Lies, Damned Lies And TNR
In descending order. Bob Owens has hung on like a bulldog through the Scott Beauchamp ferfluffle and has received official word from the Public Affairs Officer for General David Petraeus. Col. Steven Boylan says, conclusively, that none of the soldiers in Beauchamp's platoon or company have corroborated any detail of the stories published by The New Republic. The Army is officially calling the stories Beauchamp told false. Not unproven, mind you, false. That's pretty strongly worded and, as Bob points out, leaves very little wiggle room for TNR.
Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for U.S. Army Commanding General in Iraq David Petraeus, just emailed me the following in response to my request to confirm an earlier report that the U.S. Army's investigation into the claims made by PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp made in The New Republic had been completed.
He states:
To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?
Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the
command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon and
company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.As to what will happen to him?
Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to
Administrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under
the various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not
releasable to the public by the military on what does or does not
happen.
I saw yesterday that Howard Kurtz, who is usually a bit better than that, fell for the TNR statement that they had verified their stories even though the "disfigured woman" story was - by their own admission - false in a very important detail and false to the entire premise of the article. Beauchamp admitted that the incident (if it happened at all) happened in Kuwait, before Beauchamp had even experienced the war. I was a bit surprised that Kurtz never even questioned the "verification" of a story using completely anonymous sources. That isn't exactly journalism.
Will Beauchamp remain a darling of the truthiness believers? Well sure. Is TNR guilty of perpetrating a fraud on their readers. Well, the Army says so. Given that TNR already has a history of publishing frauds, it is their responsibility to now either produce real proof or to retract the stories, apologize to their readers and take their lumps.
By terrence, Saturday, 4 August , 2007 @ 10:29 am
The Army is obvisously engaged in a Bush-directed cover-up; they must surpress the truth. The American public must be kept in the dark about the evil Bush junta. Just as Bush directed the murder of Pat Tillman, he is trying desparately to cover up the brave, heroic expose that Beauchamp has so wonderfully completed - see him and the Army run for cover under lies and misinformation!
/sarcasm off
Of course, the truthers will continue to accept Beauchamp’s wild eyed story. To them, Bush is evil, the Army is evil.
By Po' Boy, Saturday, 4 August , 2007 @ 11:19 am
Terrance left out Hurricane Katrina and last Wednesday’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis. In those cases Bush was trying to rub out critics of the illegal Iraq War while stealing oil from the people of New Orleans and Minnesota for the sake of Halliburton’s profits. Not to mention covering up the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, as well a Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.
Everything in fact is a devious neocon plot hatched by Karl Rove, VP Cheney and Ken Lay and run from their secret headquarters at Area 51. Call it the 9/11 Truthers’ Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory of Pretty Near Everything.