The Meaning of Scott Thomas

Kevin Drum writes:

Like a Kabuki story, though, you can already see how this is going to play out. Not only will Thomas's character be dragged savagely through the mud (Michelle Malkin is leading the charge over at her site), but eventually some small part of Thomas's account will turn out to be slightly exaggerated and the right will erupt in righteous fervor. They were right all along! Thomas did make up his stories! The left does hate the troops! The war is going swimmingly! At least, it would be if the MSM weren't undermining it at every turn.

But it's worse than that, eh. People want to know what's happening on the ground in Iraq. And every day, you have official sources willing to tell you that things are improving, everyone's hopeful, the troops want to win, Go Army!, why do you hate America?, support the mission, etc. Meanwhile, Iraq is actually way too dangerous for even a very enterprising western reporter to just kind of wander around the country observing things and reporting them independently. For certain kinds of information, one needs to be able to rely on the statements of people in the military.

What the right is trying to do is establish a precedent where if you say things the right doesn't want to hear anonymously then you'll be treated with a presumption of guilt. No matter how vindicated the article may be, it's still the case that TNR expended a lot of person-hours on re-verifying things even though nobody on the right raised any serious reason to doubt the story other than that it wasn't something they wanted to believe. It's extremely difficult to operate that way, and people won't want to. But suppose you do identify yourself. Then you get the full Michelle Malkin treatment -- character slimed, all kinds of personal details splayed across the internet, don't say you weren't warned. Thus, we'll have all our information coming from official sources, just as the right likes it (until, of course, there's a Democratic administration).

Comments

Glad to hear you are interested in what's actually happening in Iraq, Matt. It's a little rich though that lefties on here question Gen. Petraeus's credibility because he agreed to be interviewed by a blogger who once interviewed you, but heaven forbid anyone question any of Pvt. Beauchamp's statements. How long until Jack Kelly is pilloried for catching a lie on Beauchamp's blog (Pvt. Beauchamp: In Big Trouble Either Way)?

Posted by Fred | July 27, 2007 9:48 AM

While it's true that the right is able to demonize anybody like Beauchamp who tells stories they don't like, the overarching fact is that people already hate the war and realize it's a fiasco. It took them longer than it should have to get to that conclusion, but they got there, and there's no going back. Malkin et al are fighting winning tactical battles as part of a catastrophically losing strategy of defending a hugely unpopular war.

The main long-term effect of shutting out dissenting voices is to torpedo your own credibility. Right wing authoritarians are having to relearn that basic lesson.

Posted by jimBOB | July 27, 2007 9:57 AM

Main Post:

some small part of Thomas's account will turn out to be slightly exaggerated and the right will erupt in righteous fervor.

Fred:

catching a lie on Beauchamp's blog (Pvt. Beauchamp: In Big Trouble Either Way)?

Fred, thanks for giving us a real-time demonstration of what the main post predicted. I know self-reflection isn't something you guys appreciate, but sometimes it'll help you look like less of a bozo.

Posted by jimBOB | July 27, 2007 10:03 AM

One might add that, when those official stories are proven to have been mistruths, such as the now second imploded Pat Tillman death story this week, the same bloggers will never hold the government to the same standard they hold a private soldier.

Posted by BruceR | July 27, 2007 10:04 AM

Fred: Petraeus was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, who isn't a blogger. And besides that, Glenn Greenwald posted a link to an editorial he wrote in 2004, two months before the election, in which he spouted all the usual wingnut platitudes about training the troops and standing down when they stand up, which we now know was just, well... BS. It was exactly what the right needed before the election.

I don't doubt Petraeus' skill and intelligence, but he's letting himself get used. And unlike Beauchamp, he is, you know, a General and has influence. He is infinitely more important than Beauchamp in all of this and as such deserves any and all scrutiny he gets. Doing otherwise would be downright un-American.

