The New Republic taken in again?

[Mr.Moto]

@RTFirefly

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?

I’m not, and if you look earlier in the thread, you’ll find I addressed this point. The military is pretty concerned about the OPSEC implications of email and soldier blogs, and have been trying to get a handle on the situation for some time.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

I’m not, and if you look earlier in the thread, you’ll find I addressed this point. The military is pretty concerned about the OPSEC implications of email and soldier blogs, and have been trying to get a handle on the situation for some time.

IOW, you didn’t address the point.

I’m not saying you don’t care about OPSEC violations, because I’m sure you do. But that has been a relatively trivial concern of yours in this thread with respect to Beauchamp’s writings in TNR.

Here is your entire first post in this thread:

I don’t really care about the politics of this issue either - some conservatives lionize the military too much, and it is true that the horseplay of soldiers does get out of hand at times, even spilling over into actions that are blasphemous, sacreligious, disrespectful of the dead, or profane. If this were all that needed to be said, it wouldn’t need to be said at all.

But it isn’t all that needs to be said.

About the worst thing you can by in the military is a buddy fucker. In units that depend on every member to watch each other’s back, hidden agendas are deadly. This is why those great classics of WWII and Vietnam memoirs typically were published well after the fact, when military justice could not touch most of the men involved.

Scott Beauchamp tried to publish these kinds of memoirs comtemporaneously. The Army, naturally, had to investigate credible accusations of UCMJ violations made by a servicemember, and then Beauchamp was in a fix - he could stand by the memoirs and really get in trouble with the Army (and take quite a few people out as well) or he could disavow them and piss off a magazine.

Either way, sadly, he already fucked his buddies over - they know he sold them out for a magazine byline. And whether the stories were true or not, his life will be a living hell until he leaves the Army. And to tell the truth, I have no sympathy for him. His life ought to be as tough as possible. His job was to be a soldier, not a writer, and he was a lousy soldier from the looks of it.

Now, none of this has any bearing on whether any of this was true or not. But at this point, nobody can tell. I sure can’t, though the tales look exaggerated to a degree at least. Scott Beauchamp has reversed himself, and if whether we take him at his word now or then, he was lying at some point. TNR says they have confirmation of some tales, but they’re being close lipped about that. It may be that this confirmation is from people over there who “knew” of these things secondhand at best. Military units are natural rumor mills. The Army has conducted an investigation and apparently Beauchamp has been administratively punished to some degree. But we do not know the scale of his punishment, and what the Army can do even without a court martial is significant.

What would be required is confirmation one way or another. I’d like to see it, in the form of convincing physical evidence or another soldier who is willing to confirm or refute any of this, and who appears free of any particular axe to grind either way.

Someday soon, Beauchamp won’t be in the Army any more. That will be for the best for him and for the Army and for other soldiers - he seems to have poisoned the well pretty badly. I sure hope he turns out to be a better writer than these articles indicate he will be, and I hope he turns out to be a better person than he is a writer and a soldier.

Not a word about OPSEC.

OPSEC has been incidental to this controversy, both in your comments and in the military’s response. According to you, they found an OPSEC problem with something Beauchamp posted in his blog, not in TNR.

This is about your (and the wingnuts’ and the military’s) not liking Beauchamp’s slice-of-life account of his time in Iraq. Like Jim Bouton in 1970, the account of day-to-day life wasn’t particularly damning or revealing, but it contradicted how the military wanted itself to be seen, and how the wingnuts wanted the military to be seen. Just as Bouton went against how MLB and its players wanted to be seen.

[RTFirefly]

To follow up, you had 13 posts in this thread before yesterday, and only one of them mentioned OPSEC.

Let’s debate OPSEC if you like, but your ire at Beauchamp and TNR to this point has had almost nothing to do with OPSEC.

