I think that the phrase borrowed from commenter at Riehl Word View quite accurately reflects a growing "conventional wisdom" among a peculiar group of bloggers that military and conservative bloggers attempted to claim that "Scott Thomas" didn't actually exist.

"Scott Thomas," of course, was the pseudonym chosen by U.S. Army PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp when he posted a series of three dispatches in the magazine The New Republic.

The most recent post, "Shock Troops," (subscription required) became the focus of Michael Goldfarb on July 18 because of some very strong claims of various kinds of abuse alleged by "Scott Thomas" of himself and other soldiers. These claims are now the subject of investigations by the U.S. Army (real) and the magazine that carried the claims, The New Republic (which critics have dismissed as an attempt at face-saving and job-keeping by the editors, and little more).

Soon afterward, Beauchamp's previous post, "Dead of Night" came under scrutiny, and two claims he made there were conclusively debunked.

Military bloggers began zeroing in on the identity of "Scott Thomas" within days— Marine turned documentary filmmaker JD Johannes had his unit narrowed to the 1-18 Infantry by the following Saturday—forcing Thomas into a position where he felt the need to reveal himself days later.

On the afternoon Beauchamp came forward on July 26, severel prominent bloggers began to compose a narrative every bit as fictional as that of Beauchamp himself, and apparently, for equally dishonorable reasons.

On that afternoon in The Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum seems to have manufactured the controversy:

Conservative sites went crazy. Thomas didn't really exist. His stories were made up. The left hates the troops. Etc. etc.

At Sadly No!, Gavin M. claimed:

1) WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor.

2) WingNet proven wrong.

At alicubog:

ATTENTION COMRADES! Previous meme "Scott Thomas does not exist" is no longer operative. Please to substitute "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a bad man" or "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is Oliver Stone" or "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a semiotic construct" or "We'll get Scott Thomas Beauchamp fired" or whatever damn thing you can think of.

By the next day, Americablog had latched onto this creative fiction as well:

Of course, the right wing blogosphere went nuts, accusing TNR of fabricating a soldier and lying about his experiences. There were repeated attempts to prove that Scott Thomas was a fake.

Even yesterday, at Mercury Rising yesterday, a blogger wrote:

Of course, once they found out about it, all of the Usual Suspects in the conservative’s mighty Wurlitzer - Malkin, Powerline, the whole schmear - set out to prove that “Scott Thomas” didn’t exist and that this was all just liberal lies to smear the armed forces and turn the country against the war. They went berzerk proving to themselves through “semiotic analysis” and other such crapola that this whole thing was just made-up liberal media lies.

And so it is that "this whole thing"—the claim that conservative bloggers said Thomas didn’t exist or wasn’t a soldier—comes squarely back onto the shoulders of liberal bloggers who created the meme themselves.

When pressed to provide a specific quote from any conservative blog stating that Scott Thomas didnÂ’t really exist, was fabricated, or was an imposter, these and other liberal bloggers have utterly failed to do so.

Why they failed should now be obvious: they made up these claims themselves.

Update: A bit dog barks. Gavin M. at Sadly No! (cited above for claiming "WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor") tries to support liberal bloggers' charges that conservative bloggers said Beauchamp didnÂ’t exist, was fabricated, or was an impostor.

How does he mount his brilliant defense?

He cites devastating examples, such as Bryan at Hot Air using scare quotes around the word soldier... Twice. He also highlights a truism observed by Bryan in that post that anyone in the military would be able to tell the difference between a fellow soldier's uniform and that of a civilian contractor.

A great defense mounted so far, but wait, there's more!

Gavin M. blasts Charles at LGF for using the phrase, "purported to be written by a soldier." Charles used the "P" word to describe someone hiding behind a pseudonym? Why, that's the exact same thing as directly calling him an impostor, isn't it folks?

And yet Gavin presumably has a day job that doesn't involve balloon animals.

But hang on, he has more evidence... Ace of Spades also used the damning scare quotes... twice. Gavin's a regular Perry Mason, isn't he?

And the killing blow... before Beauchamp came out, Michelle Malkin, vile, prevaricating Malkin, addressed the liberal blogosphere's greatest unknown soldier as--and watch out for the scare quotes--as "alleged."

Purported and alleged, two bread-and-butter words in any journalist's quiver for when the facts are hazy in the least, have--according to Gavin--become the same as calling him an impostor. Using scare quotes in the same manner is morphed by Gavin into a declarative emphatically stating that he doesn't exist.

That's his case. Really.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:06 PM | Comments (42) | Add Comment
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Christiana Hendrix, wife of Mike Hendrix of Cold Fury, died this weekend in a motorcycle accident. Mike, you and your family have my sincere condolences and prayers in this most tragic of times.

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—

where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;

8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

--Psalm 121: 1-8.

As Glenn notes, "Words are completely inadequate in these situations, but they're also essential."

Please stop by and offer your condolences for the loss Mike and Christiana's family is experiencing, and if you are a religious person, consider offering up a prayer for those who remain behind.

Update: Jeff Goldstein's grandmother passed away today as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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There exists a well-known parable spoken by Jesus in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 7, that uses the example of foolish builders who build houses on the sand, only to watch those houses wash away in the flood because it had weak foundations.

Writing today at The Moderate Voice, Jeb Koogler builds his house upon the sand of noted sockpuppet Glenn Greenwald, questioning the role of al Qaeda in Iraq:

About two weeks, Glenn Greenwald wrote a widely-cited post that questioned the oft-stated notion of a strong al-Qaeda role in the Iraqi insurgency.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term “Al Qaeda” to designate “anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq” is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as “Al Qaeda.”

Greenwald goes on to point out that such statements are misleading, given that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that al-QaedaÂ’s role in Iraq is quite small. Indeed, most studies have found that, rather than a large presence of foreign al-Qaeda fighters, the Iraqi insurgency is largely made up of disaffected Sunnis, Saddam loyalists, and ex-Baathists.

The problem with building his post upon Greenwald's theory is that Greenwald's claim is demonstrably false; a simple review of the MNF-I web site's press releases, feature stories, and daily stories shows conclusively that the military only cites al Qaeda as an actor in a clear minority of cases, typically less than a third of the time, even as surge operations are heavily targeting al Qaeda cells as part of Operation Phantom Thunder.

Perhaps in the future, Koogler should base his posts on a more solid factual foundation and go directly to the source (MNF-I) instead of repeating the already discredited claims of a known partisan dissembler such as Greenwald.

The only think more dangerous than building one's house upon a foundation of sand is building that same house on a foundation of sockpuppets.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:16 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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