Why the endless attacks against Kabuki theatre?

I don't know how the chickenhawks will be able to prove diddly. Unlike typewriter kerning, they aint gonna get ready made evidence from Karl, and they would have to actually (gulp), go to Iraq to find out.

Being chickenhawks and all, that is out of the question.

Look for Mr Scott Thomas to get assigned lead humvee on the next patrol up IED blvd. however.

[deleted]

war robs us of our humanity

While "Scott Thomas's" writings are valuable, this basic insight is hardly new. Many combat veterans of various wars have described this. For example, in Studs Terkel's excellent book The "Good" War (the word "good" is in quotes in the title), one fellow who fought in the Pacific in WWII describes casually flipping pebbles into an upturned skull filled with rainwater. He didn't do it to be morbid or vengeful, he was just bored. Only afterward did he realize how macabre it was. At the time he'd seen so much death that he thought little of it.

"War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it" -- William Tecumseh Sherman

The possibility that he was married to or engaged to a TNR staffer is the most interesting tidbit.

A lot of the milblogs are assuming that he is probably a whiner, bad troop, etc..., though the truth is he is probably a decent well liked guy with slightly different political leanings.

As if any of this is new - just about any book on WWI, Paul Fussell's excellent Doing Battle, the massacre at Hoengsong in Korea, just about any book about Vietnam, and the well-documented "turkey shoot" and less well-document massacre by McCafferty's command at the close of the first Gulf War.

Some will complain: "war dehumanizes you" (whatever that means - what if we're talking about something that is innately human, but just shocking to those who've never experienced it - like sex?)

Others (like Al) will say: "no, war doesn't make people into crazies, you're all just making it up in some big leftwing conspiracy because you're out to get lovers of Freedom and America and Goodness, and you're in league with the Devil!"

I say - who gives a crap?
At the end of the day, there are still nasty people out there that will try to kill you if they get a chance. War is a necessary part of survival.

On the other hand, there are even nastier assholes who use that fact as a pretext to con you into financing the most heinous criminal war profiteering enterprises, because they are less human than the guy who makes necklaces out of the human ears he cuts off his victims.

Let's not focus on how war affects the warfighter. It could be much worse for them. They could get killed. Let's focus on how we can stop falling for the bullshit con-jobs of the war profiteers. The Cheneys, the Bush Crime Family. etc.

Al's comment above sounds suspiciously familiar.

I liked the way Malkin characterized him as "another Winter Soldier" as if that automatically debunked him. With a gratuitous slap at John Kerry thrown in just for the hell of it. To say that these people are beneath contempt is an insult to the concept of being beneath contempt.
I'm going back to the other thread and talk about impeachment some more!

As if any of this is new - just about any book on WWI, Paul Fussell's excellent Doing Battle, the massacre at Hoengsong in Korea, just about any book about Vietnam, and the well-documented "turkey shoot" and less well-document massacre by McCafferty's command at the close of the first Gulf War.
Exactly. There's also the famous photograph from World War II of an American woman contemplating the Japanese skull her husband sent home to her as a souvenir.

All soldiers are tempted to callousness and atrocities. You judge between them by whether their army tries to minimize the brutalizing effects of combat, ignores it, encourages it, or is simply too broken or incompetant to take action.

War dehuminizes all of us.

. . . or, why don't we talk about human slavery, okay? We're really getting our tax-dollars worth in this war. Uh huh. That's the way to get that bang-for-your-buck! All right, way to go Republicans!

Sullivan's comments are more or less right, but it's about more than that. Really, it doesn't matter to the right whether his story is true or false; the point of this whole absurd manufactured furor was identifying the guy, in order to ensure that he suffers retaliation. It's exactly what happened with Jamil Hussein. Truth isn't the issue; the issue is making examples of anyone who deviates from the party line.

Al couldn't contribute because he's too busy "celebrating" with the corpses of dead soldiers. He loves it! The U.S. Constitution was only a "quaint" piece of paper, anyway.

Should someone point out that TNR is (or at the very least was) nearly as pro war as the WEEKLY Standard ?

Yeah, those various, reliable accounts of necklaces strung with human ears, etc., worn by US troops in Nam were all "made up", too. ...

What's that?? They WEREN"T???
___________

[OT] Follow-up to a prior posting:

"Who Knows Why Ward Churchill Was Fired?"
by Ira Chernus
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/26/2780/print/

' My employer, the University of Colorado, has finally fired my colleague, tenured professor Ward Churchill. Why? There are lots of explanations. Take your pick. ...'
__________

Mie! Mie! Mie!

Old news, Kevin. What do you care anyway, since from your anti-impeachment post earlier today, you made it very clear you are just a doormat for the Bush Administration?