[Mr.Moto]

Well, considering I made comments about operational security relatively early on in this discussion, I think these considerations were pretty high in my mind, even if they didn’t crop up much afterward:

@Mr. Moto

Uh huh. But the alternative is a nightmare of operational security violations, perhaps even the disclosure of troop movements or classified data. There is a reason why the military keeps control of communications of this nature from a combat zone.

The Army has been struggling with this issue quite a lot lately - witness the on-again off-again bans on MySpace accounts and the like. The threat is real enough. Some months ago someone challenged me to come up with the unit information for LCPL Webb (Senator Webb’s son). I found it is just a few minutes on a site that he maintained.

So let’s not pretend that these are minor issues - they’re not. When the Army confiscated the laptop and the cell phone from Beauchamp and forced him to communicate with friends and family through MWR phones that could be monitored, they did so to teach him a lesson in battlefield security. And if he needed to learn it, perhaps some folks here need to learn it as well.

I’m gald you concede that I care about OPSEC violations, and I hope you concede that these sorts of considerations in large part motivated my responses.

For that matter, I should say I’m not happy at all with the leak of these documents to Drudge, as they seem to violate Privacy Act restrictions. I hope the military is investigating this disclosure, as the only person who seems to have the right to leak these documents is Beauchamp himself.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

Well, considering I made comments about operational security relatively early on in this discussion,

Hey, we agree on something!

@RTFriefly

To follow up, you had 13 posts in this thread before yesterday, and only one of them mentioned OPSEC.

Congratulations for quoting that one out of 13. As you may have guessed, I’d already read it.

@Mr. Moto

I think these considerations were pretty high in my mind, even if they didn’t crop up much afterward:

I can’t argue with you, since I have no idea what is, or isn’t, in your mind.

I’m gald you concede that I care about OPSEC violations, and I hope you concede that these sorts of considerations in large part motivated my responses.

That would be a false hope, since there’s no actual evidence that OPSEC “considerations in large part motivated [your] responses” in this thread. Quite the opposite, really.

For that matter, I should say I’m not happy at all with the leak of these documents to Drudge, as they seem to violate Privacy Act restrictions. I hope the military is investigating this disclosure, as the only person who seems to have the right to leak these documents is Beauchamp himself.

I’m glad to hear that. We agree on two things, then.

[RTFirefly]

TNR fires back.
Seems that the day after the call that Mr. Moto hasn’t yet bothered to quote in support of his position, Beauchamp called his wife, saying he stood by his story. And two weeks later, in an unmonitored conversation, Beauchamp confirmed that directly to TNR. He said he was reticent on the earlier conversation because:

He also told Foer that in the September 6 call he had spoken under duress, with the implicit threat that he would lose all the freedoms and privileges that his commanding officer had recently restored if he discussed the story with us.

BTW, the major in charge of the investigation said Beauchamp never recanted his story. (Contrary to what certain wingnut sites claimed.)

And apparently the Army didn’t exactly do a bang-up investigation here:

[Major] Cross conceded that there were at least a dozen soldiers in Beauchamp’s platoon whom he had not interviewed. TNR pressed for clarification:

Scoblic: So you didn’t get statements from everyone in his platoon, then?

Cross: We got statements from everyone in his platoon that was available that day we were conducting the investigation.

Scoblic: At a later point did you follow up with any of the people that weren’t available that day?

Cross: No.

And how about that Matt Drudge:

It was as we were awaiting the documentary record of the Army’s investigation that the Army leaked several documents, including the September 6 transcript, to The Drudge Report, which incorrectly reported that the documents show that Beauchamp had recanted. In fact, they show no such thing, and Drudge soon removed the supporting documents from its website, and later its entire report.

I’m sure it would be easy enough to verify or contradict TNR’s claims about Drudge. Go for it. But if it turns out TNR is right about this, maybe it’s Drudge’s reporting you should be going after.

[elucidator]

Not to intrude on your dialogue, but this operational security stuff? Bit fuzzy on that, seems to mean stuff you don’t want the enemy to know: troop movements, passwords, information that might prove useful to them and harmful to us.

