July 31, 2007

Sanchez on Beauchamp

... from FOB Falcon itself.

A taste:


"Record Media Attention"

New York Times, O'Reilly Factor, ABC, CNN, Hot Air, in the past two weeks, Major Luedeke has dealt with more media inquiries over the Beauchamp controversy than any other subject in his entire career.

After several terse conversations, it was obvious soldiers at FOB Falcon took the events described in The New Republic very seriously. What was not so obvious was how seriously The New Republic editorial staff treated the matter. If the investigation proves the "Baghdad Diarist" stories to be false, what will The New Republic do? Will they retract the story? Will they reveal the process they used to vet the original information? Every soldier I spoke to realizes he or she is accountable for what is said and done while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Careers can be ruined because of scandals like the "Baghdad Diarist."

Getting a Fair Shake

"The Army works hard to get the soldier's story out to the media, unfortunately the media only wants to hear about bad things," said several soldiers who did not want to be identified. Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp is currently on FOB Falcon, but unavailable for comment. Once the official investigation started, the key issue was to protect the soldier's rights. Needless to say, The New Republic has no such responsibility.

I'll have a bit more to say about the subject--specifically, the dishonesty of some of those blogging about the unfolding Beauchchamp/New Republic scandal--in the very near future.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:46 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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July 27, 2007

Scott Beauchamp's Problems Are Just Beginning

In addition to his short-lived career as a probable fabulist in The New Republic, Scott Thomas Beauchamp's blog has turned up a self-incriminating clear violation of operational security:


Another long day...cleaning an M16, landscaping, dipping Pro Masks (gas masks to civilians) into strange concotions, a little bit of office work...basically a hodpodge of menially tasks to keep me busy.
We finally got official dates on Iraq deployment:
May 15 - Our Bradleys get shipped to Kuwaite
June 11- Advanced Units move in
June 28 - Bravo Team, second squad, first platoon, Alpha Company, first battalion, 18th brigade, first infantry division (the breakdown of who I belong to) deploys.
Were probably going to sit in Kuwaite for some unknown amount of time, and then move into Baghdad...

That post is over a year old and was obsoleted be a changed deployment schedule, but the facts are clear: Beauchamp clearly violated operational security regulations by posting the deployment schedule for his unit to his blog.

Major Kirk Luedeke, PAO for 4th IBCT, 1st ID at FOB Falcon, stated in response to my inquiry about this blog entry:


It most certainly is an OPSEC violation.

What the U.S. Army decides to do about this operational security violation will probably be kept under wraps until their investigation is complete, but I would not be surprised if Beauchamp soon finds himself charged with UCMJ violations.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:51 AM | Comments (144) | Add Comment
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July 26, 2007

Scott Thomas Comes Forward... And Answers Precisely Nothing

The New Republic blog The Plank is featuring an entry from disputed diarist Scott Thomas, who has now come forward as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and now the fun truly begins.

There are two parts to this entry: a preface from "the editors," and then a statement by Beauchamp himself. I'll now discuss each at length, and in turn. more...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:44 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment
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July 25, 2007

House of Glass

Incredible Claims
It was precisely one week ago yesterday that Michael Goldfarb focused the blogosphere on the third in a series of dispatches from a U.S. Army soldier in Iraq, posting under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" in the magazine, The New Republic.

The name of third dispatch was "Shock Troops," (subscription apparently no longer required). In it, Thomas showed a callous and shocking disregard for a series of brutalities. These included a vicious verbal assault on a woman for disfiguring facial injuries she sustained as the result of an explosion of an improvised explosive device, or IED. This assault allegedly occurred in the dining facility at Forward Operating Base Falcon.

Thomas maintains that during the construction of a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, soldiers constructing the outpost uncovered the bones of children, and a fellow soldier wore part of a skull he found that "...even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt," on top of his head for the rest of the day and night, and even wore it under his helmet. Thomas further claims that:


No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The third story Thomas relays in "Shock Troops" was of a sadistic Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) driver who liked:


...to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs.

In his blog entry entitled "Fact or Fiction?," Goldfarb, asked the milblogging (military blogging) community to investigate the veracity of Thomas claims.

