How friggin dare anyone out there make fun of Hillary after all she has been through. She lost her free house, she went through an impeachment. She has one friggin kid. Her husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now shes going through a political battle. All you people care about is..... readers and making money off of her. SHE'S A HUMAN! What you don't realize is that Hillary is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her. She hasn't performed on stage in days. Her song is called "give me more" for a reason because all you people want is MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE. LEAVE HER ALONE! You are lucky she even performed for you BASTARDS! LEEEAVE HILLARY ALLLLLONE!.....Please. Paris Hilton talked about professionalism and said if Hillary was a professional she would've pulled it off no matter what. Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publically bash someone who is going through a hard time? Leave Hillary Alone Please.... Leave Hillary Clinton alone...right now! I mean it. Anyone that has a problem with her you deal with me, beacuse she is not well right now. leave her alone!

Original here.

Today is the 44th anniversary of the event that inspired the Seinfeld episodes featuring Keith Hernandez.

An interesting article on what might have happened to the Iraqi WMD program and the Syrian connection.

Vida Gym Ron Paul Shirt - m4m - 30 (Downtown)

Check it out before the posts die.

I am certainly one to pick on the Paulaholics, but this is just too much and too stupid.

Hat tip to Wonkette.

So, the Honorable Mrs. Clinton has been "swiftboated"? In my book, it means that a liar has been brought to-rights, but okay.

She also serially flip-flopped on the same ILLEGAL immigrant issue .5 dozen times in a few days? She was for it, before she was against it THREE TIMES?

Her underlings put on notice the next questioner, Wolf Blitzer, not to "pull a Russert"?

Mrs. Clinton is the Honerable John Kerry, in pants.
QED

Excellent post. Just click through, no one quote does the whole thing justice.

Ron Paul spent the same amount of time in Vietnam as did George Bush.

Too much background to get into on this, but the letter should stand on it's own. A chick I went out with a couple of times, who went from a Euro Hawk to surrender monkey on a dime. Names have been deleted to protect the monkey.

I am doing fine, same as I was last I wrote.

Hope you work out that house thing and whatever else you have going on.

Perhaps those of us who take the world seriously will stop the attacks on civilization before the insurgents are at the gates of Vienna again, in spite of those who find it to be an inconvenience to their sensibilities.

Good luck to you and please send my love and appreciation to your daughter who is serving all of humanity in the most noble effort of our lives.

The DC metrorail crisis on 6 NOV 2007 was a stark reminder on how Nature is fighting back on human encroachment into her territory.

Nature made a valiant attempt at stopping the US Military Industrial Establishment by closing the Pentagon metrorail station through a primitive use of smoke. Yes, simple smoke, from the leaves of trees that were scattered across the electrified tracks in a coordinated effort with the wind.

Not since the assassinations of Senator Sonny Bono and a Kennedy in 1998 have we seen Nature express her displeasure at the violation of her most private regions as we have seen lately.

Even in a stump speech, Senator Hillary Clinton has noted the Assassination by Nature of millions in retaliation of the theft of oil from Mother Nature's most private areas.

Who does Nature have in her sights next? Greenpiece? NATO? London? It is anybody's guess as Nature is the most secretive of foes to annoy. One can not waterboard or drug nature into revealing her next attack, one can only wait and hope to survive.

Update 11 NOV 2007: Looks like someone else came up with this phrase a few days before my post.

Just saw this is "green week" or something and thought of the ultimate Segway modification: replace batteries with a Honda generator for the "ultimate" hybrid. Burn ethenol in it if you want!

Via The Corner at The National Review Online:

Refighting the Pacific War? [Mark Krikorian]

Gen. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has died. He "had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest." Detractors? Protest? He helped win the war and -- oh, by the way -- saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives (both American and Japanese), but the left-wingers couldn't stand the fact that he wasn't a self-hater like them. Because, as he said, "I sleep clearly every night." You go on sleeping clearly, general.