Confessions from U.S. Soldiers in Iraq on the Brutal Treatment of Civilians

Actually there is a fair amount of evidence that the printed stories were not accurate. Several soldiers who served in the same unit have pointed out a number of details that they said were untrue.

I am struck by the lack of supporting details from the New Republic of from Thomas. E.g., on what date did a woman with a damaged face eat in Thomas's mess hall and get insulted? Where the childrens' burial place from which a skull was stolen? On what date did Thomas visit this burial place. A possible weak point in Thomas's story is that so far nobody else has said that there even was such a children's burial place.

The charges are being officially investigated by the military and unofficially by lots of individuals. I expect we will soon know the facts, one way or the other.

Just laughing out loud at that first comment.

actually, we pulled the last of our troops out of iraq two years ago, having established a stable, western-style democracy. the kurds, the sunnis and the shiites are living in perfect harmony, generally speaking. there have been no deaths in iraq in years — we pulled out largely because our troops had nothing to do and were bored. but left-liberal conspirators (i love redundancies) are hiding the facts because they hate america. and in afghanistan, the taliban is barely a memory, having been wiped out years ago. osama actually is in custody and scheduled to go on trial at the hague next month. and the msm, well, they've covered all of this up because they hate america too! everybody hates america except us true patriotic wingnuts. there, al, egbert, i've saved you the bother of posting!

C'mon Kevin, you can do a better hatchet job on our real positions than that -- no right winger like myself doubts that out of 160,000 troops we're going to have a few Jerry Springer Show rejects - abu Graib demonstrated that. Put aside the fact that Michelle Malkin has already marshalled enough evidence against this twit to make Nifong and his Duke lacrosse case look solid, [why don't you ever provide links to inconvenient evidence?] The real issue is why The New Republic was so enthusiastic about running it before basic fact checking. Even after the Stephen Glass fiasco they still figured Fake But Accurate was worth the risk if it gave them a chance to disparage our troops. Maybe Dan Rather replaced Marty Peretz.

The charges are being officially investigated by the military and unofficially by lots of individuals. I expect we will soon know the facts, one way or the other.
Posted by: ex-liberal on July 26, 2007 at 6:14 PM | PERMALINK

Well, I'm glad that the sleuths that brought us Mai Lai, Pat Tillman, Haditha, and Abu Ghraib are on the case. I'm so relieved.

Actually, ex-lib, the army did confirm that there was a graveyard there, although they said it was a normal graveyard not a Saddam dumping ground.

I do think TNR does bare the blame for this in some part. They had to know that the story was going to be a hot one. They presented it from an anonymous source with no evidence that they confirmed it at all. They could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble simply by saying that the writer was stationed in Iraq and what branch of the service he was in while still keeping his ID secret.

Plus, the overwrought prose was a bit much.

The scary part is that the wingers are now claiming that his fiancee works at TNR and they are going after her. Even J-pod had the sense to say that it was ridiculous to target this poor woman. Maybe because so many people at the Corner owe their own positions to social connections.

What's important to remember here is that there's a accuracy beneath the fakery. Make sure the correct narrative is stressed.

"Let's not focus on how war affects the warfighter. It could be much worse for them. They could get killed. Let's focus on how we can stop falling for the bullshit con-jobs of the war profiteers. The Cheneys, the Bush Crime Family. etc."

OBF: I would agree with you entirely on this point if it weren't for one thing : those "who pull the strings" to enrich themselves via the depradations of war make an obscene habit of casting ALL troops as "Our Glorious Heroes", in order to stifle thoroughly deserved criticism. (I think we both know that ALL generalizations regarding soldiers are inherently false.)

Nevertheless, I concur with your emphsis on the supreme culpability of the latter group -- without the conniving war profiteers and their cheerleading propagandists, the commission of such atrocities would never have been facilitated. It is they who bear the ultimate responsibility for the savagery invariably resulting from their toxic schemes.

Diarist "Shock Troops' written by Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=128957

--so far nobody has any evidence that he's made anything up.--

Interesting that disproving a negative is now tatamount to "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" amongst the left. That aside, sorry, but coming from the guy who gave us Bob Burkett.....well, you're not the go-to person to ask when deciding on some story's plausibility and substance.

You did get points for falling on your sword when it became clear that the guy you interviewed had taken you for a ride & played you for a fool, though. That was pretty good as far as gestures go. But, seriously, that had to have been embarrassing on your part....to go down in history as the guy who interviewed a fraud and swallowed the story whole until someone decided to make a gif of a MS Word version (who'da thunk it?)

"emphsis"

"Emphasis", that is!

