Victory's Just a Beauchamp Away

Katherine Jean-Lopez passes on an email from Michael Yon:

I intend to support the boycott being launched by Bob Owens. Boycotts against the media have proven effective: I launched one myself last year against a magazine that misused one of my photos and misrepresented me. That magazine collapsed.

The New Republic needs to be the latest example that the good old days of no-accountability are ending. They attacked American soldiers during a time of war, and they attacked those soldiers without justification. I happen to be in Baghdad with some of the soldiers they attacked. These soldiers have enough challenges with urban combat that they should not have to watch their backs for concern of irresponsible publications stabbing them.

That's not a very subtle stab in the back allegation now is it? Meanwhile, I don't know if it's more or less odd that in this instance the alleged backstabber is actually serving in the military as we speak.

Comments

From Bob Owens' call for boycott:

"Below are a list of recent advertisers that have placed ads with either the print edition of The New Republic or the web site tnr.com
...
American Petroleum Institute
BP
Chevron
..."

------------
You know, I could actually support this boycott if ole Bob went after the advertisers themselves. (Which he won't).

Because I'm starting to understand now why Marty beat the drums for the Iraq invasion so loudly.
Which, in my opinion, was the real stab in the back of the troops. Not that morons of the right want to talk about that either.

Posted by Don Williams | October 29, 2007 12:31 PM

Michael Yon is a soldier in the conservative cultural war on America. He enlisted to fight against our values, ideals and principals. His chosen field of battle is infiltration of the US military in order to turn it against the US civilian population.

Posted by ken | October 29, 2007 12:33 PM

Michael Yon is a soldier in the conservative cultural war on America. He enlisted to fight against our values, ideals and principals. His chosen field of battle is infiltration of the US military in order to turn it against the US civilian population.

Posted by ken | October 29, 2007 12:33 PM

what's really odd is how the right-wing crazies love the phrase "in a time of war;" they get practically orgasmic whenever they type it.

Posted by howard | October 29, 2007 12:35 PM

TNR and the right-wing: what happened to honor among thieves?

Posted by IM | October 29, 2007 12:37 PM

And I thought Yon jumped the shark with his child eating AQ single, unsubstantiated source story. Jesus! I wonder if its too much Wild Turkey and Brown Acid?

NEXT DIVERSION: Boycotting magazines who won't print all the news the Right deems fit.

So let me understand this:

1. No AQ link
2. No WMD's
3 No WMD active programs
4. Mission Accomplished!
5. Sending the ENTIRE Iraqi Army home WITH weapons!
6. Unguarded ammunition supplies
7. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
8. Abrogation of the 4th Amendment to save us from a bunch of guys with no state, no army, and no missiles ... Jesus, Mary and Joseph--my head is ready to explode! What have we become? A nation of pussies?

OK--now what am I missing here? Who stabbed these guys in the back? Holy mackerel Andy! Where the Hell is my flag lapel pin? DO NOT TAKE THE BROWN ACID! We have evidence the Brown Acid is bad.

Say Goodnight Gracie!

Posted by Cindrella Ferret | October 29, 2007 12:42 PM

Until they get Marty Peretz on their side, I suspect the boycott will fail to deprive TNR of what it needs to keep publishing.

Posted by neil | October 29, 2007 12:44 PM

GOP 08 : all that's left are the assholes

Posted by cleek | October 29, 2007 12:51 PM

"the good old days of no-accountability are ending"

oh god, too rich.

enron. wmds. saddam behind 9/11. bigger spender than lbj. katrina. heckuva job, brownie. harriet meiers. shoot a man in the face while drunk.

and through it all, no accountability, ever, from the right-wing tyrants in the white house.

yeah, let's hope those days are ending.

e.g., with a new set of nuremberg trials for bush, cheney, and rumsfeld.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 29, 2007 1:05 PM

Since I have never read TNR, am I paticipating in the boycott? I'd like to get some free credit.

Posted by BushYouth | October 29, 2007 1:09 PM

Bob is going after the advertisers.

