No, I’m thinking about the Army’s credibility and reputation.
Of course, if they don’t give a flip about that, then no problem. But neither you nor they should expect anyone to believe them.
This is because, y’know, Congress is supposedly making policy decisions based on Petraeus’ testimony. Which went against a whole bunch of reports released just the previous week.
OTOH, Beauchamp’s story was simply providing a slice-of-life, this-is-what-it’s-like account. The wingnuts were attacking Beauchamp’s story not because it made a difference whether or not it was accurate, but because they like to jump on any otherwise private citizen who pokes their head up to tell their story, if it reflects badly on the wingnut view of life, whether it’s someone like Beauchamp, or someone like Graeme Frost and family, or the college students whose contact information Michelle Malkin publicized. AFAICT, they want to make sure that there’s a cost to be paid when average people engage in non-wingnut speech.
Slow?? We went through all that at the time of the initial story. The wingnuts were over Beauchamp’s story like flies on shit, and all they found was that a story that was supposed to have been told in a lunchroom in Iraq, was actually told in a lunchroom in Kuwait. But for some reason, the wingnuts seem to think the onus is on TNR. As do you.
I’m having a hard time understanding why this is such an important isue to so many people. Are some of the handful of people involved running for president or something?
So what if a dog got run over? So what if some guy wrote a story that mentioned a dog getting run over that didn’t hew completely to the facts? Did Beauchamp name names? If he did and his accusations led to criminal charges, it would be a big deal for the defendants and the lawyers involved in the case, but not the national media.
One would think that “soldier’s diary”-type slice-of-life stories would be subject to less vigorous fact-checking than hard news reports.
And I find it a bit easier to believe that military officials would go to lengths to protect the military’s reputation than that a soldier would make up false stories about nobody fellow soldiers in order to smear it.
There were a few things here that made it an issue for me. I can’t speak for too many other people.
First of all, lots of the things described by Beauchamp were UCMJ violations and indications of bad unit morale. It was necessary for the Army, once they had these allegations on the record, to investigate them and see if there was any truth to them.
If the Army had not done so, it would have been negligent on their part.
The bad part about this, though, is that Beauchamp, by writing these articles brought a ton of scrutiny on his whole unit. And it fell on him, his chain of command, and everyone around him who might have committed these acts, known of them, or covered them up.
Now, this wasn’t a good circumstance for anyone involved, I’m sure, and It is certain that Beauchamp wasn’t a popular guy after this.
There is also the problem that Beauchamp had a blog that revealed data it shouldn’t have - an OPSEC violation. PDF 3 refers to this.
Now, Michael Yon is reporting that Beauchamp had the chance to leave Iraq but chose to stay and do his duty. This came from Beauchamp’s CO.
Now, you can believe this or not - but Beauchamp was indicating in his statements that he wanted to just do his job. I personally think that’s admirable, as I indicated above. I hope all goes well for him over there.
There’s another point I want to make.
Reading through the Foer and Scoblic conversation with Beauchamp, we see some people not doing much to support a young man in a war zone. In fact, all they do is pressure him more and more.
Now, I won’t deny that they had certain business dealings that they had to take care of, but they seem to go about it in a particularly sleazy way - threatening his future employment, bringing his wife into the conversation, the works.
This was a writer they were proud to showcase just months ago, and their purported purpose in running him was to give a view of Iraq from the perspective of the troops. Yet in this conversation - supposedly the first in weeks - they cared little of his perspective or what he was doing. Apart from a perfunctory “How are you doing,” they asked no questions about his well-being. And then, of course, they turned up the pressure on a man getting about four hours of sleep a day.
That seems wrong to me. And if the conversation is an accurate portrayal of events, Foer ought to apologize to Beauchamp for this kind of lousy treatment.
BTW, anyone looking for the next Ernie Pyle shouldn’t be looking at Scott Beauchamp, and ought to be looking in Michael Yon’s direction. If he had more consistent funding, and better outlets for his work besides his blog and a few papers, he’d be a much bigger force than he is now.
If the Army is going to investigate every instance of bad unit morale in Iraq, my bet is that they wouldn’t have anyone left over to fight a war.
Oh, bullshit. In any organization, there are rules that are broken and nobody ever gives a good goddamn about them. The Army not excepted.
You know what? Maybe the wingnut legion should have considered this back when they were calling bullshit, claiming that there was no “Scott Thomas.” Because he was sufficiently honorable, he stepped out from behind his alias to rebut their claims.
You got a post from back then saying “if there really is a Scott Thomas, he shouldn’t come forward because it would bring a ton of scrutiny on his unit”? I bet you don’t.
I’m not gonna wade through the PDF to find out about it, but ISTM that if so, this is neither here nor there with respect to the TNR piece.
Now, Michael Yon is reporting that Beauchamp had the chance to leave Iraq but chose to stay and do his duty. This came from Beauchamp’s CO.
