Fake, But Accurate
 

zoomie:
"Only thing he's admitted he got wrong was the incident mocking a disfigured woman occurred in Kuwait, not Iraq, but DID occur. All other incidents remain unrefuted."

me:
Patently untrue about the other refuations, and it ignores the larger point that the Kuwait story, assuming it was indeed true, has nothing to do with the "effects of war"

---

duus:
""The claims?" All of them? All the stories were invented from the whole cloth? or some of the claims? Nothing in the stories were true? What kind of quote is that? For example, did Scott Thomas mention in any of his articles that there was a war in Iraq, and are they claiming that that "claim" is false? Or is that not an "allegation?" That statement is nonsense. It's an empty P.R. statement."

Speaking of empty statements, what was TNR statement backing his lies up, then?

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PP:
"What? The Army investigated itself and found nothing wrong? And the military flack whose job it is to go out and tell reporters there's nothing wrong went out and told reporters there's nothing wrong?"

What TNR editors investigated their author [and husband of staff member] and found nothing wrong???

Fake, But Accurate
 

None of this is "fake but accurate," as you said. Which is a nice little recapitulation of the whole episode. Just so long as you can trash the other side, you don't care how you get there.

But thank you for acknowledging, however grudgingly, the weak probative value of the anonymous leak about the Army's putative investigation.

eta: This post by Ezra Klein is dead-on:

• A BIT MORE ON BEAUCHAMP. As I understand the story right now, TNR appears to have verified the overwhelming bulk of his story, while the military says they can't verify it. Given that the incentives for both institutions are to prove exactly what they've proven, I'm not precisely sure who to believe. There are also rumors of a recantation out there, but no such document has actually been obtained, and you'd think that it would be released in some formal manner, rather than leaked to the Weekly Standard's blogger (I do love Brian's title though: "The Weekly Standard Tries Its Hand at Reporting.).
  
  If Beauchamp is indeed a liar, I'll be surprised, but nor particularly concerned. There are, in fact, liars out there. And there are also cruelties in Iraq. The response of the Left on Beauchamp is entirely -- and maybe embarrassingly -- a counter-reaction to the obvious bad faith of his critics.
  
  The Weekly Standard in particular, and war supporters in general, have never struck me as particularly concerned with factual accuracy. The energy the Right has expended on disproving Beauchamp's claims has dwarfed the energy they expended tracking down the hollowness of the lies that took us to war. The anger they've expressed over his misremembering which base he was at when he mocked a disfigured woman is considerable, whereas the anger they expressed when Bush misrepresented our fight in Iraq as primarily against a branch of al Qaeda has been entirely absent. They were willing to destroy this guy, expose his personal life, dig through his poetry, anything to discredit his story. But when the lies were pro-war, they've been exactly as dogged -- see the embarrassing ouvre of Stephen Hayes -- in protecting the falsehoods.
  
  What we have here, at the end of the day, is not an appetite for accuracy or a concern for the truth, but a cynically motivated feeding frenzy meant to discredit an upsetting op-ed. If Beauchamp is a liar -- and I'm not convinced he is -- he should be drummed out of the publishing world. But this selective outrage over untruths and merely occasional thirst for accuracy is quite scary. We're currently embroiled in a war where the lies have killed thousands and thousands of people. But the only falsehoods the Right appears to be concerned about are the personal anecdotes of a young soldier.

I don't really care about Beauchamp, and still haven't read what he wrote. But the reaction of the right-wing nutjobs to his piece is odious.

Fake, But Accurate
 

sunbeltjerrys rejoinder to Ezra in the comments was spot on:

Clearly, you do

then perhaps you should, or otherwise you really should stop defending the lying fuck.

No, what is odious is you defending an article you've never read, "written" by some self-admitted mean-spirited thug, to describe the horror of war he had not ever witnessed, whose only qualification was that he is fucking a senior person at TNR.

Fake, But Accurate
 

His qualification is that -- unlike you and most of the people in a lather attacking him -- he is serving his country by serving in combat in Iraq.

That said, I'm not defending what he wrote. I'm attacking you and a wide variety of right-wing nutjobs.

Fake, But Accurate
 

He purportedly [I saw purportedly because no one has even verified this, save, according to TNR, "one" other source] wrote about something he did prior to ever stepping foot in Iraq.

So basically if I buy a ticket to Iraq for some point in the future, it gives me carte blanche to publish false stories about the military today?

PS - many of the people attacking him are milbloggers, writing from the ground over there - so let's be honest here, shall we?