That unsubstantiated story was not about AQI eating a child. Can't you get anything right?
It was about AQI baking a child and serving its baked body up to its parents at dinner.

An all too similar story was reported a month earlier on June 8 by Carl Penhaul for CNN.

"Nationalist insurgents say al Qaeda excesses are behind their falling-out. Several sources said al Qaeda members burned a 7-year-old child alive and murdered women and other children in the towns and villages around the provincial capital of Baquba. They did not give names or dates to back up their claims."

From burning a child alive to baking a child and serving her/him to the parents isn't a big stretch for Al Queda. These are the same people who flew planes in the WTC with innocent civilians on board.

Yon's credibility was never in question, not even by MSM reporters, because he repeated a story told to him and made it clear that story could not be verified.

Only those on the left refuse to believe anything horrific about Al Queda while swallowing bullshit stories about our troops from a fabulist like Beauchamp.

So Pot Pol and his executioners could kill children by slamming them against trees, and Hitler could gas Jews in ovens, but AQI who behead innocent civilians on YouTube can't possibly burn children alive OR bake them and serve them to their parents.

Posted by LaughingatLiberals | October 29, 2007 1:15 PM

Bob is going after the advertisers.

That unsubstantiated story was not about AQI eating a child. Can't you get anything right?
It was about AQI baking a child and serving its baked body up to its parents at dinner.

An all too similar story was reported a month earlier on June 8 by Carl Penhaul for CNN.

"Nationalist insurgents say al Qaeda excesses are behind their falling-out. Several sources said al Qaeda members burned a 7-year-old child alive and murdered women and other children in the towns and villages around the provincial capital of Baquba. They did not give names or dates to back up their claims."

From burning a child alive to baking a child and serving her/him to the parents isn't a big stretch for Al Queda. These are the same people who flew planes in the WTC with innocent civilians on board.

Yon's credibility was never in question, not even by MSM reporters, because he repeated a story told to him and made it clear that story could not be verified.

Only those on the left refuse to believe anything horrific about Al Queda while swallowing bullshit stories about our troops from a fabulist like Beauchamp.

So Pot Pol and his executioners could kill children by slamming them against trees, and Hitler could gas Jews in ovens, but AQI who behead innocent civilians on YouTube can't possibly burn children alive OR bake them and serve them to their parents.

Posted by LaughingatLiberals | October 29, 2007 1:15 PM

Thanks, Laughtrack.

You made my morning with your impression of a spittle-flecked, venom-intoxicated schizophrenic creep.

Posted by matt | October 29, 2007 1:17 PM

Only those on the left refuse to believe anything horrific about Al Queda

it's true, i only believe the pleasant things.

Posted by cleek | October 29, 2007 1:21 PM

Once again, Matthew, your grasp of the erroneous is impressive. Beauchamp, as I clearly stated, has been dealt with. His accounts have been deemed fiction by a formal military investigation, as well as veterans and civilian experts.

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer. He has been unable to provide a single named witness or expert to support the stories authored by Beauchamp, has suppressed testimony given to TNR editors that dispute his preferred narrative, and refuses to retract a story he clear cannot support with facts.

He is clearly acting unethically. It is a shame that so many journalists care so little about professional ethics as long as their ox isn't the one being gored.

Posted by Bob Owens | October 29, 2007 1:21 PM

All hail! The Glorious Leader of the Cult Of Beauchamp has arrived!

Posted by All Hail! | October 29, 2007 1:25 PM

Perhaps the magazine "collapsed" precisely because it ran a photo of K-Lo?

Posted by El Cid | October 29, 2007 1:28 PM

Re Bob Owens' comment "The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer "
-----------
Hey, Bob Boy. Question for you.

If we should go on a jihad..er..crusade against TNR because it printed Beauchamp's material,

Then what should we do to those who lied us into an unnecessary war that has

(a) killed 3700+ of our soldiers
(b) crippled thousands more, many for life
(c) condemmed millions of Americans to die years before their time by stealing $4 Trillion from the Medicare Trust Fund and pissing it away
(d) created the best recruiting campaign for Al Qaeda that Bin Laden could have hoped for?