Too bad he didn't go to law school, because I'd rather have a man like Tibbets on the Supreme Court rather than Justice John Paul Stevens, who recently told an interviewer that he was "troubled" by the fact there was "so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration" before deciding to kill Adm. Yamamoto in 1943 -- the head of the Japanese navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Humanitarian consideration? We're supposed to wring our hands before killing an enemy commander, on a warplane, in the middle of a war? I don't follow closely the sophistries of the Supreme Court, but if this is the quality of the man's reasoning, no wonder we're in such trouble.

11/01 11:21 PM

Maybe I have thought about writing this for so long that I just think I wrote about it. Or I posted it on someone else's 'blog.

Lakeside Inn, Reston, VA
1999ish

I was talking to two older guys, both Army veterans. One, who I had talked to many times, was a Special Forces guy in Vietnam. He always had some obscure thing to bring up and talk about, but he was tricky about it and there usually was an interesting lesson related to his stories. The other guy was just drunk and confusing.

So, the non-SF guy starts quizzing me about my background.

Him: "WHAT WAS YOUR MOS!?"

Me: "Huh? I have 20 years of service; have been in 3 different Officer Fields and two Enlisted MOSs . . ."

Him: "WHAT WAS YOUR MOS!?"

Me: "When I enlisted I was a 45N and then I was a 19E . . ."

He kept going on and on, as if he had never heard about anybody ever progressing past pot-scrubber and basically calling me a liar about my background. He also went on and on about how his time in the Army was the most traumatic time in his life.

Me: "When were you in?"

Him: "During 'nam, 1970 - 1972" (not sure if that is exact, but it was around then)

Me: "Oh wow, you must have seen some rough stuff. Most of the Vietnam vets I know don't have that attitude. Where were you stationed?"

Him: "Germany."

Me: "WHAT!? and what was YOUR MOS?"

Him: "Truck driver (he did name the MOS code too)."

Me: "Lemme get this straight. You are sharp-shooting me, with 20 years of service and the most 'traumatic' experience in your life was driving trucks around Germany in the 1970's??? AND you can't get over that experience???"

The conversation degraded from there. If I wrote about this in the past it was probably more accurate. All this PV1 Beauchamp stuff reminds me about that guy whenever it comes up, except PV1 Beauchamp is actually doing rough duty.

Drudge, New Republic battle over 'Baghdad Diarist'
October 27, 2007

In his account, Beauchamp described various ways in which the occupation of Iraq brutalized soldiers in his combat infantry unit. He described the ridicule of a disfigured Iraqi woman, attempts to run over stray dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles and the mistreatment of dead children's remains.

In his own reaccounting, he was not in Iraq when he met the disfigured woman, he was in Kuwait. Actually, not his accounting, but the supposedly by the other soldiers that The New Republic asked to back the story. He NEVER said she was Iraqi.
2.pdf
Also, in the readily available documents, he would not swear uner oath to have seen Bradley IFVs running over dogs or the desecration of human remains.

The writer's identity quickly was revealed and both the New Republic and the Army investigated.

Yes, his identity was revealed by his publisher, The New Republic as was that of his wife who was writing for them at the time, Elspeth Reeve. BTW, the Army was already investigating him for OPSEC violations in his weblog.

The magazine determined that the incident involving the disfigured woman was concocted and corrected that,

Not quite. They minimalized a serious error that undermined the entire premise of the story. Otherwise, you are on track. On the window track that you are licking on the short bus.

but also reported that interviews with Beauchamp's comrades substantiated his version of the other events.

Other than the fact that none of them backed those accounts up under oath. Neither did PV1 Beauchamp. The man has a title, you might try using it in your writing.

The Army's investigators refused to release details of their findings, but said in an e-mail that Beauchamp's "allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made."

The Congress has restricted what can be released as a part of public law. The parties to the investigation have protection under the law, no matter how much you do not like or understand it and public releases of information are not the data dumps that you might wish.

A report in the Weekly Standard alleged that, as part of the Army investigation, the private also had signed a statement totally disavowing his piece. When the New Republic inquired about such a statement, an Army spokesman denied it existed.

