The Next Pat Tillman-like Cover-Up?
This is scary: The New Republic's Baghad blogger, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, has "recanted" his stories after a military investigation.
To recap: Beauchamp anonymously wrote several columns for the New Republic in which he described horrific behavior on the part of American soldiers, their characters twisted by their time in Iraq.
Conservatives went nuts and questioned his legitimacy.
The New Republic did some digging, confirmed almost all of his writing, and (with his permission) revealed his identity as the husband of a TNR intern.
Immediately afterward, the military seized Beauchamp's computer and telephone; he could not even communicate with his wife.
Now comes this statement from the military:
An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.
One has to wonder: Did the military Abu Graib him?
Here's what the New Republic said in its own investigation, which one has to assume is more credible than the Army's:
In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)
Think the military went that far to find the truth? The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, claims that Beauchamp "recanted" his stories on the first day of the "investigation." Columnist Michael Goldfarb writes,
...
the great unanswered question in the affair is this: Did Scott Thomas Beauchamp lie under oath to U.S. Army investigators, or did he lie to his editors at the New Republic? Beauchamp has recanted under oath. Does the New Republic still stand by his stories?
I'm amazed (well, not really) that the Standard could be so willfully naive about this. Does anyone really believe that the military wanted to know the truth about this situation? Or is it entirely likely that they were determined to suppress Beauchamp?
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P.S. Thanks, by the way, to the poster below who brought this to my attention.