Over to you, Bob Boy.

Posted by Don Williams | October 29, 2007 1:41 PM

man, this is such a relief.

there was that several-year period when dave niewert, glenn greenwald, digby, and other prescient types were warning us that the proto-fascist right-wingers were going to escalate into full-on fascist mode with a stab-in-the-back theory.

and it was kind of awkward that none of the proto-fascists would just come out and *say* it.

but now they are happy to fly their fascist flag high!

isn't that better?

Posted by kid bitzer | October 29, 2007 1:43 PM

Yeah, what the hell is Lopez talking about with her previous "boycott"? I tried a google search and didn't find anything, at least not in the first few pages. Must've been pretty quiet. Or maybe it existed just in her fevered brain.

Posted by Glenn | October 29, 2007 1:44 PM

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.

A classic moment in not just American journalism, but English grammar in general.

Posted by glasnost | October 29, 2007 1:48 PM

It was about AQI baking a child and serving its baked body up to its parents at dinner.

Titus Andronicus is in Iraq?

Posted by samba00 | October 29, 2007 1:50 PM

"That Magazine Collapsed"

Anyone have any idea what the hell she is talking about?

Posted by DP | October 29, 2007 1:58 PM

I think Michael Yon was wrong to sign on to Bob Owens's boycott, though I share their disdain for Franklin Foer. As a practical matter, how many of Yon's readers have subscriptions to TNR? And why make martyrs of hacks like Foer? Foer should be writing or editing bathos-laden crappy fiction of the sort his little brother writes, not working as a journalist.

Yon could have put Foer & Co. in their places by accepting Beauchamp's CO's offer to interview Beauchamp and then asking him on the record about the fig leaves TNR is clinging to to delay having to retract the stories.

Posted by Fred | October 29, 2007 2:01 PM

Is Bob Owens a robot? A Borat impersonator? Just a really big fan of the passive voice?

"The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer."

Yeah, Bob. Also, All Your Civil Liberties Are Belong To Us!

I understand what those shitty sentences mean, but barely. And somebody tell this butthole that you don't "swing" a knife.

I might be tempted to take these cretins more seriously if they didn't all write like eighth graders.

Posted by Mike | October 29, 2007 2:06 PM

Yeah.

I understand what those shitty sentences mean, but barely. And somebody tell this butthole that you don't "swing" a knife.

No, you don't. You stab with a knife. You stab our heroic soldiers in the back with a knife. Our soldiers, who were never defeated on the field of battle, but in whose moment of need were stabbed in the back by the Enemy Within.

I'm sure Mr. Treason-in-defense-of-Slavery Yankee will be along shortly to identify the traitors.

Posted by stickler | October 29, 2007 2:13 PM

The magazine referred to in K. Lo's post is, I believe, Shock, and is a magazine that Yon boycotted, not K. Lo. That said, knowing a little bit about the magazine business shows once again just how ignorant these people are about how the business works and what effect they have on it (none). Shock closed because no one would advertise in it, because no advertisers wanted to be associated with its, well, shocking content. Michael Yon had precisely nothing to do with it, and his stated belief that he did is either bs, totally egostistical, totally crazy/ignorant or a combination of any or all of the above.

Posted by Anon | October 29, 2007 2:18 PM

Was the boycott of Shock anything like the boycott of France that was led by Bill O'Reilly? The one that allegedly cost the French billions of dollars in lost tourism money, etc., according to a completely fictional 'Paris Business Review' that O'Reilly cited?

Posted by Woody Bombay | October 29, 2007 2:30 PM

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.

Damn you, Scott Beauchamp!

Posted by The Other Steve | October 29, 2007 2:30 PM

Not that I had a principled stand against the magazine before, but now I think I'll be renewing my subscription.

Posted by DRR | October 29, 2007 2:35 PM

It is a shame that so many journalists care so little about professional ethics as long as their ox isn't the one being gored.

