We disagree. I respect an honest disagreement far more than I respect posts that slander other members. It leads to "tit for tat" insults which lead us nowhere, and prevents any serious discussion of what I consider one of the paramount issues of this time we're living in. D&D. Impeach Bush and Cheney.
after all the vitriol that's been spewed by war opponents these past five years, it's pretty unfair to place the blame for the tenor of the debate on me, assuming you in fact want to have nuanced debate. as to the "lies" i've been putting out, i'm not sure what you're referring to- but there are plenty of lies to go around. to suggest that the surge is working now is not to ignore that mistakes were made previously, nor is it the case that to accept that the surge is having a positive effect means the war is won, or anywhere close to being so. nor does debating the more narrow issue of the surge mean that the focused has moved from the larger war. i have always, and i invite you to go back and check, accepted that we are in what Newt has referred to as The Long War. the current conflict in Iraq is but one front in that war, and an early one at that. If you're serious about confronting Islamic Fascist Terrorism, or whatever name you want to give it, get serious about that fact. this "war" will last a long, long, time- a generation at least. the american people, via their elected representatives, authorized this war, and when the time came to weigh in again, they doubled down in 2004. Depsite "polls" that may show public opinion changing, the noises from certain democratic congressional quarters this country has made a commitment to the people of iraq. reneging on that commitment will cause far greater harm to this country's "reputation" that anything george bush has done. even if things have gone poorly previously, there's some modest cause for optimism now, it would behoove us all to give the general and his troops the support they need.
This very amusing self-pitying sermon deserves of a list of "greatests hits" posts in which basso either in triumph or frustration, labels his various foes, real and imagined as terrorists, communists, assholes, etc etc etc.
Uglier and Uglier Earlier this month we brought you the on-going story of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a US Army private who published a series of 'Baghdad Diaries' in the New Republic under the name Scott Thomas. Thomas told a dark story US soldiers in Iraq acting in various dishonorable and sadistic ways. This brought forth a storm of charges from the right-wing blogs and the Weekly Standard claiming that the diaries were fabrications. Then TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out. Post media critic Howard Kurtz has been writing about these criticisms in his column. And tomorrow he reports that now the US Army has determined that Beauchamp's claims were "found to be false." Kurtz got a few more statements from an unnamed "military official" who would not go on the record "because the probe is confidential." And he was told that the investigation into the truth of Beauchamp's article will not be released. The unnamed official further explained that the Army will not prosecute Beauchamp but rather deal with the matter administratively "by having his cellphone and laptop confiscated." For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, the statement announcing the investigation and its verdict appears not to have been a public release but rather a statement released uniquely to the Weekly Standard. That's how the Kurtz article reads and some quick reporting on my part suggests this is in fact the case. And it gets better. The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge against Beauchamp, says another unnamed military official told the magazine that not only had the Army found Beauchamp's written accounts to be false but that Beauchamp himself has now signed a recantation of all his claims. So case closed; he fessed up. Yet when TNR contacted the Army public affairs a Maj. Steve Lamb told them: "I have no knowledge of that." So what's up here? Beauchamp makes his charges. The US Army allegedly investigates and finds the highly embarrassing charges to be false. But no information will be released about which of his charges were false, how they were false or how they were determined to be false. They then punish Beauchamp by preventing him from having any communication with the civilian world. And if that's not enough, an unnamed military source tells the Standard that Beauchamp has undergone a successful self-criticism session and has recanted everything. But an Army spokesman tells TNR that he's not aware of any confession or recantation. We can at least be thankful that the matter is being handled with such transparency. Maybe Beauchamp was always a teller of tales. He wouldn't be the first nor even the first to have wormed his way into the pages of The New Republic. But it's hard not to have some suspicion that the Army has put itself in charge of investigating charges which, if true, would be deeply embarrassing to the Army; that it has provided itself a full exoneration through an investigation, the details of which it will not divulge; and it has chosen to use as its exclusive conduit for disseminating information about the case, The Weekly Standard, a publication which can at best be described as a charged partisan in the public controversy about the case. This hardly inspires much confidence. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016328.php
i can't believe you're defending this mark. it's a fabrication, and it's pretty well documented as such. i know you feel the need to defend any possible criticism of the left or war opponents, but in this case it doesn't become you. accept it, and move on. it's not even worth debating.
no. it's not worth my time. the army's emphatic about it. prove it's true if you want to argue something that shouldn't even be up for debate. beauchamp made it up, and a credulous TNR didn't even do the most basic fact checking before publishing. they got burned, and you will as well if you continue to try and "prove" something that's patently false. but again with the question- why are you so quick to publish lies and distortions that make the US, whether the government (but only republicans) and US military look bad?
