Remember The New Republic’s faux “Baghdad Diarist”, PFC Scott Beauchamp?
I first blogged about him here:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/the-new-republics-man-in-iraq/
And a wrap up, with a compilation of updates here:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/the-new-republic-closes-the-book-on-beauchamp/
Well, Bob Owens of The Confederate Yankee requested and received copies of sworn statements given by Beauchamp and Soldiers in his unit, to Army investigators.
Documents released by the Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base Florida, in relation to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests files for documents relating to the military investigation into the Scott Thomas Beauchamp “Shock Troops” article in The New Republic magazine.
The following are the never-before published statements of soldiers interviewed in the course of the investigation. Names are redacted per federal privacy laws.
Here are just a few:
These are Beauchamp’s statements:
Note that there’s no hint of remorse for his embarrassing, puerile behavior.
Here are a few from Soldiers in his unit:
To a person, they all refuted Beauchamp’s fabricated wild-assed tales of mass graves, Soldiers prancing around with human skulls on their head, “dog demolition derbys” with Bradleys, and Soldiers insulting a disfigured woman in the mess hall.
The whole thing reeked of bullshit from the get-go. TNR got punked by a problem child,and still won’t apologize to those they slandered. They salivated over another military-bashing smear piece, and it back-fired.
I checked TNR online today. Franklin Foer is still hiding under his desk.