Still getting your special bulletins from Steve Boylan's office, Bob-a-job?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 29, 2007 2:36 PM

Since I've got Ball Four on the brain, these hysterics on Yon's part remind me very much of Bowie Kuhn, ca. 1970:

"You've done the game a grave disservice. Saying players kissed on the Seattle team bus—incredible! Or that some of our greatest stars were drunk on the field. What can you be thinking of?"

And there it is. Yon, like Kuhn, takes a portrait of the ups and downs of everyday life, and goes into a fit of hysteria because it doesn't portray soldiers (Yon) or baseball players (Kuhn) as heroes who can do no wrong, rather than as average people who do good things and bad things, not to mention grown men who are perfectly capable of shrugging stuff like this off, and (in the case of our soldiers in Iraq) have more pressing concerns every day that render stuff like this trivial.

In short, Yon doesn't believe in the manhood of the troops, but sees them as hothouse flowers who must be protected from the mildest remarks that could possibly be interpreted as criticism.

He thinks our troops are girly-men. I bet the wingnuts, devoted as they are to our troops, are pissed at him.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | October 29, 2007 2:42 PM

I don't know low tech cyclist, I think its a great mistake to attribute actual beliefs to tools like Yon. Let us say that Yon, like a lot of republicans, uses "the invincible warrior" as an image and a rallying point when it suits him and the "crushed military victim" as a rallying point when it suits him. We'll see the movie, book, and song versions of this starting pretty soon with some actor hired to play the part of the a) noble warrior who woulda, coulda, shoulda won the war single handed b) injured, PTSD veteran victim pissed on by liberals, c) victorious rambo like battler against the liberal menace at home. That's just the highlights, of course.

aimai

Posted by aimai | October 29, 2007 2:54 PM

I organized a boycott against the Soviet Union, and it collapsed.

Now, bring me the finest wines known to man. I want them here and I want them now.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 29, 2007 3:06 PM

So, partisans on both the right and the left are joining forces to boycott Marty Peretz' magazine?

Too Rich!

Posted by bob | October 29, 2007 3:34 PM

Every day I think, "That's it. Bushpigs can't get any dumber or any more ridiculous." And every day they manage to top themselves and crawl further up their lower intestines.

It really is amazing to watch.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | October 29, 2007 3:43 PM

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer. He has been unable to provide a single named witness or expert to support the stories authored by Beauchamp, has suppressed testimony given to TNR editors that dispute his preferred narrative, and refuses to retract a story he clear cannot support with facts.

Owens, if you and your ilk were interested in branding the media as traitors, you should've done it before 3/4 of the American public turned against the war. You're going to have difficulty convincing them at this point.

Posted by Xanthippas | October 29, 2007 4:03 PM

Yeah, what the hell is Lopez talking about with her previous "boycott"?

Posted by Glenn

The truth? It seems that may be ongoing, however...

Posted by actor212 | October 29, 2007 4:04 PM

His accounts have been deemed fiction by a formal military investigation, as well as veterans and civilian experts.

Posted by Bob Owens

To quote Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark..."Who?"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Next, he'll be telling us "top...men"...

Posted by actor212 | October 29, 2007 4:06 PM

The most fascinating thing about Owens, Yon and all the other member of the Anti-Beauchamp Brigade remains their utter silence on the very first piece Beauchamp wrote for TNR -- which was about an Iraqi kid who supposedly got his tongue cut out by evil insurgents for befriending US troops, but continued to befriend them anyway. Which, of course, by itself blows to smithereens the idea that Beauchamp (whether he's a liar or not) and TNR were setting out to Get Our Soldiers.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | October 29, 2007 4:17 PM

"Let us say that Yon, like a lot of republicans..."

Why do you assume Michael Yon is a Republican? Because doesn't immediately assume the worst of American troops? Aren't there Democrats and independents who don't have contempt for the military?

Posted by Juan | October 29, 2007 4:21 PM

Why do you assume Michael Yon is a Republican?

Well, he's a liar and a fool. You do the math.

