Scott, I’m an asshole lying scumbag piece of shit, Beauchamp offered up the truth to save whatever is left of his slimy little ass.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.
Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:
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.
According to the military source, Beauchamp’s recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military’s investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, “I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.”
The magazine’s editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety–meant to illustrate the “morally and emotionally distorting effects of war”–took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been “melted” by an IED.
No. Fucking. Kidding.
The entire left side of the blogosphere jumped on this little shit kiddies bandwagon when The New
Republic published these obvious wet dreams of the uber liberal psychotics. Forget the fact that most of this waste of skins claims were so out there that anyone with half a neuron in their greasy little noggin would at least pause for a second and think — wtf?
Fake, but accurate. But, in this case, not even close to accurate.
You’d think they would have learned their lesson by now. How many times do you have to be bludgeoned by the clue bat before trying to pass off flat out lies starts to become a bad idea?
Progressive — the new stupid.
Repeat.
So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, “I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.”
And, TNR backed him up. Again.
Every leftie blog was outraged that we dare question this “heroe’s” daring tales from the battlefield. How dare we? We’d all be eating crow by the end of the month. We dared because this was just another example of flat out shit being passed off as the truth — again. By the compassionate denizens the left.
Lies, lies and more lies. How can we not question? There are too many recent examples of this insane behavior. Jesse Macbeth, Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, anyone?
Stephen Glass. Scott Beauchamp. Name to be filled in later.
Bye bye, Frankie Foer.
At Ace’s — BEAUCHAMP RECANTS: SIGNS STATEMENT THAT HE FABRICATED STORIES WITH ONLY “SMIDGEN OF TRUTH”
Go there just for the videos.
There’s a lot more reaction to this out there, but I don’t think they’d like me tracking back with the title of this post.
I have no doubt that the hyper-intelligent idiots who run leftie blogs will try to spin this as some sort of conspiracy between conservative blogs and the military. Their latest bit of genius was to try to find a Rovian explanation as to why a military Public Affairs Officer would actually give information about their investigation to, oh noes — the public.
There’s not enough aluminum foil on the planet to explain this amount of nutbaggery.
When all is said in done, I feel no vindication that we were right — again.
I’m ashamed that there are Americans that wanted this lunatic’s insane fabrications to be true.
*Many thanks to Beth “Gracie” Greem, ROTC for getting the truth out at the expense of his/her job.
Update: An Army Lawyer has a post up on what the Army may do to the little shitmeister.
Allah at Hotair asks whether Beauchamp was just telling investigators what they wanted to hear to avoid punishment.
Here’s the thing, if he was lying, there’s not much that he can be charged with. At most it would be some variant of an Article 92 violation for publication without permission or something similar (presuming such a prohibition existed within his command). At most, that’ll get him 2 years if it’s a general order, more than likely it’d be violation of an “other lawful order” which is 6 months max confinement.
Now some may argue that he’s lying to investigators but he told TNR the truth. Problem there is that the penalties for a False Official Statement are far harsher (7 yrs and a dishonorable discharge). Lying to investigators is often worse than the misconduct itself. So even if Beauchamp IS lying, he sure can’t ever say so while in uniform, as that subjects him to the more serious Article 107 charge.
There’s quite a bit more, but I don’t want to steal his entire post. Go read the rest.
Moosetracked at the Bullwinkle Blog