("Alright, who stole my 'a'?? Don't nobody leave till I get it back!!") ;-)

Sorry, RW, but no one left of center (except the not-even-liberal New Republic) vouched for this story. The only positive claims were made by wingnuts: that "Scott Thomas" wasn't really a soldier, and that the incidents in his story could not possibly have happened. Both claims have been blown completely to bits.

("Alright, who stole my 'a'?? Don't nobody leave till I get it back!!") ;-)

The same person who stole your L key and space bar?

I'm sorry! I couldn't resist!

As Kevin points out, the conservatives have gone crazy over this story. The reason, I believe, is the unbalanced selection of examples. E.g., from what I know, most parents of KIAs support the war in Iraq. By focusing on Cindy Sheehan, the media gave the opposite impression.

I believe the overwhelming majority of our soldiers in Iraq have behaved very well. Few of their praiseworthy actions have been reported. If the media now focuses on a few bad apples, they will have provided an unbalanced picture of our fighting men and women. It's not (necessarily) lying, but it has the same effect.

Thus, one gets comments like osama_been_forgotten 6:19, which implicitly denigrates the entire military based on four bad things done by military people during the last 40 years. If obf included the many, many good things they've done, the picture would be more balanced.

SnarkyShark >"...Look for Mr Scott Thomas to get assigned lead humvee on the next patrol up IED blvd. however."

The name Pat Tillman comes to mind...

"Everyday reality now is a complete fiction, manufactured by the media landscape and we operate inside it." - JG Ballard

This story makes me ill especially about the dogs being run over (can't help it, I'm a pathetic animal lover). But I've read stories like this before, and long long ago. It's funny how details that come out about this war keep disappearing off the web. Like soldiers own personal blogs that have disappeared. Those who told us, the public, that absolutely the US broke the laws of the Geneva Convention because (several of them did say online), that we (they) were in Iraq 2 months before Bush announced it publically and told the American people we were going.

Oddly, all their personal blogs have disappeared from the net with these details.

America the free!

cough cough

ex-lib;
I wasn't implying that everyone in the military is bad, or commits attrocities.

I was implying that the structure of investigative authority of these incidents has an inherent conflict of interest, and has produced consistently dishonest results, in several high-profile cases.

What blows my mind is - in all of these cases, the truth eventually gets out anyway, and these guys just look worse trying to cover it up. Yet they never seem to learn. . .

"That aside, sorry, but coming from the guy who gave us Bob Burkett.....well, you're not the go-to person to ask when deciding on some story's plausibility and substance.

You did get points for falling on your sword when it became clear that the guy you interviewed had taken you for a ride & played you for a fool, though. That was pretty good as far as gestures go. But, seriously, that had to have been embarrassing on your part....to go down in history as the guy who interviewed a fraud and swallowed the story whole until someone decided to make a gif of a MS Word version (who'da thunk it?)"

Well, its not really as embarassing as spending $500 Billion and several thousand American lives and 100K + Iraqi lives because of forged Uranium memos. The fact that wingnuts chose to ignore that, and the fact that many, like the true demented individuals they are still continute to insist that there were WMDs in Iraq reveals how pathetic they are.

and you are a liar. Kevin was one of the first to say that the memos were dubious.

Wingnuts of course know no remorse. The only way they could make up for the harm their pathetic lies have cost the country is to give up all their money (although it won't make a dent in that half trillion) and go to Iraq and put their own lives on the line. But they won't do that, of course.

---but no one left of center (except the not-even-liberal New Republic) vouched for this story---

You might want to ask the author of this: "The whole thing has been kind of weird. Needless to say, Thomas does exist (he went public this morning on TNR's blog) and so far nobody has any evidence that he's made anything up." - Kevin Drum

Check around, most of the lefty sites are playing the "those righties are sure going bezerk over this and claiming that it's false. Why, I don't see anything false!" game. Just like Rathergate.

obf, you may be right that the investigations of these four events involved cover-ups. However, I'm not so sure that the cover-up was always formally established.

E.g., Andrew Sullivan says our soldiers murdered people at Abu Graib. If so, then I agree there was a cover-up. But, AFAIK there's no official confirmation of such murder or murders. There's a Catch-22 here. Sullivan might say that the lack of official confirmation just shows that the cover-up worked.

Editor and Publisher just today has an article admitting that the media coverage of Hatitha was unfair. See http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003617320

Sometimes when the military fails to find the worst, it's not a cover-up; it's because the worst wasn't accurate.

no right winger like myself doubts that out of 160,000 troops we're going to have a few Jerry Springer Show rejects - abu Graib demonstrated that.
--Minion

Abu Graib was policy, not a fluke. The evidence is overwhelming. Moral cowardice has many forms; one of the worst is refusal to see what's right in front of your eyes.