Posted by Woody Bombay | October 29, 2007 4:23 PM

"Aren't there Democrats and independents who don't have contempt for the military?"

sure; in fact, none of the democrats or independents that i know *do* have any contempt for the military. some of the democrats and independents i know are *in* the military, in fact.

nope--i reserve all of my contempt for the pathetic right-wing keyboard commandoes. and really, they deserve so much, that i can hardly keep up the requisite supply.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 29, 2007 4:26 PM

Aren't there Democrats and independents who don't have contempt for the military?

Posted by Juan

Yon's about as "military" as Bush was...c'mon, Juan, stop with the straw men. More Democrats in national offices have served in the US Army than Republicans. You could look it up.

Posted by actor212 | October 29, 2007 4:53 PM

Whenever Matt mentions Beauchamp, the comments accumulate. There is something sociologically interesting in the psycho rights cult of Beauchamp denigration. Beauchamp's articles, of course, were pretty trivial reportage. He didn't report that he was with Marines, entering Haditha, slaughtering people left and right. He reported bad manners and a run over dog.

The massive violence in Iraq - the over 600,000 Iraqi dead, the three million refugees - are, I think, simply too much to absorb. The candid question a war supporter should ask is: how could I have been so stupid? But confronting that gross stupidity would, I guess, lead to questions about their entire mindset. This leaves a nice gap for the middlemen of idiocy - the Malkins, the Yons - who make it their business to make the anger deep enough to hide awareness. Really, I don't think the pro-war faction is naturally stupid, but they ritually cretinize themselves just in order to continue without shame.

And that is one way in which they are cultish. Cults, too, have to separate themselves from the social whole with elaborate mechanisms that take away the shame that members of the cult might naturally feel in performing certain tasks. I think Beauchamp has to be one of those tasks. And of course as the disproportion between the triviality of the offense and the anger grows, more has to be "bet" on the offense.

Posted by roger | October 29, 2007 5:27 PM

To paraphrase the Road Warrior, "You want contempt for the troops, you talk to me."

I've got nothing but contempt for the troops - any troops, US, Israeli, German, British, Japanese, Chinese, Tongan, you name it.

You're a troop - you got my contempt.

I was contemptuous of myself while serving three years in the US Army. And I was damn sure contemptuous of the morons I was serving with and under.

The US military - and virtually every other military of which I am aware - is composed of morons. It's that simple.

Sorry if anybody here doesn't like that.

Sorry? Bwaahahahahahah!! More like "tough noogies" and "eat me"...

If Beauchamp didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him...

Google for "US atrocities in Iraq" - 231,000 hits.

Then read the list.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 29, 2007 6:04 PM

A fantasist fifth columnist from the fourth estate (and a budding columnist to boot!)

Google for US attrocities in Iraq and you'll hit leftist, euroscum and alQuaidi

I was proud of myself the four years I served in the military and am proud of our military now. I'm no Hack

also roger's "He didn't report that he was with Marines, entering Haditha, slaughtering people left and right" is a soviet-style construct. The so-called fact is "embedded" in the opposite assertion.
(Another soviet favorite was the "as is widely known")

Posted by jozef | October 29, 2007 8:46 PM

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.

I'm simply glad that the knives are drawn (so to speak) and that the right has simply embraced the myth they've been intending to use all along to explain Bush's failure in Iraq -- namely, that some kind of Dolchstoss from the left in general and the media in particular is responsible for our defeat.

Good manners prevent them from blaming the Jews this time around, and no one believes a fifth column of socialists exists (given that there aren't any to speak of in America), so TNR and rest of us have to fill in.

Confederate Yankee is a confederacy of dunces -- these guys would be funny if their types of myths didn't spawn certain movements in 1920s Germany.

Posted by Voice of Reason | October 29, 2007 9:52 PM

Given that soldiers have essentially signed up for a job that consists of killing people or enabling the killing of people, it wouldn't be at all surprising if some of them were worthy of contempt.

Posted by william | October 29, 2007 11:05 PM

It isn't so much that they've signed up for the job of killing people. Some people need killing.

It's that they've signed up for the job of killing people - ON ORDERS - WHO ARE NOT THREAT TO THEM.