I don't know any details about this case, but you ought to be careful about relying on the Army's word these days. Speaking of that, we're missing you in the Tillman threads.
The army has said that they determined it was untrue but they won't discuss how they determined this and they removed all access that Beauchamp had to outside communications. TNR swears up and down that they spoke with five other members of the platoon who confirmed the stories. It is reasonable to accept that they may be false, but it is far from clear.
And the Army was initially emphatic that Pat Tillman was killed by enemy fire. I'm very skeptical of Beauchamp's claims but at the same time claims made by the Army should certainly be looked at skeptically too and I given their track record they certainly aren't deserving of automatic trust. Probably the same reason you have been so quick to post material to try to make the US military and Democrats look bad.
I did a little reading today and I have to ask what the big deal is. We know war dehaminizes the participants. We know that in any stressful situation, you look for humor as a release and stuff that seems humorous in that situation would look abhorent to others. On tough fires, I've heard many a tasteless joke about the houses that have burned, the water supply that is contaminated, the body that needs recovering. It's part of the way we cope. I don't know if any of the stuff this guy says is true, but it wouldn't surprise me, even though it's like our stuff on steroids to the tenth. I suspect it's more likely he's relating stuff he thought about saying or playing up some lesser activity... but I can see this stuff happening, as could anyone who's read any real accounts of war... try Studs Terkel's The Good War. What I do find amazing is the Repubs attempt to dehumanize soldiers in a perversely contradictory way... by only allowing them to be automatons who have no need to stray beyond the WWII movie portrayals... who require them to live up to their ideals, even though they have never been in anything close to battle. It's really sick. Is the standing of this war so fragile that you have to buttonhole US soldiers 24/7 in case they might say or do something that is not illegal, but just lets people know that this war, like all others good and bad, is screwing with people's minds?
^ I don't deny war dehumanizes participants and people engage in gallows humor that still doesn't automatically mean that what Beauchamp has said is true. It doesn't mean either that what the Army says about him is true either. I haven't seen enough corroborating evidence, such as others in his company coming out to publicly admit to what Beauchamp writes about, or others flatly denying it. I'm skeptical about both claims.
On the issue of the skull, it reminds me quite a bit (perhaps too much?) of a recent story about German soldiers in Afghanistan.
this is one of the most bizarre posts i've ever read. you seem to be saying that it doesn't matter whether or not it's true, because it could be true, and thus it fits your particular narrative of the war, while forgetting that it's the responsibility of TNR to prove it's case, something they have refused to do. instead, they, and you, seem to think it's ok to make wildly unsubstantiated allegations, and then say, in the words of mc beauchamp, "prove i'm wrong." what has happened to standards and accuracy in reporting? and then, you seem to want to excuse the alleged behavior w/ a "boys will be boys" shrug, c'est la vie, c'est la guerre- may i assume that you were likewise as cavalier about abu ghraib?
Oh please. You're reading my post completely wrong. You either can't fathom what I'm saying, which is sad but proves my point as well as anything I could write... or you're deliberately misrepresenting what I said, which is pathetic. And really, trying to make me look like Rushbo and bringing in a comparison to Abu Ghraib is really low. Here's one difference: command approval.
O’Hanlon: Iraq Trip Relied On ‘The Itinerary The Defense Department Developed’ In their now infamous New York Times op-ed, Brookings analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack wrote that “[w]e are finally getting somewhere” in Iraq, based on their eight day trip to the war-torn country. In the days following the op-ed, the media gushed over the analyst’s opinions, uncritically referring to them as “vocal war critics,” despite their long history of support for the war. But in a recent interview, Glenn Greenwald elicits the inner details of the trip from O’Hanlon, confirming “rather conclusively what a fraud this Op-Ed was, and even more so, the deceitfulness of the intense news coverage it generated.” Some key points from the interview: As Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) last month, the trips to Iraq organized by the U.S. government are aptly characterized as “the dog and pony show” for the superficial, dressed up view they provide. O’Hanlon and Pollack’s op-ed, however, made no mention of the extent of the Pentagon’s involvement. Nor did O’Hanlon make much mention of it to other media outlets, observes Greenwald. With the superficiality of their trip revealed, O’Hanlon and Pollack’s op-ed can hardly be considered the “climate-changing” salvo that the right wing would like it to be. Read the full interview here . http://thinkprogress.org/
Here's the article by Greenwald with his reaction: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/12/ohanlon/index.html
The front page of USA Today read that major attacks are down 50% since the surge started. So now you are having accounts from liberal institutions, liberal lawmakers, and you have data points in the liberal biased media - all pointing to a changing picture in Iraq.