Posted by Joshua | July 27, 2007 10:07 AM

"the same bloggers will never hold the government to the same standard they hold a private soldier"

Have any of those "same bloggers" defended the Army's initial false stories about Tillman?

Posted by Fred | July 27, 2007 10:08 AM

Have any of those "same bloggers" defended the Army's initial false stories about Tillman?

How do you spell "WMD"?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 27, 2007 10:12 AM

Joshua,

1) Hugh Hewitt is a blogger, as two seconds on Google confirmed. Here's his blog, which coincidentally, has a post about Beauchamp -- who, it turns out, is married to a TNR staffer.

2) Beauchamp, with his TNR platform, obviously has influence -- otherwise Matt and others wouldn't even be posting about him.

3) If you're right and Petraeus is a partisan hack, why was he confirmed unanimously by the Senate for his current command? There wasn't one Democratic Senator who shared your concerns?

Posted by Fred | July 27, 2007 10:18 AM

why was he confirmed unanimously by the Senate for his current command?

because the Right Wing Noise Machine TM would have treated any dissenting vote as proof for the treasonous, defeatist nature of the Democrats and in the current climate of madness this would have hurt the dissenter's electability - but you know that

Posted by novakant | July 27, 2007 10:25 AM

Matt and others wouldn't even be posting about him

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Matt has not posted a single thing about "Scott Thomas" since this week (according to Google, YMMV).

This is, like most phony controversies, an exclusively right-wing manic obsession they've worked themselves into a frenzy over, being the emotional midgets that they are.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 10:26 AM

Substitute "until this week" for "since this week."

That is all.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 10:27 AM

Isn't there a pattern here of Republicans "outing" or "Valerie Plaming" progressive media speakers who appear to be making searing but credible criticisms of the Administration's Iraq War policy? Then, they succeed in silencing those legitimate critics. Amazing how they can get away with it time after time.

Posted by Lisa | July 27, 2007 10:30 AM

Amazing how they can get away with it time after time.

Lisa, it's a witch hunt. It's what they do. It's what they're good at.

That they appropach every problem by resorting to a witch hunt and that they succeed in doing so isn't surprising. They're just focusing on their core competencies.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 10:34 AM

"But it's worse than that, eh. People want to know what's happening on the ground in Iraq."

Try reading Michael Totten's blog or Michael Yon's because, you know, they are in Iraq embedded and reporting.

http://michaeltotten.com/

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Posted by Dave | July 27, 2007 10:42 AM

Dave, there has, to my knowledge, not been an unhinged obsession with Michael Totten and Michael Yon in the lefty blogosphere as there was regarding Scott Thomas in the righty blogosphere. It's only the right that's having trouble fighting back their tears regarding how their precious sensitivies are being hurt by Scott Thomas's writings. There's no such similar objection to Yon and Totten on the left who, as far as I know, they are well aware of.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 10:46 AM

Fred: Calling Hugh Hewitt a "blogger", as you did, is like calling, say, Mark Cuban a "blogger". Hugh Hewitt has a fairly popular radio show which he spews right-wing talking points all day and attacks phony liberal strawmen he sets up. That is the guy Petraeus granted an interview with. This is not a case of, say, John Bolton getting interviewed by Atlas Juggs. If Petraeus was interviewed on Jeanne Garafolo's show (if it still exists...) what would you say?

As for why he was confirmed unanimously, see what novakant wrote. It really wasn't an option.

As for Beauchamp... maybe I omitted a couple of words, but any influence he has pales next to Petraeus. I can't even believe I had to write the last sentence, but there you go.

Posted by Joshua | July 27, 2007 10:49 AM

I now know for sure that conservatives are being dishonest about Scott Thomas. The quotes coming from his blog are hardly representative. Conservatives know they can get away with misrepresenting Thomas as a shrill leftist, because who's going to actually read through his blog? Well, I did. This from Kurtz's article: 'Beauchamp said last year that each morning he feels "retarded for joining the army," "a little more liberal than the day before" and "a tool for global corporations."' Yes, he did write these things. But this comes from a poem that is far more ambiguous. He's listing how he feels each morning, and we're not meant to actually think he's a tool for global corporations or retarded for joining the army; the narrator is unreliable.