Moto, can you offer anything specific in Beauchamps story that might fall under such a restraint? Because it seems to me you are implying a whole 'nother level of cupability here, the Beachamp was revealing intelligence that might prove useful to our enemies.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

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.

Bolding mine.

Send out the investigators.

‘I Don’t Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier’s Life’
After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence, members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; Page A01

Yep, terrible morale. Get those investigators out there, stat! :rolleyes:

[RTFirefly]

And from the previous link, the reason why we need more Beauchamps:

The American people don’t fully realize what’s going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

“They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don’t go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire,” he said. “They don’t ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground.”

I suppose TNR could have published interesting bits from random soldiers’ blogs, but there are a lot of journalistic problems with that. Instead, they did something responsible: vetted one soldier upfront, and published his diary under a pseudonym.

Meanwhile, Drudge and the Weekly Standard don’t get raked over the coals for their journalistic malfeasance. Maybe this thread has the wrong periodical in the name.

[Mr.Moto]

@RTFirefly

I suppose TNR could have published interesting bits from random soldiers’ blogs, but there are a lot of journalistic problems with that. Instead, they did something responsible: vetted one soldier upfront, and published his diary under a pseudonym.

Wouldn’t it be more responsible to send a reporter or feature writer out? That way if the Army doesn’t like what he writes, they won’t have him in a terrible position like Beauchamp was in?

Michael Yon, as I mentioned above, is a Special Forces veteran but is no longer on active duty. And Ernie Pyle, as I also mentioned above, was employed by Scripps-Howard. Their livelihood and personal freedom aren’t endangered by what they write.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

Wouldn’t it be more responsible to send a reporter or feature writer out?

Could a reporter have written Ball Four in 1970? No. And that’s in a situation where, unlike in Iraq, there would have been no risk to the safety of the reporter.

It would be essentially impossible for a reporter or feature writer to write this story.

That way if the Army doesn’t like what he writes, they won’t have him in a terrible position like Beauchamp was in?

He wouldn’t have been in this situation but for the ‘activism’ of wingnuts, looking for the next KerningGate. That we even know the name ‘Beauchamp’ is fundamentally their fault, not TNR’s. Your side keeps calling bullshit without good reason about reporting of various sorts from Iraq, and a stand-up guy like Beauchamp stands up to say, no, this isn’t some made-up or composite story. Then your side falls on him like a ton of bricks.

Yeah, blame TNR. The problem’s in your own camp.

Michael Yon, as I mentioned above, is a Special Forces veteran but is no longer on active duty.

And Joe Blow is a bartender in Milwaukee.

And Ernie Pyle, as I also mentioned above, was employed by Scripps-Howard. Their livelihood and personal freedom aren’t endangered by what they write.

And WWII, for all its danger, was a classic old-fashioned war with front lines and stuff. Reporters could cover WWII, and even Vietnam, with substantially less risk than reporters covering Iraq, whose fatality toll is already in the low three figures. Think we had one dead reporter for every thirty dead soldiers in WWII or Vietnam? This is a fundamentally different war than WWII, and while the war’s similar in type to Vietnam, the environment’s fundamentally more difficult. Vietnam had its safe spaces; this war doesn’t. To expect reporters to play the same role that they have in past conflicts is absurd.

[Mr.Moto]

@RTFirefly

And WWII, for all its danger, was a classic old-fashioned war with front lines and stuff. Reporters could cover WWII, and even Vietnam, with substantially less risk than reporters covering Iraq, whose fatality toll is already in the low three figures. Think we had one dead reporter for every thirty dead soldiers in WWII or Vietnam? This is a fundamentally different war than WWII, and while the war’s similar in type to Vietnam, the environment’s fundamentally more difficult. Vietnam had its safe spaces; this war doesn’t. To expect reporters to play the same role that they have in past conflicts is absurd.