Nobody can tell me that the three quarters of a million or whatever the figure is of morons that we have in the US military ALL REALLY understand why they are killing Iraqis, or why Iraqis are killing them.

I can guarantee you that almost NOBODY in Vietnam knew.

All these clowns know is that Bush ordered them over there to overthrow Saddam, and then ride around in trucks, kick in doors, and shoot people driving their cars too fast.

Now of course you can quote a bunch of these idiots who will proclaim they're there for all sorts of bogus neocon reasons, or random statements like "preserving the national security of the US", or some other bullshit.

None of that is relevant.

The bottom line is that all these people are over there killing a bunch of people who were ZERO threat to the US and are now KNOWN to have been zero threat to the US, and if we weren't there, would STILL be zero threat to the US.

That makes all of it a war crime.

And the fact that apparently a large number of US soldiers don't understand that it's all a war crime (and I admit, based on interviews and comments around the Net with some US soldiers, that a lot of them DO understand that) clearly shows what the problem is.

The guys who DO understand that it's all a war crime but who are "only obeying orders" STILL don't understand that that is what they signed up for: to kill people who were no threat to them on orders that they didn't understand.

That the problem is the SYSTEM. The SYSTEM IS the war crime.

I prefer mercenaries over soldiers because at least mercenaries understand what the hell they're doing: they're killing people for PROFIT! Fine! You may disagree that that profession is a valid, moral occupation. But at least it makes sense!

But a soldier kills people FOR NO RATIONAL REASON except that he doesn't know how to get out of doing so! That's nuts!

Unless of course you assume that everybody in the "modern professional US Army" is there to kill people because they're getting paid. That would make them mercenaries. Nobody is arguing that idea as far as I know. The usual schtick is to extol US troops as honest, upright, US citizens defending the country and our freedoms from "bad people."

None of which jibes with reality.

So what do you say about the great mass of US soldiers who don't understand what the hell they're doing in reality?

You gotta have some contempt for people that clueless who are getting hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of people killed.

Maybe if you have a different attitude about human stupidity than I do, you could have some sympathy for them. I don't.

And maybe you can reserve your contempt for the scumbags like Cheney and the neocons who put US troops in these situations. Fine. I can't.

And again, I say this having served three years in the US army, including a year in Vietnam, as an enlistee.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 30, 2007 12:22 AM

Given that soldiers have essentially signed up for a job that consists of killing people or enabling the killing of people, it wouldn't be at all surprising if some of them were worthy of contempt.
Posted by william

Given strong motives foravoiding military service to the nation are cowardace, love of your nations enemies - it wouldn't surprise me that such Lefties have a contemptuous prediliction for cowardace or treason.

*******************
jozef I was proud of myself the four years I served in the military and am proud of our military now. I'm no Hack

Hack is a loser draftee from the Vietnam war. He is also a loser ex-con. Most Vets are like Jozef - not only are they proud of their service, the honor and valor of their comrades, but also respectful of soldiers serving adversary nations who served well.

The US military - and virtually every other military of which I am aware - is composed of morons. It's that simple.

Given most Vets go on to lead a happy, normal life, get married, rarely get in trouble on the level of their peer age group, and have better health, careers, lower criminality of their peers?
And they morons?
If so, what does that make a scumbag like Hack?

Posted by Chris Ford | October 30, 2007 1:26 AM

"Given strong motives foravoiding military service to the nation are cowardace, love of your nations enemies - it wouldn't surprise me that such Lefties have a contemptuous prediliction for cowardace or treason."

Hey Chris,

Did you notice that the architects of our invasion and occupation of Iraq are people who avoided military service, and in the case of oil men Bush and Cheney, have cozy relations with the country that supplied the majority of the 9/11 attackers? It would be more accurate to say that it is the Righties who are the ones who have a contemptuous prediliction for cowardice and treason. At the same time, these cowards and traitors keep pushing for a war that is disastrous for our national security interests, and which is disastrous for the well-being of our troops.