And, yes Fred, Jack Kelly is a scumbag for presenting this as a lie: "In a blog entry for May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp describes an atrocity: "'Put a 556 in his head.' (The caliber of an M-16 rifle is 5.56 millimeters.) On the street below, the man's brown face dissolves in a thick red mist. The lights in the city's houses shut off in unison. Electricity rationing. Water rationing too. You ever tried to survive for more than a few hours in 120 degree weather?"

On May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp was in Germany, where temperatures rarely reach 120 degrees, and the electricity and water work just fine."

Read through his blog: this is obviously a flight of fancy. It's transparently imaginative, meant to deceive no one who actually was a reader of the blog, which repeatedly disguises being in Germany. So in what way is this a lie? It isn't. Kelly has the honesty problem, not Beauchamp.

Posted by Robert | July 27, 2007 11:21 AM

" It's a little rich though that lefties on here question Gen. Petraeus's credibility because he agreed to be interviewed by a blogger who once interviewed you,"

The fact that Matt was interviewed by Hewitt decreased his credibility in my book. Sanity is a significant part of credibility you know.

Posted by Njorl | July 27, 2007 11:24 AM

lefties on here question Gen. Petraeus's credibility ... but heaven forbid anyone question any of Pvt. Beauchamp's statements.

Who said that, Fred? Sure would be nice to see you argue with an actual lefty rather than straw ones.

Sure, check out Beauchamp's story. But don't ASSUME from the outset that he's nonexistent or lying, which is what plenty of warbloggers did. By contrast, lefties gave Petraeus the benefit of the doubt for a LONG time after he took the job. (It wasn't just Dem Senators.) It took actual, you know, evidence to convince some of us that's he's hacking it up.

In fairness, the discrepancy Kelly highlights at the bottom of his column is more than an incident "slighly exaggerated" -- if true, it's an outright lie. But it'd like to see the sourcing on it and some more details. E.g., did Beauchamp claim the incident happened on that date (when Kelly says he was actually in Germany), or is that just the day he chose to write about it? Was Beauchamp even claiming that really happened, or was he openly trying his hand at fiction? It certainly reads like an effort to sound literary.

See: evidence, Fred. Try it sometime.

Posted by Ryan | July 27, 2007 11:26 AM

I'm guessing Fred thinks the Democratic base takes its marching orders from Marty Peretz and TNR.

Posted by Reality Man | July 27, 2007 11:26 AM

Among the observations Fred presents as evidence that purportedly undermines Beauchamp's credibility is the fact that he is married to (or engaged to?) a woman who works at TNR.

That fact, Fred, may explain how his piece got published, but it has zilch to do w/ whether what he said is true.

Posted by THS | July 27, 2007 12:09 PM

"But it's worse than that, eh. People want to know what's happening on the ground in Iraq."

Try reading Michael Totten's blog or Michael Yon's because, you know, they are in Iraq embedded and reporting.

Yeah, the key word there is "embedded". Totten and Yon I think are decent writers and pretty honest about what they see, but for the most part they don't get to see what the army doesn't want them to see. Also, since both those guys depend on contributions from mostly right-wing "tell us the good news" type readers, they have a vested interest in not straying too far from what their readers want to hear (which is why the idea that these guys are more "independent" than the reviled MSM is basically a joke).

In any case, it's pretty hard to tell just from the Army's perspective whether we're really winning or losing. They're fighting little tactical battles which in the end probably won't determine much. It's not terribly hard to piece together the bigger picture of failure - the overall chaos, the refugees streaming into Jordan, the decline in oil production, the ethnic cleansing, the inability of Western civilians 4 years after the war was won to simply walk around Baghdad the way you can walk around every other major Middle Eastern city, the obvious increase in Iranian influence, etc. The fact that we can kill al Qaeda bad guys, keep order in a few Baghdad neighborhoods, build soccer fields and make some friends kind of pales by comparison with the big picture.