Uh huh. And yet Ernie Pyle died alongside Marines on Iejema. Plus your post insults genuine journalists who have taken these risks and have died. Michael Kelly (late of The New Republic) comes instantly to mind here.

So I wonder if things have changed so much as you think.

BTW, you asserted above that Beauchamp was held totally incommunicado. I’m still waiting for a cite to that effect.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

Uh huh. And yet Ernie Pyle died alongside Marines on Iejema.

The singular of ‘anecdote’ is ‘anecdote,’ just in case you’re wondering.

Plus your post insults genuine journalists who have taken these risks and have died.

Oh really? Damned if I know how.

Memo: making an absurd assertion without any evidence or reasoning backing it up does not make the assertion true.

BTW, you asserted above that Beauchamp was held totally incommunicado. I’m still waiting for a cite to that effect.

And I’m still waiting for responses to a bunch of things too. Want a list?

[RTFirefly]

BTW, first on my list would be post #126, since that’s the state of play of the thread’s central issue.

@RTFirefly

And Joe Blow is a bartender in Milwaukee.

By which I meant, I have no idea who Michael Yon is, and AFAICT there’s no reason I should have an idea who Michael Yon is, so if you think the words ‘Michael Yon’ should mean something to me, it’s up to you to educate me, rather than for me to educate myself. Until then, Michael Yon means no more in this thread than does Joe Blow, the Milwaukee bartender.

However, serendipity occasionally comes through. Apparently you mean this Michael Yon:

The New Republic needs to be the latest example that the good old days of no-accountability are ending. They attacked American soldiers during a time of war, and they attacked those soldiers without justification. I happen to be in Baghdad with some of the soldiers they attacked.

Since I’ve got Ball Four on the brain, these hysterics on the part of a fellow you apparently consider a responsible news source remind me very much of Bowie Kuhn, ca. 1970:

“You’ve done the game a grave disservice. Saying players kissed on the Seattle team bus—incredible! Or that some of our greatest stars were drunk on the field. What can you be thinking of?”

And there it is. Yon, like Kuhn, takes a portrait of the ups and downs of everyday life, and goes into a fit of hysteria because it doesn’t portray soldiers (Yon) or baseball players (Kuhn) as heroes who can do no wrong, rather than as average people who do good things and bad things, not to mention grown men who are perfectly capable of shrugging stuff like this off, and (in the case of our soldiers in Iraq) have more pressing concerns every day that render stuff like this trivial.

In short, Yon doesn’t believe in the manhood of the troops, but sees them as hothouse flowers who must be protected from the mildest remarks that could possibly be interpreted as criticism.

He portrays our troops as girly-men. You should be pissed as hell at him.

[Mr.Moto]

Hold on there. All along I’ve said that TNR should retract this since there are credibility problems connected with it. I haven’t commented much on other TNR stories except where these concerned the way the editors there handle cases like this. And in fact, by and large I don’t have problems with the majority of TNR stories that I read, at least as far as their factual content is concerned.

But now you come along and would chuck Yon’s whole blog because of something you read - instead of just disagreeing with that particular post. Never mind that he is over there, never mind that his photographs have been published in Time magazine and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, among many others. Never mind that Brian Williams praises him highly and reads him religiously - and notes correctly the esteem many in the military and out have for him.

Link.

A lot of that esteem is because he directs criticism around fairly liberally - I’ve seen him take on generals and privates both, and lots of folks in between. And our leadership in Washington of all stripes, is hardly spared.

So why should I discount Michael Yon? You keep saying that first-person accounts from Iraq are essential. Why shouldn’t I read those from someone over there who once was one of the youngest men ever to complete Special Forces training?

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

Hold on there. All along I’ve said that TNR should retract this since there are credibility problems connected with it. I haven’t commented much on other TNR stories except where these concerned the way the editors there handle cases like this. And in fact, by and large I don’t have problems with the majority of TNR stories that I read, at least as far as their factual content is concerned.