It is the Lefties that want our troops to stop dying for Dubya's foreign policy follies, and it is the Righties that want to continue using our troops like the plastic playing pieces in the game of Risk. Yet, according to your warped reasoning, the Righties love our troops and the Lefties hate them.

What's the weather like in Bizarro world, Chris?

Posted by eltoro | October 30, 2007 1:56 AM

To quote Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark..."Who?"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Next, he'll be telling us "top...men"...

Top men and women, indeed.

Col. Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Multi-National Division-Baghdad. Beauchamp's CO. "He [Beauchamp] did admit to the investigating officer that the incidents did not take place."

Major John Cross, the investigating officer of the formal investigation which found all claims to be false.

First Sergeant Hatley, Beauchamp's Sgt, who stated from the beginning "not a single word of this was true."

Major Kirk Luedeke, FOB Falcon PAO.

Major Renee D. Russo. Kuwait-based PAO, called the burned woman claim an "urban myth or legend." Told that to TNR's Jason Zengerle months ago. TNR refused to print it.

William "Big Country" Coughlin, civilian contractor, Camp Arifjan Kuwait. Said such a woman never existed, other words unsuitable for print.

Doug Coffey, Head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems, manufacturer of the Bradley IFV. Debunked the physics/mechanics of the dog story. Also killed TNR's credibility when it was revealed TNR purposefully refused to provide him details of the story, in order to create their whitewash of an investigation with their "re-reporting."

Richard Peters, Iraq Veterans Against the War (formerly stationed at FOB Falcon in 2005-2006) who called Beauchamp's claims "elaborate lies" and Beauchamp himself a "loser."

I've got no less than a half dozen more names I could list. Do you want those, or is what I've provided enough?

The most fascinating thing about Owens, Yon and all the other member of the Anti-Beauchamp Brigade remains their utter silence on the very first piece Beauchamp wrote for TNR -- which was about an Iraqi kid who supposedly got his tongue cut out by evil insurgents for befriending US troops, but continued to befriend them anyway. Which, of course, by itself blows to smithereens the idea that Beauchamp (whether he's a liar or not) and TNR were setting out to Get Our Soldiers.

Wrong again. I debunked that story, "War Bonds," way back on July 25.

He claims to have met the Iraqi boy, "James Bond" while pulling security as the tire on his Humvee was being changed on a combat patrol. All Humvees are equipped with run-flat tires. They do not carry a spare tire on urban patrols (though they occasionally do in very remote regions), and SOP would be to tow the vehicle, as changing a tire on patrol is setting up for an ambush. This entire story was made up out of the whole cloth, and while it hasn't been studied in as much detail as "Shock Troops," no doubt had it's genesis in stories he heard from other soldiers, which is the mark of all his writing.

Likewise, his second story "Dead of Night" is also false in key details, and this story actually provided the first concrete proof that his stories were not fact checked by TNR, as he alledged a murder based upon "proof" of a pistol cartridge that does not exist, and from a gun that 30 seconds on Google would have refuted as "only belonging to the Iraqi police," which was debunked by the NY Times before this story was ever written.

Next?

Posted by Bob Owens | October 30, 2007 12:50 PM

actor212,

It appears that Bob Owens has just handed you your head. Looking forward to reading your comeback...

Bob Owens,

Two questions for you:

1) Aren't you playing into the Left's hands by advocating a boycott of TNR? Why not just embarrass TNR with the facts?

2) Why didn't Michael Yon take the opportunity he was given to interview Beauchamp? I understand his point about Beauchamp's decision to stay in harm's way and how he deserves a second chance, but Yon need not have given Beauchamp a hard time; he could have asked him point-blank about the TNR stories though and reported his response.

Posted by Fred | October 30, 2007 12:59 PM

Holy shit.... people are still talking about Beauchamp? I thought this news about his fake news stopped being real news about - well, years ago.

Meanwhile, I've been boycotting TNR privately my entire life, or at least well before the rag became all anti-war. So Bob Owens and all the other anti-TNR jihadists can jump off my bandwagon now. Thanks.

Posted by Neal Murray | October 31, 2007 10:07 AM