The Weekly Standard spoke out of school, at the time. However, the now illegally released record supports The Weeekly Standard's source. seems to be an unofficial source, subject to LEGAL (ever read that word before?) retribution.

Since then, Beauchamp has remained in Iraq with his unit and the magazine has been unable to communicate with him.

Other than 2 or 3 times as stated by Mr. Franklin Foer and a transcript from a 6 September 2007 telephone conversation. Did you know that you refer to the transcript later in this article? How could you be unaware of a conversation that you write about in this same article? Are you Fairbankising all the way through?

Both the New Republic -- still unable to determine whether its story was true or false -- and bloggers interested in the case -- enraged that the story had "defamed" and "dishonored" the U.S. military -- have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for release of documents produced by the Army's inquiry.

Yep, you got something correct. Funny how the raw, un-redacted version does not look so hot for Mr. Foer and his crew, huh?

The Drudge writer, whoever that may be, then went on to list four documents he or she had obtained. Two were transcripts of a Sept. 7 telephone conference call in which Beauchamp, with at least two military superiors present with him in Iraq, spoke at length with New Republic editor Franklin Foer and the magazine's executive editor Peter Scoblic.

You went through all of that crap when you knew about this!?

Oh, only one person in the room was a true "military superior", his squad leader. The PAO representative, while higher in rank (just by accident, PV1 Beauchamp would have been an SP4 if he could just stay out of trouble) was not in the Private's chain of command.

At a certain point in the conversation, the latter two telephonically included the lawyer the magazine had retained to represent Beauchamp. In the course of this conversation, Beauchamp repeatedly refused to confirm or deny the details of his diarist piece and professed his desire to devote himself entirely to fulfilling his duties as a soldier.

Seems you missed the part where the TNR reps. did the whole mob-movie-like thing hoping nothing bad happened to his wife Elspeth "Ellie" Reeve.

One of the documents is a kind of executive summary of the Army's investigation, concluding that Beauchamp's article was entirely false and recommending that he receive psychiatric treatment. The fourth document, according to Drudge, was "a signed 'Memorandum for Record' in which Beauchamp recants his stories and concedes the facts of the Army's investigation -- that his stories contained 'gross exaggerations and inaccurate allegations of misconduct' by his fellow soldiers." (In fact, signing such a document -- if it exists -- is not an admission of guilt, but merely an acknowledgment that the person under investigation has been shown the contents.)

It was interesting to note that Drudge provided links to the transcripts and report but not to the purported "Memorandum for Record."

Are you talking about the "Memorandum of Concern", a counceling statement, included in 2.pdf, that was signed by LTC (Tim, that means Lieutenant Colonel) George A. Glaze, on 1 September 2007? Or do you mean the "Memorandum for Record", contained in the same .pdf, signed by PV1 (that means Private, E-1) Beauchamp on 1 September 2007 at 2030 hrs? Yes, the latter is just a reciept.

No, he did not overtly "recant" his stories, a PAO was on record said that to Bob Owens some time before the Drudge documents were posted. However, he did swear to a set of facts that shred the basis of his stories. Should not be a big deal for you an the TNR crowd, where Kuwait is as good as Iraq for a "horrors of war" story.

Don't you know any of this? Did you come into this story right after an Anthropology Department keg party? Are you trying to get a TNR job or as a commentor on Ezra Klein's 'blog?

Read the rest yourself. This guy needs modern medication.

Mr. Foer is NOT protecting PV1 Beauchamp. He is protecting an editor and himself.

See my earlier post for details.

Maybe it is a little too apparent from the transcript (
part one here, part two here.

The New Republic people threaten PV1 Beauchamp with his wife's job and tell him that he is never going to write again. All of that is overlayed over telling him, several times, that he should not "recant" his story.

Now, if you are never going to write again what is the point of not recanting your story if you are the one who lied? Even if you did not lie about anything, what is the point of not recanting your story unless it is just to protect someone else?