Doubters—including active duty U.S. Army soldiers currently or formerly posted at FOB Falcon and nearby areas—immediately began to deconstruct and dismiss Thomas' claims as probable works of fiction.

Soldiers stationed at FOB Falcon in the recent past and present deny ever seeing a burned woman such as Thomas described as being on the base. To date there has been no corroboration that a wounded woman matching this description has ever been at FOB Falcon.

Other soldiers have cost doubts on whether there was ever a grave full of children's remains uncovered while constructing a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, though others find it plausible that an unmarked cemetery—apparently not all that uncommon in the area—may have been found and moved. Regardless of whether or not a cemetery may have been uncovered, other soldiers flatly deny that the close-fitting modern Army helmet has enough room for anything other than the wearer's own skull.

Soldiers and military vehicle specialists intimately familiar with Bradley IFVs have flatly stated that these vehicles cannot be driven as described in Thomas' account due to their construction and the limitations of the laws of physics.

In all three examples cited by Thomas in this third dispatch, the behavior of the actors and the apathy displayed by apparently dozens of soldiers during each atrocity has been heavily criticized by military veterans who flatly deny that such events could take place in a military culture where such inaction can be a criminal offense for those who refuse to report it or intervene.

Absolutely Fabulist
Elements of Thomas' two previous dispatches have also come under fire for being very unlikely.

In "War Bonds" (subscription required), Thomas claims that:


In Baghdad, a busted infrastructure has left entire neighborhoods navigable by vehicle only. The sector we soldiers patrol is known unaffectionately as "Little Venice" because of the dark brown rivers of sewage that backwash from broken pipes. The biggest fear in these parts isn't sniper fire or IEDs, but a flat tire that forces you to wade through the reeking fluids.

The brief amount of information allowed outside the New Republic subscriber firewall neglects to mention the specific kind of vehicle in question, but as only wheeled vehicles have tires, the description weeds out both Bradley IFVs and M1 Abrams tanks. That leaves us with HMMWVs (Humvees) and eight-wheeled Stryker Infantry Combat Vehicles (ICVs) as the two most-common wheeled vehicles used on patrols. Both of these vehicles classes are equipped with run-flat tires designed to go for miles before needing to be changed. That intentional design detail engendered into both vehicles would make changing a tire in a river of "reeking fluids" a very unlikely event.

Sandwiched between these two increasingly suspect stories was Thomas' second dispatch, one that I think should have sent up a red flag to the editors of The New Republic.

In "Dead of Night," (subscription required), Thomas made an embarrassing gaffe, followed by a potentially defamatory charge:


Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belongs to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of modern firearms knows that no pistol, rifle, submachine gun, or machine gun deployed in the world today uses ammunition "with a square back," in 9mm Parabellum, or in any other caliber. For feeding reliability, all currently used ammunition has tubular cases with a round rim. But past this wildly inaccurate of description of the recovered casing , Thomas went on to defame the Iraqi police, inaccurately stating as fact that, "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

That statement is so astoundingly incorrect as to be laughable. While Glocks are carried by many Iraqi police officers, Glocks are among the most common handguns in Iraq, easily found and purchased, and carried by those on each side of the conflict and Iraqi civilians alike.

A Pattern of Failed Editorial Oversight
All three stories sent to The New Republic by the soldier writing under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas" has elements that may have been worth questioning by an alert editor.

I honestly doubt that most editors would have known that many American wheeled combat vehicles have run flat tires, and so I can readily forgive them for not making that particular catch. I'm still left to wonder, however, if having a sharp editor with a military background might have been able to deflate Thomas as a fabulist in advance of the publication of his very first post.

But even without a military background, I'd expect for most editors to recognize the red flag present in his second post--when he makes the claim of a "square back" cartridge casing--just from watching the occasional episode of CSI. I'd also expect them to make at least a cursory attempt to check Thomas' inflammatory claim only the Iraqi police carry Glocks, and recognize all the political undertones that such a loaded charge implies.

It would have taken very little effort—no more than several minutes on Google with any variation of "iraq" and "glock" as the search terms—to note that these pistols are very popular and quite common in Iraq, being coveted by soldiers, police, militiamen, insurgents, criminal gangs, contractors, and civilians alike. These few brief moments un-taken would have shown Thomas' claim and implication to be flatly wrong.

