The conservative Weekly Standard's blog has been aflutter with commentary the past two weeks over a New Republic contributor who they contend could be the Baghdad version of Stephen Glass, another New Republic writer who fabricated stories back in 1998.
The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist," penned by an active-duty soldier using the pseudonym Scott Thomas, produced three separate and disturbing vignettes in the third installment of his column about the curiously sick humor he and his colleagues developed while at war. In his story "Shock Troops" (subscription required), he wrote about making fun of a woman disfigured by an improvised explosive device. He goes on to tell of another soldier who wore a part of a child's skull on his head and then another who enjoyed squashing dogs with a Bradley fighting vehicle. After the first vignette, Thomas paused from his anecdote and asked, "Am I a monster?"
Not the most flattering picture of American troops. And not plausible, said a plethora of military bloggers. After the column's July 13 publication, Michael Goldfarb, a blogger for the Weekly Standard, put out a call to military bloggers, more familiar with the terrain, for assistance in verifying or disputing the claims of the "Baghdad Diarist." Several prominent military bloggers responded and received dozens of replies from military personnel. The New Republic's editor, Franklin Foer, also answered some questions posed by Weekly Standard, but the answers didn't quiet Goldfarb and his fellow bloggers' queries, and thus the New Republic had to identify the writer.
Out came Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the husband of one of the New Republic's staffers, as the "Baghdad Diarist." The magazine stood its ground alongside Beauchamp and his writings and went through and rereported the pieces it had published.
Yesterday the New Republic editors produced the fruits of their investigation in an online-only letter. Beauchamp had gotten everything right, except "one significant detail." The scene he painted of him and his buddies poking fun at an IED-disfigured woman occurred in Kuwait, not Iraq. Not quite Stephen Glass, but an embarrassment nonetheless.
Today, the Weekly Standard and mil bloggers continued to criticize the writer. And according to the New Republic , the Army has launched a separate investigation to examine Beauchamp's claims.
--Nikki Schwab
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