If Ellie had nothing to do with the stories, other than being the innocent wife of the author, what is the point of threatening PV1 Beauchamp with her losing her job over his lies? Her job shoul not be at risk at all.

So, we have Mr. Foer saying that whatever PV1 Beauchamp sent to them was fine and his work checked out when TNR investigated it. Somehow, by the time it got to print, a large portion of the military world had a problem with it, including me.

I am sure there are other perfectly good theories out there, but the only thing that fits for me is that Mr. Foer is leaning on the Private and his wife to protect another employee of his.

Or at least be forced to listen to the first few tracks of Smokin'.

Note: At the time of this writing, the TNR search feature was not returning any Beauchamp articles and appears to be related to the revamping of their website.

"The Editors" of TNR posted this statement on 10 August 2007. Besides calling a major location error in "Shock Troops" one key detail (the detail being that "the war" turned their writer into a "monster" but he was in Kuwait, before arriving in Iraq, at odds with the published story), they also give us this tidbit:

Scott Beauchamp is currently a 23-year-old soldier in Iraq who, for the past 15 days, has been prevented by the military from communicating with the outside world, aside from three brief and closely monitored phone calls to family members.

Note that it was only 15 days. The thing is, nobody was keeping Private Beauchamp from contacting TNR or his family (his wife was working for TNR at the time) before his Operational Security (OPSEC) investigation began and nobody was keeping him from contacting anybody after the investigation concluded. The Private was not prevented from contacting anybody at all when this story was being investigated by The Weekly Standard and the gaping holes and Fairbanksings were being revealed. Nor was he prevented from contacting others after his most recent investigation was concluded.

Additionally, they did speak to a BAE Systems employee, as they claimed and as verified by Bob Owens. Problem is, TNR did not reveal the name of Mr. Doug Coffee, the name of the firm where he is employeed, nor their sloppy "fact checking" process. That process lacks a few basics, like giving the expert a copy of what you are verifying. Yes, if you did not know, the verifier at TNR just asked Mr. Coffee some general, leading questions and proclaimed the Shock Troops dog killing Bradley driver story complete and factual. When Mr. Bob Owens presented Mr. Coffee with the actual story, he changed his take on the possibility of Bradleys being dog and concrete smashers. TNR does not reveal any other experts questioned, but then again they did not reveal any experts at all to start with.

Enough old news, the transcript of a 6 September 2007 confrence call has surfaced. It appears to be authentic and part one can be found here, part two here. Whomever released this stuff outside of the regular Public Affairs process is in for trouble. Contrary to what Mr. Foer would like you to believe, this is NOT Army policy and PAO Major Kirk Luedeke, assigned to this issue, even told Mr. Foer so. TNR and Mr. Foer, who have had no problem at all with an publishing insider's fabrications about the antics of himself and his fellow troops, suddenly has a problem with some no-name leaking an official investigation that involves TNR. Go figure.

It really does not sound like Mr. Foer needs to be commenting on anything military, nor does he need to have any supervisory control over any articles related to the military. Actually, perhaps TNR should stay away from military articles completly and just stick with Beltway Babbling about big lofty policy.

In the transcripts we have this:

Transcript of Conversation
            Scott Thomas Beauchamp and The New Republic, 061945SEP07
Attendees: Pvt Scott Thomas Beauchamp, A/1-18 IN; Frank Foer, Editor The New Republic, Peter Scoblic, Executive Editor, The New Republic, SSG Preiszler, squad leader, Spc. Ben Washburn, 4th IBCT Public Affairs and "Gene" Lawyer for Scott Beauchamp, provided by The New Republic

(double check my typing accuracy, the .pdf I was reading was a picture not a text document)

See any commissioned officers in that header? I don't either, but Franklin Foer imagines one intimidating Private Beauchamp during the conversation, as he told Howard Kurtz shortly after the transcript and investigation were improperly released. It seems like Mr. Foer was not banking on the transcript getting out, as he never said a word about this conversation happening before it was unexpectedly released.