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I have no idea who Michael Yon is, or why I should believe some random stranger who has to publish a disclaimer that he’s not funded by Fox News. But notwithstanding any of that, I didn’t see the words “honorable discharge” in there. If “leave” translates to “general discharge” or worse then that’s a bit of a black mark on your permanent record.
But whatever the Army was doing with him during the month immediately preceding when he was out of sight, that doesn’t raise any questions in your mind.
Sure, Foer ought to apologize to Beauchamp. But so should the Army.
Well, PDF 2 includes what we used to call in the Navy a counseling chit.
Counseling is very mild as a punishment - it does not harm advancement and promotion in the long tern, nor does it prevent a soldier from honorable discharge. Furthermore, counseling chits are destroyed upon transfer, so you start life in a new command with a clean slate with only the marks in your formal evaluations held against you.
I do not know what Beauchamp’s evaluations are like, though indications are he’s had other problems in the past. Michael Yon alludes to this in the piece I linked to. But from the looks of things, Beauchamp wasn’t punished in a terribly harsh way.
Glenn Greenwald has a few words to say about the military’s becoming just another part of the Bush/Cheney/GOP/wingnut hackocracy/propaganda machine.
Lotsa links in the original.
Frankly, that analysis is nuts.
The military looked all set to let Beauchamp talk to Newsweek and the Washington Post. Was it them who put the kibosh on that, or Foer and his minions putting pressure on Beauchamp to talk only to them?
And really, it seems to be a little strange to complain about disclosures and leaks when you were cultivating a huge inside source yourself.
Could you clarify how this is a response to what you quoted? Because it seems like you are talking about something completely different than I am.
I’m not suggesting that the military harshly punished Beauchamp in any official sense. I am pointing to the fact that they cut him off from the world for a month, during which time they just might have repeatedly made it clear to him what sort of consequences they could bring down on him both officially and unofficially, to get him to cease to support his own story.
But none of that constitutes an official punishment, just ‘investigation.’
Somehow, I’m having problems with the idea that TNR kept the military from letting Newsweek and the WaPo from interviewing Beauchamp.
What inside source were ‘we’ (whoever ‘we’ were in your mind) cultivating on the Beauchamp story?
Some additional thoughts:
Was this before or after they’d spent a month browbeating him? If ‘after’, what good would that be?
The military as an organization is supposed to be politically impartial. It isn’t supposed to be giving a story to wingnut bloggers. It’s supposed to be sharing info via press releases available to all, and press conferences that representatives of all media can attend.
Do you have a cite that Beauchamp was incommunicado for a month? All I’ve been able to find is that his internet access was taken away, which isn’t exactly the same thing.
Then Beauchamp shouldn’t have been writing at all, should he? After all, he isn’t exactly a PAO officer, is he?
How is it fine to give a story to TNR but not give one to Drudge?
Exactly. His story doesn’t officially represent the military as an organization. He’s just one soldier telling the story of his day-to-day experiences, just like any of the thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq who were blogging on their experiences, or sending emails home.
None of this is particularly newsworthy in the standard “there’s a story here that we need to get to the bottom of” sense, just the texture of everyday life.
Guess you’d shut them down too.
What I would do is subject them to regulation. That seems fair, and in keeping with how things have always been run.
I just find it funny that you should defend Beauchamp so forcefully but decry leaks against him - after all, he was leaking himself, and a lot of what he talked about was supposedly done by others.
Do you read TNR, Moto? I don’t either. My opinion is not affected by TNR, I daresay neither is yours. So whats the takeaway, here? Why would this issue have such significance? You’re being a bit coy about that.
Did TNR fumble the ball, or was this wholly their intent, to undermine morale and support for reasons malign and treacherous? Are we being invited to see a larger pattern of mendacity by the liberal media? Shirley you wouldn’t spend three pages arguing that a relatively minor liberal outlet needs a stern talking to, so what greater implications are you about, here?
Fine with me. But what’s past is past. Why are you going to regard a soldier who told his tale of everyday life at war in a magazine as different from the many soldiers who did so via blog or email?
Sorry, but in the news sense of the term, no, he didn’t ‘leak.’ He wasn’t trying to get secrets out; he was simply trying to give a feel of everyday military life in Iraq to those of us who aren’t there.
It reminds me a lot of when Jim Bouton wrote Ball Four and became a pariah overnight in the world of MLB - not because he’d exposed any dastardly secrets, but because he revealed the players and coaches as ordinary people, with all their imperfections, rather than idealized heroes.
Also, I reiterate, Beauchamp did not represent, did not speak for, the U.S. government in the things he said; it was clearly one soldier’s diary, and nothing more. The U.S. government - of the people, by the people, for the people - has no business siding with this faction against that faction. If it does, it becomes a corrupt political machine writ large: a north-of-the-border banana republic.
Scott Beauchamp’s choices, the choices of an individual, carry no similar risk.