The editors at The New Republic did not bother to take that time.

TNR editors apparently did not bother to challenge Thomas to provide support for the verbal assault he claims to have committed again a disfigured woman on FOB Falcon. There is no indication that they ever made the attempt to contact the Public Affairs Officer at FOB Falcon to see if such a woman even existed, even though I've found in my experience PAOs are typically far more likely to respond to requests from journalists—and even bloggers—in a more timely manner than would an infantry soldier on extended patrols.

TNR editors apparently failed to ask the common sense questions about the desecrated bodies claim. Why would any soldier subject himself to wearing a section of a human skull covered with rotting flesh both day and night? Even if the audience did find it uproariously funny, what sight gag remains entertaining for hour after hour? Why would any group, no matter how jaded, be "folding in half with laughter" at the sight of a man parading around wearing a portion of child's rotting skull as a cap? Could a soldier even get a piece of skull into an Army helmet and wear it?

There is no evidence that TNR saw fit to question any of this story at all.

Likewise, either through carelessness or laziness, Franklin Foer and his editorial staff never apparently made the common-sense connection that Bradley drivers do not have the latitude to joyride alone through the streets of Iraqi towns, randomly and sadistically destroying infrastructure, buildings, and stalls in crowded markets, while swerving recklessly to attack dogs. The unlikelihood of this story being true, again, apparently went unchallenged until after publication.

Picking Up The Pieces at The New Republic
So what becomes of Franklin Foer and the now twice-fooled New Republic? We'll know soon enough if there are any jobs lost as a result of this scandal, but I would opine that if dismissals do result, there is certainly enough justification for them.

One thing I would hope that TNR and other news organizations might now consider is hiring military veterans to vet stories coming out of combat zones for obvious inconsistencies. It would, at the very least, provide a more contextual, experienced layer of fact-checking to flag stories that may not be accurate.

And What of Scott Thomas?
The New Republic has an interesting decision to make regarding Scott Thomas. While I'd generally consider advising against "outing" lairs hidden by pseudonyms, Thomas apparently created stories that were little more than defamous fiction.

They owe Scott Thomas nothing for his treacherous deceit of both TNR and the U.S. Army. Publicly publishing who he is—or at least communicating his name to his commanders—might be the first step in recovering from this debacle.

It's time to pay the piper. I wonder how many people will share paying the bill.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:29 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
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July 24, 2007

Two Simple Questions for Franklin Foer

Yesterday, after days of withering criticism by named military officers, well-recognized combat journalists, and anonymous soldiers over the claims made by pseudonym-hidden "Scott Thomas," I suggested that the New Republic boil down their investigation to answering two simple questions:

  • When did the verbal assault take place on the badly-burned woman at FOB Falcon?
  • What was the name and location of the combat outpost where a mass grave was discovered?

This are eminently reasonable questions to ask at this time and I think most would agree that these questions should have been asked by Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, well before Thomas' claims were published in the first place.

The New Republic has had six days to investigate Thomas' disputed claims. I think the time has come for Franklin Foer to provide detailed answers.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:29 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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July 23, 2007

Near Certainty

For his sake, I hope that Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, is merely suffering from unfortunate phrasing:


The magazine granted anonymity to the writer to keep him from being punished by his military superiors and to allow him to write candidly, Mr. Foer said. He said that he had met the writer and that he knows with “near certainty” that he is, in fact, a soldier.

Considering the explosive allegations made in Thomas' claims against both American soldiers and the Iraqi Police, Foer meant "absolute certainty," didn't he?

(h/t reader AMac)

Update: Yes, he did.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:12 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Doubting Thomas: Simple Questions for the New Republic

As time wears on, it seems increasingly unlikely that the writings of the pseudonym-shielded soldier "Scott Thomas" in the New Republic are anything other than works of macabre creative fiction.

"Thomas" has written three "dispatches" for the New Republic thus far, but once the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb began questioning the veracity of claims made in Thomas' third story, experienced military veterans and observers in the blogosphere who read the account began to doubt that these claims took place.

