later? :dubious: You told a falsehood. You told another when you denied it. The average 8-year-old knows better than to try that shit. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/75 "2007-08-25T15:40:26Z")
Well, OK, if you want to take “we” in the sense of “not me, but other people”, and “he made the allegations” in the sense of “he made the allegations”. But then what we are agreeing to is that Kerry was making accusations based on something of which he had no first hand knowledge, based on the testimony of witnesses some of which were shown to be untrue, and the rest (if I understand **John Mace** ’s point) were unfalsifiable in that they didn’t refer to any incident in particular. As I mentioned, Kerry was only in Viet Nam for a few months (and, as has been shown, he was clearly [lying about what he was doing at least some of the time)](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27211-2004Aug23.html) what we are talking about is a lot of unsubstantiated allegations from unreliable witnesses, most of which is hearsay. Much like the Beauchamp accusations, with the difference that Beauchamp is the one alleging that he saw things that no one else did. The only commonality being that the Usual Suspects swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Of course. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/76 "2007-08-25T15:46:32Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] Kerry speaks thru out his Winter Solder testimony as “we”. Emphasis added. He claimed 'war crimes committed by the American military against Vietnamese civilians were “not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis…” ’ and '“with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” ’ He handed out flyers that claimed [/quote] But that still isn’t what you claimed. > [@](#): > > This doesn’t make any sense to me. Kerry claims that 150 people witnessed these alleged crimes on a day-to-day basis. But you don’t think anyone of them in particular witnessed them. How does that work? All of them saw something that none of them saw. He didn’t claim that any one individual saw this on a daily basis. He claimed that it happened on a daily basis based on the number of people reporting individual incidents. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/77 "2007-08-25T15:52:48Z")
Could you point to the place where Kerry claims this as the basis for his “day-to-day” time table? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/78 "2007-08-25T16:39:28Z")
Sigh … > [@Shodan](#): > > Rather like Kerry waiting until he was safely back in the States before making **his claim that he witnessed war crimes in Viet Nam on a daily basis**. I grant you, he only spent a few months in Viet Nam, but if he really witnessed this, and wanted to make a difference for the better instead of self-aggrandization, he should have reported the alleged crimes to his superiors. Someone as supposedly brave as he claimed to be should not have been fearful of following the proper chain. Gawdamighty. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/79 "2007-08-25T17:56:04Z")
Was this meant to be in response to my question? Because it doesn’t do that. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2007, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553/80 "2007-08-25T18:16:33Z")
Was your question intended to address the fact that you told a falsehood? Because it doesn’t do that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-republic-taken-in-again/416553.md?page=5)