Fake, But Accurate
 

Yes. He and others mocked a woman who had been burned or scarred, but they did it in Kuwait or Iraq.

I'm not saying that the mistake is OK -- and, really, while it certainly could be a lie, it seems equally likely to me that he recalled that it happened on a military base in the Middle East and got the country wrong, though of course if you start with the assumption that he's lying then it's much easier to conclude that he's lying -- but what you and the right-wing nutjob bloggers are doing goes way beyond making a mountain out of a mole hill. I mean, who cares? I'm not defending the error, but I think the reaction to it is pathological.

He didn't just "buy a ticket." Malkin did that. He enlisted and his serving his country there.

Some of those attacking his attackers have served, too, so let's just stop pretending that the right wing has some sort of special credibility or claim to communion with the experiences of soldiers and Marines on the groud in Iraq. That fact that Beauchamp's piece attacks that pretense is probably what agitates the right wing so much.

Fake, But Accurate
 

not to interrupt, but it seems like there is this big gap in your argument whenever you say this, like since implicit in his stories is the point that those "serving our country there" are doing horrible things, it seems odd that you think "serving our ountry over there" puts him on a pedestal relative to this discussion.

Fake, But Accurate
 

It doesn't put him on a pedestal, but it qualifies him to talk about what's going on there, unlike Michelle Malkin, Captain Ed, and the other wingnuts of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

Fake, But Accurate
 

No. It qualifies him to perhaps write a report from the standpoint of a soldier, but that only gives him standing to be the one tlling the truth............or lying.

Fake, But Accurate
 

I don't understand why you think we're disagreeing. Of course he may be lying.

I re-post this comment by "roger" because something of its tone will appeal to sebby:

• By this point, Beauchamp has become a meta-issue, and the question really is: how is it that, on the same week that Oxfam issues the most scathing look at the effect of the occupation since the Lancet report, both the liberal bloggers and the conservative bloggers ignore it completely to talk about what Rush Limbaugh would call "fraternity pranks"? I think it is one of the great reasons that liberal interventionism is fucked from the very beginning. If an 'empire' like the U.S. can be so grossly and systematically inattentive to the effects of its interventions, and tends to follow Paris Hiltonish/Beauchamp mini-scandals to the exclusion of all else, then this empire could never, in a million years, be relied upon for liberal intervention. It be like relying on pre-schoolers for heart surgery. I think we can all agree that Americans are the dumbest, smuggest, shallowest, morally challenged, naive, goofy and psychopathic people on the face of the earth; that they exist in such a bubble of attention deficit disorder and irrationality that it is a miracle that they have survived; and that, luckily, their the leadership is doing the world a favor by outsourcing their jobs and plunging them into such mindless debt that the country is bound for a future as a world historical grease spot and a footnote much sooner than anybody thought. Perhaps the accumulation of all this prosperity - through slaveholding, the theft of Indian lands synchronized with the massmurder, of the Indians, loose bankruptcy laws to bilk nineteenth century investors, sharp practices and shoddy manufactured goods - has simply led to a general social amorality and an ethos of boredom and illiteracy, instead of creating a New Jerusalem on the hill. It is more like a brothel run by Tinker Bell.

I assume you posted this DU-ish claptrap for our amusement. Unlike some leftist nonsense, this one was so over the top, it actually made me laugh.

One: This guy loses all respect immediately for referring to the fully debunked Lancet report - but whatever.

Two: His point about us being preoccupied with Paris, etc, is noted, but is he really suggesting this star-fucking is restricted to the USA? England, Germany and Italy are just as, if not more, preoccupied with scandal rags than we are.

Three: He refers to Americans as "the dumbest, smuggest, shallowest, morally challenged, naive, goofy and psychopathic people on the face of the earth". I laugh aloud, note our GNP, and the fact that everyone in the waking world would prefer to live here, even though they feel compelled to bitch about us.

Four: This quote is the best:

"Perhaps the accumulation of all this prosperity - through slaveholding, the theft of Indian lands synchronized with the massmurder, of the Indians, loose bankruptcy laws to bilk nineteenth century investors, sharp practices and shoddy manufactured goods - has simply led to a general social amorality and an ethos of boredom and illiteracy, instead of creating a New Jerusalem on the hill. It is more like a brothel run by Tinker Bell."

Oddly enough, it was really the "enlightened" English and Dutch who started these practices. We seem to be okay, but look at them. But hey, that's not fair - they're Euro.

Roger sounds like a 19 year old Cal student.

2

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Boo