The Weekly Standard Has No Shame

Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard maintains the fiction that American soldier Scott Thomas Beauchamp is the creation of New Republic editors. Kristol's reasoning is that TNR hates America and the military. This op-ed is shameless in so many ways.

But what is revealing about this mistake is that the editors must have wanted to suspend their disbelief in tales of gross misconduct by American troops. How else could they have published such a farrago of dubious tales?

Spencer Ackerman is a noted TNR basher. He was fired from the magazine. Ackerman writes that Kristol's anti-soldier assertion doesn't pass the laugh test.

Whatever disagreements I've had with Frank (Foer), I know from experience that he does not assign, approve or edit stories to cast aspersions on the military. Even subconsciously, he would not express any eagerness to publish Thomas's story for anything remotely approaching that reason. Kristol is wrapping himself in the mantle of people much braver and nobler than himself (and myself) to disguise his enormous strategic misjudgment. He's crying a river of crocodile tears. And he knows that the motives he's ascribed to TNR's editors are complete bullshit.

Beauchamp is real. He is with the 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division. The Pentagon has taken away his laptop. He is also married to a TNR staffer. All of this can be easily confimed. Which makes this passage in Kristol's op-ed all the more vile.

Since the Nation has held this view of every American war (except when we were fighting side-by-side with Stalin's Soviet Union), and loves nothing more than accounts of American war crimes, its story is no surprise. At least they interviewed real soldiers on the record. The New Republic, in its July 23 issue, takes a different tack. Its slander of American soldiers appears to be fiction presented as fact, behind a convenient screen of anonymity.

Kristol then has the audacity to talk about journalism ethics.

We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD are well aware that editors make mistakes. We have made our share.

The Weekly Standard was so wrong on this story. They never bothered to fact-check the existence of Scott Thomas. They were only interested in discrediting the Thomas Scott articles because it hindered their neoconservative support of the Iraq war. That's all this was ever about.

Meet the TNR Iraq Blogger

It's amazing how much time the Right spent trying to scream that the soldier who wrote under the pseudonym Scott Thomas didn't exist. The Weekly Standard and the National Review lead the charge. It didn't matter that they had no actual evidence or did no responsible investigative reporting. Ideology and pro-Iraq war support came first.

Now Scott Thomas has come forward and revealed his real identity as Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

Will the Weekly Standard and National Review stand by their writing or just pretend that the controversy they started never happened? I'm betting on the latter. Both publications should of had a major editorial review of how they wrote such factually inaccurate articles. Instead, they attack a soldier they claimed never existed here and here. Real classy.

Other lefty bloggers share their thoughts.

"That's just crazy. All these people need to stop," writes Matt Yglesias. "They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense."

The Right bitches about the "liberal media." People would take their complaints more seriously if they didn't have tv and radio host throw on-air temper tamtrums and print journalists that posted corrections. Instead, they have a noise machine.

Shakes makes a great point.

Which is why I think we should hold Foer and TNR to some account. It was obvious how all this would play out. Any of us on the Left who share the stories of antiwar soldiers, or soldiers just telling the ugly truth of war, need to be prepared. Better prepared than that, anyway.

The rightwing noise machine will attack. It's not important if the Right makes a valid point. What they want to make of is that people don't hear the other side make valid points. They want you to believe it's a shiny happy people world.