Of course, Mr. Foer is making a big fuss about the Army not giving TNR all sorts of documents, so that TNR can spin this story however they wish. Check the transcripts if you don't believe me. What is puzzling is how TNR had a confrence call with the Army and now expects the Army to be the only ones to provide a transcript. They could not record and transcribe this themselves? Granted, they would have missed the detail of Private Beauchamp sipping some water, but they could have included the full name of the lawyer that they retained for Private Beauchamp.

More about the transcript and Mr. Foers comments about it in a bit. Let's check something else that is important to this story.

Mr. Foer has tossed out the idea that the Army interviewed the wrong people in the Article 15-6 investigation and demands their sworn statements. He is pretty cagy about who TNR interviewed to investigate/re-report the Baghdad Diarist stories. Actually, he never has released the names of anybody interviewed other than Privat Beauchamp and Elspeth Reeve. The Diarist stories are full of military violations, even serious crimes, but he does not turn over the evidence to complete an investigation into these crimes. He does not even bother to tell anybody if any of the soldiers listed in the AR 15-6 report are the ones his magazine interviewed:

CPT Eric Pribyla
SSG Skyler Preszler
PFC Tracy King
SSG Jonathan Duncan
SSG Kevin Reinhardt
PFC Brian Long
SPC Gregory Franz
PFC Randy Moon
SSG Scott Cunningham
SFC Martin Guiterrez
1LT Jamil Brown
SSG Robert Bauer
SSG Clifford Gabriel
CPT Lee Showman
SSG Jessee Martin
SSG Francis Hancock
SGT Craig McLaughlin
SPC William Whitmore
PV2 Jarrid Ilgenfriz

Every one of them signed a DA 2823. Did Mr. Foer send "Gene" the lawyer to Iraq and get sworn statements from his 'witnesses'? Not that I know of.

One portion of Shock Troops, that is somewhat refuted in the AR 15-6 report, is the inference that 'Scott Thomas' saw a Bradley running over dogs. Actually, he (or his editor) wrote that he did not see the third dog killing by the Bradley driver, implying that he saw the previous two. The 15-6 says he never saw a Bradley run over a dog. Also in Shock Troops, Private Beauchamp (or his editor) wrote that he saw his friends desecrate the remains of a child. The 15-6 says that he witnessed no such thing.

As you can see, squaring what Mr. Foer says with what is in the sworn record is going to be pretty difficult, unless you use imagenary English. So, let's try that.

Mr. Foer keeps telling anybody who will listen that Private Beauchamp has not "recanted" his stories. He tells all that Elspeth Reeve told him that PV1 Beauchamp told her that he never "recanted" and he says that the Private himself called Mr. Foer at home in a private, unrecorded, untranscribed conversation that he did not "recant". Fine, so Private Beauchamp never used the word "recant" or any of its variants in his sworn statements. He only made sworn statements that completly shreded what was printed under his name. There, happy Mr. Foer? I solved the puzzle without buying a vowel.

Back to the transcript. When (softball) interviewed by Mr. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, Mr. Foer claims that PV1 Beauchamp was under duress from the Army during the call. He fails to mention that he and his Executive Editor were bringing up the future of PV1 Beauchamp's wife at the magazine in an attempt to prevent the Private from "recanting" his stories.

Something else that was odd in the transcript, they told PV1 Beauchamp that he was not going to be able to write again after this was all over. Why would they tell him that if the Private was telling the truth the whole time? They still let Eve Fairbanks make up stories over there as an editor (the Examiner prints her fiction too). Lee Seigel is still writing and plenty of other fabricators are fully employed making up stuff more often thatn PV1 Beauchamp. Pure speculation: Perhaps they were trying to warn him to keep quiet about how his articles were edited after he submitted them?

The call happened on 6 September 2007. A couple of weeks later, on 24 September 2007 it was reported that she PV1 Beauchamp's wife was gone from TNR and had moved on to Time.

As they say, stay tuned for more!