In his third dispatch, Thomas claimed that he and another soldier openly, verbally assaulted the appearance of a severely burned woman who had survived a prior attack by an improvised explosive device, or IED. The alleged attack took place at the dining facility of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon.

Presumably, this episode was meant to show the brutality and inhumanity of soldiers thoroughly desensitized to basic human decency and dignity because of the on-going violence of the Iraq War.

It is perhaps a "larger truth" that war does horrible things to the psyche of those who experience it. That some do and say horrible things as a direct or indirect result of their experiences during such turbulent circumstances, and sometimes for years afterward, is beyond dispute.

But though strong adverse reactions may indeed be true for some veterans who experience such brutality, it is by no means true for all.

It is also equally true that there seems to be very little concrete support for this specific allegation, and significant anecdotal evidence against it.

Major Kirk Luedeke, the Public Affairs Officer at FOB Falcon, categorically denies the presence of a woman with these unmistakable severe burns at the base. Another man who claims to be a soldier currently deployed to FOB Falcon states that:


In the 11 months I've been here I've never once seen a female contractor with a burned face. In a compact place like this with only one mess hall I or one of my guys would certainly have noticed someone like that. There are a few female contractors, I think maybe a dozen, but none fit the horrific description given in that article. Further, I've personally seen guys threatened with severe physical harm for making jokes of any kind about IED victims given the number of casualties all the units on this FOB have sustained. It is not a subject we take lightly.

Another claims:


I was based at Falcon last year for six months with the 101st Airborne. I never saw a woman who fits Thomas's description. That's not conclusive since I haven't been there for almost eight months.

Another soldier (an officer whose ID I have positively identified but whose name I do not have permission to publish) who has been at FOB Falcon since March describes the claims of Thomas as "total nonsense."

The New Republic must establish the following if they intend to continue claiming that this story of abuse by Thomas is true.

They must produce the year, month, and week that this attack took place, and make this time public knowledge.

If the New Republic cannot or will not release the time-frame during which the claimed assault took place, then there is no way for the military and agencies employing contractors at FOB Falcon to check their logs to prove or disprove the existence of a severely wounded soldier or contractor matching the description provided by Thomas.

The only reason for the New Republic not to release this information is to cover up the distinct possibility that Thomas' claims is false.

If the New Republic wants its readers to believe it is operating honestly and ethically, they cannot refuse to release the date of the alleged assault as precisely and as soon as possible.

Tuesday, July 24, while an arbitrary date, is a reasonable release date for this information, as the New Republic claims to have been investigating the claims made by Thomas for nearly a week, and they should have already acquired this information prior to the story's publication.

Another claim made by Thomas in his third dispatch to the New Republic is that his unit, while spending several weeks building a combat outpost southwest of Baghdad, uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of children, presumably from the time of Saddam Hussein's reign. Thomas then claims that an extended desecration of the bodies was perpetrated by a fellow soldier, without fellow soldiers, more senior enlisted men, of officers stepping in.

Returning once again to the blog of combat correspondent Matt Sanchez, we encounter the claim from FOB Falcon PAO Major Luedeke there were no mass graves uncovered during the construction of any combat outposts in the Rashid District, at any time.

This strong refutation is a definitive statement by a U.S. Army soldier, for the public record.

If the New Republic wishes to continue to stand behind this Thomas claim, they have no choice but to publicly publish the name and location of the combat outpost where the mass grave is supposed to exist.

I am fairly certain that if the New Republic were to make this information available, that the United States military would be very interested in exhuming those who fell at Saddam's brutal hands so that they could be given a proper, dignified burial. Further, I'm reasonably confident that the military would allow the media to document the exhumation and reburial... if such a mass grave exists.

Once again, the only plausible reason for the New Republic to not release the name of the combat outpost and the location of the mass grave in question, is to obfuscate whether or not Thomas is providing the New Republic with an accurate account, or a clever work of fiction.

As the New Republic should probably have already obtained the name of the base and the location of the alleged mass grave prior to publication, and would certainly ask for this information during the course of their investigation into Thomas' claims, a Tuesday, July 24 deadline to publish this information seems quite reasonable.

In my mind, Thomas' third claim, that a private took great joy in smashing a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) through curbs, concrete barriers, and market stalls, along with using the vehicle to deftly attack and kill dogs with the vehicle's tracks, is too absurd to even need further refutation.

