GMontag's Journal: The Private Second Class Scott Thomas Beauchamp Affair

Where is the MacGuffin?
28 July 2007

Admissions and Facts First, Speculation Later (I will add links to text later, but I did change a lot of what I was going to write after re-looking at the original sources. this link to the article was working free as I wrote)

I shall confess, that I was in the minority thinking that 'PFC Scott Thomas' was made up by an editor at The New Republic, at best a load of Glassifications from nonsense passed off by fake vets as fact. Turns out it looks a lot more like a Fairbanksing.

1. Contrary to the dreams of the apologists for Private Second Class (PV2) Scott Thomas Beauchamp, he was not "attacked" by the Right at The Weekly Standard or on the "milblogs". The fanciful accounts written by the Private were questioned. Shortly thereafter, the paid subscribers of The New Republic, in the comments section to his article Shock Troops posted 23 July 2007, questioned the honesty of the Private too.

Look for yourself. The third comment 2007-07-19 09:42:46 raises several questions.

2. The New Republic also employs the wife of Private Beauchamp, the award winning writer Elspeth Reeve. Apparently, she has known her husband for quite some time as she quoted him in an April 2004 story.

Yes, this is relevant since Franklin Foyer stated Bauchamp being married to Reeve was the main factor for hiring the Private.

3. Private First Class Beauchamp (demoted to Private Second Class some time before "Shock Troops" was published) could have taken the "whistle blower" route and reported all of these incidents he describes up through his chain of command, or through the Chaplain. Even Atheists can report through the Chaplain as this is a parallel reporting chain for misconduct witnessed by soldiers. The fact is, he chose to write 'stories' about events, which if true, would likely have resulted in discipline of the personnel involved.

Abu Ghraib was reported by a Specialist, to his Lieutenant and up through the chain. It was announced to the press at a CENTCOM briefing to the press in short order (and ignored by the press for quite some time). Courts Martials and recommended punishments resulted from this investigation. As far as I remember, they are still not complete.

4. Private Beauchamp boasts in his own weblog, full of Leftist musings, that he will go to war and return a "writer". For some reason comparisons to Hemingway and Orwell are tossed onscreen by the supporters of the Private, but there is quite a difference. Hemingway and Orwell were fine writers before going to war and they made no secret about their writing about the war to their fellow soldiers. Also, their accounts rang true. In Homage to Caledonia, Orwell notes a teen or pre-teen soldier telling a story to an old woman on a train. Even thought he could not understand the conversation he doubts the factualness of the little soldier. Now, there is a similarity between an Orwell experience and the Private Beauchamp experience.

5. Private Beauchamp's wife is, as mentioned earlier, an accomplished writer who works for The New Republic. The only question that I have had, or seen for that matter, about her work in the past was in December of 2006 when Group Think was published in The New Republic. Actually, it was not so much a question about her work as it was a question about the odd coincidence with a not-very-honest sounding story by Eve Fairbanks in the Examiner "Caution: D.C. apartment hunt can result in identity crisis" a few months earlier. The articles sounded like they were written from the same research, one fiction and the Reeve article factual. Not doubting that it was all done with permission, it just seemed odd that employees of the same publication had articles within months of each other that were so close in topic and conclusion.

6. The New Republic fired one of their staffers for "leaking" the fact that Elspeth Reeve is married to Private Beauchamp.

Now for some thoughts on the pile of facts above.

If Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp wanted a real story he could have reported all of the incidents through any of the appropriate channels available and watched how events unfolded. If the reports were ignored or given lax attention, he would really have a story. Even if the investigation resulted in punishment, like at Abu Ghraib, that should not stop a good fabulist from making it sound like the Army ignored things, just like the MSM did with Abu Ghraib.

What he did, no matter what the underlying facts are, was wrong.

Speaking of the "facts", his second-hand story of a Bradley driver running over live dogs is quite difficult to believe, for those of us who have been around dogs anyway. I have not had the occasion to notice them to sun themselves on or next to hot roads. The snoozing dogs I have seen usually pick the shade. When I have seen dogs get run over they are usually trying to run in front of a vehicle. Also, I have not seen any that a Bradley could sneak up on.

As for knowing when a dog chasing the Bradley was close in on the right side, he would have had a spotter in the crew or another vehicle calling him on the radio. He would also have to have a pretty lax Track Commander to let him do all that swerving in formation, market stand smashing and the like.

Many people have been describing the passage from the article about this inaccurately. Here it is, just in case you read something different:

I KNOW ANOTHER private who really only enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over. He took out curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs. Occasionally, the brave ones would chase the Bradleys, barking at them like they bark at trash trucks in America--providing him with the perfect opportunity to suddenly swerve and catch a leg or a tail in the vehicle's tracks. He kept a tally of his kills in a little green notebook that sat on the dashboard of the driver's hatch. One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book. The second kill was a straight shot: A dog that was lying in the street and bathing in the sun didn't have enough time to get up and run away from the speeding Bradley. Its front half was completely severed from its rear, which was twitching wildly, and its head was still raised and smiling at the sun as if nothing had happened at all.
I DIDN'T SEE the third kill, but I heard about it over the radio. Everyone was laughing, nearly rolling with laughter. I approached the private after the mission and asked him about it.

"So, you killed a few dogs today," I said skeptically.
"Hell yeah, I did. It's like hunting in Iraq!" he said, shaking with laughter.
"Did you run over dogs before the war, back in Indiana?" I asked him.
"No," he replied, and looked at me curiously. Almost as if the question itself was in poor taste.

Loudly making fun of a burn or IED victim in a dining facility and getting away with it seems unlikely too. Especially if she left loudly upset. I know when I was younger than the 23 year old private, as a Second Lieutenant, I would not have tolerated that behavior and neither would the Non Commissioned Officers. If the Private wished to push it, he could get at minimum a Conduct Unbecoming charge without saying or doing anything else to the victim.

Grave desecration? More UCMJ action. How on earth does anybody consider this guy a "whistle blower" if he never bothered putting the whistle in his mouth? The only whistle blower in this whole deal is the recently fired New Republic staffer.

One thing that made me think that this was a Fairbanksing job was from that "Big Shame in a Small World" story, written by New Republic Associate Editor, Eve Fairbanks, for The Examiner. She took an existing New York Times story and wrote another story, that was loaded with falsehoods that could easily be seen IF you found the original story. This story smacks of the same treatment. It could be a series of otherwise bland information and made sensational by an editor skilled in Fairbanksing. I wonder where TNR could find one of those?

I really hope the book clobbers this guy when it is thrown at him.

Yes, much of what I have written has been written and said by others over the past few days. Any similar wording is purely accidental.