Posted by vanya | July 27, 2007 12:29 PM

Among the observations Fred presents as evidence that purportedly undermines Beauchamp's credibility is the fact that he is married to (or engaged to?) a woman who works at TNR.

And, if true, it pretty much undermines the entire original right-wing narrative that Scott Thomas was a fake. He wasn't just some guy in a basement sending e-mails with forged IP headers to gullible TNR editors, as the right-wingers thought. Rather, he was someone that the staff of TNR personally knew.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 12:32 PM

And, if true, it pretty much undermines the entire original right-wing narrative that Scott Thomas was a fake.

Correct, but, to be fair, the existence of the wife/fiancee wasn't known when the wingers first started ranting about the validity of Beauchamp's report. That doesn't justify their claims that both he and his report were likely works of fiction, but it does explain why the existence of the wife/fiancee didn't forestall the ranting that we've observed.

Posted by THS | July 27, 2007 12:45 PM

THS, but it does provide evidence to me that the entire reason for this whole tempest is because the right-wingers have been grasping for something -- ANYTHING -- to attack TNR and Scott Thomas over. First it was "It's a total fake and a fraud!" then it was "Ok, he might be real, but the stories aren't things we think are true!" then it was "And here's evidence he's engaged/married to a TNR staffer." And by that point, when you're like, "So?", it becomes obvious that they're just moving the goalposts all over the field until they come up with SOMETHING that sooths them psychologically. Only a few weeks ago, such an accusation about Scott Thomas would have been met with, "NO he ISN'T! He's completely MADE UP! There's NO WAY a TNR staffer would know him personally!"

At this point, the credibility of the anti-Scott Thomas crowd is so shot that I can't even take their claim that Scott Thomas is socially connected to a TNR staffer.

Posted by Tyro | July 27, 2007 12:55 PM

We are basically on the same page, Tyro. I think I have the logic and sequence right, but you are definitely right in your characterization of the claims of the right as a "moving goalposts" phenomenon. I'm sure that they will find a way to discount whatever is revealed next.

Posted by THS | July 27, 2007 1:31 PM

It sounded to me like "Thomas" was being refuted on a factual basis: how you can't possibly see a dog on the side of an armored vehicle from the driver's position, run flat tires on Hummers, mass graves and a child's skull worn as a head dress, melted faces, etc.

Given that evidence of implausibility, what's wrong with trying to explain "Thomas's" means, method and motive for what amounts to sliming the humanity of his fellow troops?

Indeed, what did Beauchamp ever say that was really a criticism of Bush administration policy?

Posted by edh | July 27, 2007 2:30 PM

Robert, nice rebuttal.

What I'm amazed at is the incredible hue and cry about some horror of war writing, meanwhile, it turns out there is evidence that Tillman may have been murdered and utter silence on this topic among the wingnuts. Simply not having "defended the Army's initial false stories about Tillman" when other mild things cause such extreme outrage is what they mean when they say deafening silence...

Posted by DBH | July 27, 2007 2:39 PM

I have to step in and say I'm a lefty that reads Totten. Unlike almost all the voices out there, at least he's there, embedded or not.
As far as biases brought on by embedding, I can compare his work done currently in Iraq to his embedded work in Lebanon post-War, and find it to be of a similar outlook; I think the military might be tilting him in a direction, but it's not showing him "only the good stuff", any more than he might seek out himself.

Posted by Woodrow Jarvis "asim" Hill | July 27, 2007 2:59 PM

The problem with Totten's situation is that just by being embedded with a military unit he is simply not going to see the things that an independent on the ground would see, regardless of whether or not the military PR is "tilting him." The mere presence of troops changes the entire dynamic. It's like going out on patrol with a cop in a bad part of town and assuming that what you seen during the patrol is what that part of town is really like, and that now you know exactly what it's like to live there. Which is not to knock Totten's efforts, but that's just how it is.