While apparently a claim that the New Republic was willing to publish based upon Thomas' credibility, it ignores the fact that Bradley drivers are not left unattended to use their vehicles as destructive playthings as they see fit. A driver follows the orders of his vehicle commander, who must protect the lives of his crew and the soldiers in the fire team the IFV carries. Further, Bradley IFVs rarely, if ever, operate alone.

Bradleys typically operate in the support of larger American formations involving other Bradley IFVs, American Abrams tanks, Stryker armored vehicles, Humvees, other medium and heavy trucks, and squads, platoons, and companies of soldiers.

For Thomas' claims to be true regarding this driver, it would probably require that dozens of soldiers and their commanders repeatedly allow their lives to be needlessly risked and their mission subverted, so that one sadistic, destructive driver could attempt canine homicide.

Thomas' story would also require that the driver and vehicle perform at or beyond a Bradley IFV's upper limits of performance, stealth, vision, maneuverability, and structural strengths.

There is no evidence that the New Republic can produce to substantiate this claimed series of atrocities short of unedited videotaped footage showing the vehicle and driver performing these incredible acts.

And so we we are left asking the New Republic to answer two very basic, very simple questions that any journalism student should have been able to answer before publishing a similar story:

  • When did the verbal assault take place on the badly-burned woman at FOB Falcon?
  • What was the name and location of the combat outpost where a mass grave was discovered?

If the New Republic cannot or will not specifically answer these quite reasonable and very basic journalistic questions, then we will be forced to ask the magazine's senior editors and its publisher far more probing questions in the near future.

Update: Via Sitemeter, I noticed three different visitors from the New Republic dropped by early this afternoon in the span of half an hour. Obviously, they got the message, and it only remains to be seen whether or not they will provide a response.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:50 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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July 20, 2007

The Previous Libel of the New Republic's Scott Thomas

Michael Goldfarb, who been leading the charge against suspicious and apparently false reporting by the New Republic's "Scott Thomas," posts some interesting content from a previous Thomas story:


Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Many people have keyed in on the fact that no Glock pistol (or any modern mass-produced commercial or military firearm, for that matter) has ever fired a 9mm cartridge that had a square case rim as "Thomas" so poorlyand inaccurately wrote here. What Thomas was ineptly trying to describe is that the striker of Glock pistols can leaved a squared mark on the primer of a fired shell, as opposed to the more common rounded edges of marks of firing pins of most other pistols.

But far more damning than Thomas' incompetence is the demonstrably false assertion he made that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police."

Glock pistols have been on the commercial market for decades, and are quite common worldwide. Glocks are a common and favored handgun on the Iraqi black market:


Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa, showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900. Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

There are literally dozens of stories of Glock pistols being recovered from insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen. They have been captured in cordon-and-search operations, in targeted raids, in weapons caches, and of course, from the dead and wounded in violent confrontations.

American soldiers have them, as do civilian contractors from many nations in many lines of work. Ordinary Iraqi civilans (men and women) buy them to protect their families as well. Glock are quite likely the most ubiquious handgun in Iraq, carried officially or unofficially by those on all sides, and those on no side at all.

For "Scott Thomas" to claim that "the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police" is laughable, and coming from someone who claims to be a United State soldier in Iraq who would certainly know that to be a false statement, is perhaps as clear an audacious a display of willfully libeling the Iraqi police as has been written in the American media.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:00 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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A Matter of Lessening Credibility

I just sent the following to letters@tnr.com:


Dear The New Republic,

I just finished re-reading the claims made in Shock Troops, an article by "Scott Thomas" in The New Republic containing very inflammatory, very hard to believe claims.

TNR states that Thomas is a pseudonym for someone that claims to be a soldier operating in Iraq.

An active duty officer currently serving at Camp Falcon considers the Thomas stories "absolute nonsense." Highly-respected Iraq War combat journalist Michael Yon, who has embedded with the 1-4 Cav stationed at Camp Falcon, emailed me a while ago to state that the story "sounds like complete garbage."

