The New Republic has, in essence, defended the personal essay by U.S. soldier Scott Thomas Beauchamp on all grounds save one: That Beauchamp relocated to Iraq an incident in which he participated in Kuwait. In that incident, he supposedly made fun of a horribly burned woman while others laughed along.
It is now looking like that incident was entirely invented, and that The New Republic had reason to know there were problems with its veracity before it published its defense of Beauchamp.
Follow the link for more.
UPDATE: Thoughts on semiotics, from Jeff Goldstein.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Podhoretz, here.
MORE: Now this is news: Beauchamp recants: “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. . . . According to the military source, Beauchamp’s recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military’s investigation.”
STILL MORE: More on Beauchamp here: “So Beauchamp was lying the whole time, and now that he has two entirely different stories, he was either lying to TNR, which probably paid him $50 per article and which can’t put him in prison for lying to them (because he’s not under oath when he’s spouting off to Franklin Foer), or he lied to the Army, which pays his entire salary and can and will put him in jail for quite a while if he lies to them . . . . So guess which one Beauchamp is more likely to have lied to — the people who couldn’t jail him, or the ones who could. And would. That’s about as definitive a refutation as we’ll get in this saga, but it’s a good one.”
Plus, a victory dance from Ace.
And Bill Quick observes: “The biggest mystery to me is why the mainstream media has any credibility left at all. Maybe its users aren’t looking for credibilty any more. Just reinforcement.”
Still more at Cadillac Tight.
Mark Steyn comments: “If that Weekly Standard story is correct, it moves Private Beauchamp into full-blown Stephen Glass territory. In essence, they made the same mistakes all over again – falling for pat cinematic vividness, pseudo-novelistic dialogue, all designed to confirm prejudices so ingrained the editors didn’t even recognize they were being pandered to. But this time they did it in war, which is worse.”