Still, it's not impossible to get some idea of what it's like to actually live inside Iraq.

Posted by josephdietrich | July 27, 2007 3:43 PM

Maybe Scott will run for President, so we can all be treated to the Swift Hummer Dogcatchers for Truth. I can hardly wait.

Posted by Jalmari | July 27, 2007 3:55 PM

And we won't say a word that Scott Thomas is soon to be married woman at TNR.

No this means nothing. Gezzzz

Posted by Dustoff | July 27, 2007 4:36 PM

a blogger who once interviewed you

Nice way for Fred to conceal the fact it was Hugh Hewitt, a water-carrier so dedicated to the BushCo cause that he continued cheerleading Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination after most of the right had run away screaming.

'A blogger', indeed.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 27, 2007 5:17 PM

In general, the Republican Party is the party of AUTHORITY. From Nixon's Law & Order spiel to warrantless wire-tapping and torture, the Republicans like the People In Power to give instructions and the people to follow (except Democratic Presidents, of course).

For these reasons, when a soldier speaks up with unapproved talking points, the reaction of the entire right is a frenzied attempt to MAKE THAT GUY SHUT HIS YAP. Content or accuracy is NOT the issue.

Witness the attacks on Joe Wilson. To this day even people on the left feel obliged to make a bow to how "unsavory" he is before pointing out that what he said in his infamous NYT op-ed was TRUE. The politics of character assassination work.

At this moment hundreds of powerful people are doing all they can to make sure Scott Thomas PAYS, to discourage other soldiers who might want to say something unapproved. Hurray to Matt and many other blogs for pointing this out, because the MSM will sacrifice truth-telling to politeness.

The moment we are in bears a lot of similarity to 1970 - 1972. The Establishment has been badly discredited by incompetently waging a stupid war. The MSM and the Establishment will fight back to retain their positions of respect and influence in the face of unfriendly facts. Fortunately, this time there have been no hippies, no Jane Fondas, no disrespect of soldiers to use to manipulate the public to hate those who were, ahem, right, who called this one from the start. (stand up now, Obama & Dean & co) This time all the authoritarians have to work with are Michael Moore and Sean Penn. This time we have a real chance to prevail over the forces of reaction. And so the authoritarians throw fits and slime any and all who have the temerity to challenge them, especially some low soldier. They will not hold their punches for the sake of decency. Power is at stake.

Posted by tomtom | July 27, 2007 5:37 PM

Drum writes:

"....eventually some small part of Thomas's account will turn out to be slightly exaggerated...."

Thomas wrote: "I shoot, move, communicate, and kill . . . the deaths that I inflict secure the riches of the empire."

This bit of creative writing was apparently written while he was in Germany, before being deployed to Iraq.

Why is this guy the best TNR can come up with as a typical American servicemen serving in Iraq? And how in heck did the Army not spot this guy in mental health examinations?

Posted by spookyben | July 27, 2007 10:24 PM

It sounded to me like "Thomas" was being refuted on a factual basis: how you can't possibly see a dog on the side of an armored vehicle from the driver's position, run flat tires on Hummers, mass graves and a child's skull worn as a head dress, melted faces, etc.

Check your hearing, your understanding of facts, or your preconcieved bias.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 27, 2007 11:17 PM

Matt,

It might be worth taking a look at what Greyhawk, from Mudville Gazette, has to say about Beauchamp. He's agnostic about whether or not things happened as written, but makes a strong case that the author is an asshole. Either Beauchamp is an asshole for lying about events that didn't happen, or he's an asshole for participating -- or at least not trying to stop -- events that did.

There isn't a lot separating Beauchamp from Lynndie England, other than he has a better haircut and mad writing skilz.

-- Fred

Posted by Fred Schoeneman | July 30, 2007 1:28 PM