But perhaps more problematic for TNR are the biological, medical, and forensic improbabilities--and what some experts consider absolute mechanical impossibilities--of the stories told by this author. I am forced to conclude that the claims made by "Scott Thomas" are either gross exaggerations or outright lies that TNR editors could have easily verified before publishing this inflammatory article if they were interested in publishing an account that meets assumed journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness, and editorial integrity.

Did New Republic editors ask for credible documentation from "Scott Thomas" to prove his identity as a present duty soldier or as a discharged veteran? If so, did they receive such documentation, and did New Republic editors make an attempt to verify the accuracy of that documentation? Considering not dissimilar and thoroughly debunked claims by fake Ranger and former member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Jesse MacBeth, this would be the only prudent first reaction upon reading such dramatic claims as those made by Thomas, especially considering TNR's own Stephen Glass problem.

Did it ever cross the minds of New Republic editors to determine the approximate date that the burned woman in the dining facility was verbally brutalized by Thomas? Did it ever occur to the New Republic to check with the military to see if such a person existed at that base, at that time, or ever?

Did the New Republic ask for verification of the mass grave discovered at the site of a combat outpost south of Baghdad, to see if the story was even possible? Did it not seem unlikely to NR editors from even the fictional television forensic dramas such as CSI, that Saddam-era mass graves would contain extremely decomposed bodies, not those like the author claimed were still rotting?

Did it ever occur to any New Republic editor to contact someone who is an expert on Bradley IFVs--say, the companies who build them, the soldiers that drive and them, etc--to see if Thomas claims of being able to attack dogs and structures in such a manner are even technically possible? Former Bradley drivers and other tracked vehicle personnel have all stated Thomas' claims verge from improbable to impossible.

But beyond merely fact-checking Thomas' series of suspicious and unlikely claims, where was an opposing viewpoint? Where is even the appearance of journalistic objectivity in this article?

To borrow a phrase from another periodical with apparently similar standards, "enquiring minds want to know."

Update: Does anyone know Richard Peters? Stationed at Camp Falcon from "15 Nov 05 - 18 Nov 06," I'd be willing to bet that if Iraq Veterans Against the War Member Peters has heard or witnessed the stories told by Thomas, then he'd probably be more than willing to share or confirm them.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:09 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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July 18, 2007

A Series of Highly Incredible Events

Has the greed of the New Republic for stories depicting our nation's soldiers as depraved barbarians led to a downfall of what little credibility the rag still maintained?

Writing today at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb thinks he smells a rat in the writing of a man who claims to be a soldier currently serving in Iraq, discussing a series of brutal allegations concerning the alleged verbal abuse of a burn victim, the wearing of child's skull, and a dog-murdering Bradley IFV driver.

Let's look at few problems with each of the claims of "Scott Thomas," the pseudonym of man who authored the New Republic article.

The burn victim story.
First, it is all but impossible for a U.S. soldier not to be able to determine the uniform differences between an active-duty soldier's unifrom and a civilian contractor's apparel. Second, it is highly unlikely that a person as horribly burned as the one described would be medically fit for active duty. Third, if two soldiers began taunting a wounded IED survivor, I think it quite likely that other soldiers would quickly and violently end their display.

The child's skull story.
First, it is biologically improbable that a piece of a child's skull would fit on an adult human's head. Second, it biologically improbable that a Saddam-era mass grave in a hot desert country like Iraq would contain flesh that was still rotting. Third, it is highly unlikely that any military unit would stand for such behavior.

The dog-murdering Bradley IFV driver.
The most preposterous story of all. IFV drivers don't run willy-nilly around and over everything in their path, and have to answer to his own vehicle commander, the rest of the crew, and any infantrymen carried by the vehicle if they make erratic, dangerous, and perhaps life-threatening decisions such as those claimed here. There is also the fact that Bradley's cannot slip up on a dog and run him over as claimed, and I find it highly unlikely that this Bradley is so nimble that the driver could repeatedly hit, wound and kill dogs, or that he would be allowed to repeatedly hit stationary objects, without being removed from his position by his immediate commander, his platoon commander, his company commander, or others.

I think it is highly probable that each of these stories is false, and will be very interested to see if the New Republic can in anyway support these outlandish claims.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:35 PM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
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