And your case for saying that lies in tatters. The leaks were wrong. Beauchamp didn’t retract anything, and stands by his story. The military’s ‘investigation’ was woefully incomplete - just a one-day, talk-to-whoever’s-there, don’t worry about everyone else, sorta thing.

But now you come along and would chuck Yon’s whole blog because of something you read - instead of just disagreeing with that particular post. Never mind that he is over there, never mind that his photographs have been published in Time magazine and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, among many others.

Wow - he’s a blogger and a photographer. Well, then.

Never mind that Brian Williams praises him highly and reads him religiously - and notes correctly the esteem many in the military and out have for him.

Link.

Good for Brian Williams. At least that’s a name I’ve heard of. But even then, that doesn’t say stuff. On this board, you can quote Thomas Jefferson, and the other guy will say, “Yeah, but so what if Jefferson said it - is it right?” That’s our ethos here. So if Brian Williams likes him, so what?

I’ve seen him take on generals and privates both, and lots of folks in between. And our leadership in Washington of all stripes, is hardly spared.

And now we’ve seen him basically say that our troops are a bunch of girly-men. If that doesn’t bother you…

So why should I discount Michael Yon? You keep saying that first-person accounts from Iraq are essential. Why shouldn’t I read those from someone over there who once was one of the youngest men ever to complete Special Forces training?

You don’t have to discount Yon at all, AFAIAC, though you should to be consistent, given your problems with Beauchamp.

You were the one trying to bring him into the debate as some sort of icon, without backing it up. If anyone else is still here, you might convince them.

[Mr.Moto]

Pleas for consistency ring pretty hollow - you’re saying you’ll only listen to those first-person accounts that you trust.

Which is what I said before about Beauchamp - for lots of reasons, I don’t trust him.

I still think there is a lot more to this story that’s not out - there are still pending FOIA requests, TNR is sitting on either corroborating evidence or is fibbing about that. I still think Beauchamp was embellishing the truth, but I’m willing to be convinced if I see more - as I said quite a few times above.

And there ought to be an investigation over this Drudge leak, frankly.

At the end of all of this, we will probably have a clearer picture. However, in the interim we have a story that isn’t verified to my satisfaction, and TNR isn’t convincing me in their efforts to verify it - especially if they are telling Beauchamp not to talk to other media outlets.

So we disagree - not the first time for that. And I think we’re the last two talking here. So if you’re trying to convince me, you might be wasting your breath, like I think I’m wasting mine.

I might check back on this one if more news drops. But in the interim, I think I’ve said all I want to.

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

Pleas for consistency ring pretty hollow - you’re saying you’ll only listen to those first-person accounts that you trust.

Saying it doesn’t make it so. It would behoove you to quit making up nonsense.

Which is what I said before about Beauchamp - for lots of reasons, I don’t trust him.

Umm, aren’t you “only listen[ing] to those first-person accounts that you trust”?

I still think there is a lot more to this story that’s not out - there are still pending FOIA requests, TNR is sitting on either corroborating evidence or is fibbing about that. I still think Beauchamp was embellishing the truth, but I’m willing to be convinced if I see more - as I said quite a few times above.

Ah, you think. That’s all you’ve got.

You know, you’re welcome to think whatever you damned well please, and to believe he’s bullshitting even if the evidence stacks up as high as a mountain that he’s telling the truth. It’s a free country.

But dude, this is the fucking Dope. What you think belongs over in IMHO. You can poll yourself there.

That’s my real problem with you: AFAICT, you really do consider your thoughts to be GD-worthy. At least, that’s how you act here.

But they’re not. This forum is about evidence and argument. But in the absence of either one, you pull out your thoughts, and put them into play as if they meant something in this forum.

Which they don’t.

[Mr.Moto]

BTW, that cite I requested, got anything on that yet?

[RTFirefly]

@Mr. Moto

BTW, that cite I requested, got anything on that yet?

I’d say go ahead, call my bluff, and come up with that killer argument based on my not being able to find a cite.

Have fun.