Statement from the New Republic

TNR has published a statement about their research into Scott Thomas Beauchamp's writings. They say that, after exhaustive research, that most all of his story holds up.

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

There is one detail that was false and they acknowledge this.

Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. He told us: "We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right."

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

This is not an inconsequential error. The point of the whole story was how the war had hardened these men so that they were now capable of such cruelty to an injured woman. But, if their vile teasing occurred in Kuwait, before they even arrived in Iraq, it's rather hard to blame the war. All they have shown is that they were vile people before they started fighting in Iraq. It is a self indictment of Beauchamp and his buddies rather than an indictment of the war. And all the other anecdotes should be read in this light. With about 160,000 men and women serving in Iraq, it's likely that some of them were rotten people before they entered the military. Just think of your own place of work and the percentage of nasty folks there. The story now becomes one of how Beauchamp and his friends were jerks before they got to Iraq and, if the rest of his story is to be believed, continued to be so. It is not an indictment of the war or our armed services in general.

However, some critics of the TNR story have not let up. Dean Barnett has several significant objections to the other two stories - about the guy going all day with a child's skull on his head and about the guy who drove his Bradley around swerving to hit things including stray dogs. Comparing the original story to the TNR statement demonstrates that there are still problems. The army has shut down Beauchamp's communication with reporters so we don't know if we'll get any more information. But compare Barnett's objections with the TNR statement and see if you are convinced by either.

And Barnett maintains, and I agree, that the original problem was hiring this guy, who was engaged to a TNR staffer at the time, to give what they wanted to project as a picture of the typical American soldier rather than just one jerk who, according to his own blog, joined the military so that he would have more validity as a writer.

TNR by its own admission hired Scott Beauchamp “to provide our readers with a sense of Iraq as it is seen by the troops.” As I’ve written several times, this is The New Republic’s original sin in this matter. Scott Beauchamp didn’t give TNR’s readers a sense of Iraq as it is seen by the troops but rather a sense of Iraq as seen by a spouse of a TNR writer with an ideological axe to grind. His purported experiences, and his attitude, are far from typical. The fact that at this late date, TNR is insisting that he was a fitting tour guide of Iraq for TNR’s readership is appalling, and continues TNR’s ongoing slander of the 160,000 men and women who are serving nobly in Iraq.