---and you are a liar. Kevin was one of the first to say that the memos were dubious.---

Heh, that was Charles Johnson & the Freeper guy. Drum came on board after anyone to the right of Castro could see that it was a MSWord fake. After all, who was it again that interviewed Burkett? (hint: look at the URL of this site).

Look, if I want to chat with Kossack losers, I'll go to the source. Piss off, loser.

"Heh, that was Charles Johnson & the Freeper guy. Drum came on board after anyone to the right of Castro could see that it was a MSWord fake. After all, who was it again that interviewed Burkett?"

I said one of the first, you pathetic liar. As soon as information came out that indicated that they were a fake, he said so. He interviewed Burkett well before the memos were published, so yoru insinuation is a lie.

But do tell me why pathetic chickenhawk cowards like you aren't bothered about memos that cost us half a trillion and led to 100K plus deaths ? Says a lot about you pathetic loser's priorities.

"Look, if I want to chat with Kossack losers, I'll go to the source. Piss off, loser."

Yup, thats easier than answering why you aren't bothered by memos and lies that cost us half a trillion deaths. It must be pathetic to be such a chickenhawk and to have such a selective lying memory. If you guys had any sense of honor -- well, the Japanese called it Seppuku ...

"Yup, thats easier than answering why you aren't bothered by memos and lies that cost us half a trillion deaths."

I meant half a trillion dollars and thousands of deaths.
Unlike pathetic wingnuts, I correct typos. They still cling to the delusions of WMDs in Iraq.

"I don't know how the chickenhawks will be able to prove diddly. Unlike typewriter kerning, they aint gonna get ready made evidence from Karl, and they would have to actually (gulp), go to Iraq to find out."
___________________________

The very inability to disprove the Scott Thomas allegations is what makes them so infuriating. Contrary to the comments above, the people most upset with the stories are deployed soldiers and the near concensus opinion among them is that they know of nobody who has acted or was likely to act in the manner described by Scott Thomas.

The individual events don't ring true to people in a position to know. Wearing a skull all day? Why and what's more, how did he keep it on? Did he strap it to his helmet or did he go around in a combat environment all day with his helmet off? Real "Apocalypse Now" stuff, which, since it seems the standard vision of some of how soldiers act, is perhaps the reason he used it.

Run over dogs with a Bradley? Anyone who's ever sat in the driver's seat of a Bradley knows you can't see the ground close enough to the vehicle to run over a dog unless he's already dead. And if he's dead, he might hold an IED. Besides which, any driver goofing around like that would get the track commander's boot up his ass.

Lastly, the story of mocking a person wounded by an IED is just so out of character that almost no one believes it. Soldiers don't mock comrades who have suffered wounds, especially those caused by IEDs. Then, there's the little detail that nobody else stationed at Thomas' FOB remembers anyone with such wounds. Perhaps he had his own mess hall - the one at his FOB isn't big enough for such a person to go unnoticed.

Nope, the events cannot be disproved. But the people who are really pissed aren't chickenhawks.

The relationship between the wingnutosphere and evidence never ceases to amaze me.

A few weeks ago, a man shot an airman in a parking lot outside an apartment building in New Jersey. The shooter then committed suicide by shooting himself w/ his own gun. He left two notes saying that he "hated the government" and "wanted to make a statement".

Malkin and the LGF cretins went nuts over this incident, claiming that the airman was shot by an anti-military leftist. The prosecutor did not release the notes, but he did say that they indicated that the shooter was severely disturbed. This statement was not compelling to Malkin et al., who continued to insist that the prosecutor did not release the notes because they "probably" contained anti-military hate speech.

All this despite having no knowledge of whether the shooter had expressed any such sentiments either in the note or in the past. It was subsequently revealed that the airman was not in uniform; thus it's unlikely the shooter even knew the victim was an airman.

At the time, my sense of the situation was that it was more likely that the shooter was mentally ill than that the shooting occurred because of his political leanings, but anyone who knows anything about mental illness knows that a first psychotic break typically occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood. And the "reasons" given for acts that occur in such situation often involve demonization of some "other", i.e., the FBI, the CIA, foreigners, the government. And, of course, there was the prosecutor's statement.

I was so annoyed by this nonsense that I actually called the prosecutor's office and spoke to their public information officer, who said explicitly that there were no references to the military in the notes and that they were rambling and barely coherent. He also said that it was a matter of policy not to release such notes.

As far as I know, neither Malkin nor any of her pals made any effort to check out the validity of their assumptions, and I haven't seen any updates, corrections, or apologies indicating that those assumptions were incorrect. After all, there are other left-wing atrocities to attack . . . on the basis of similarly convincing enemies.

Here's a link to an editorial that sums up the facts.

SnarkyShark >"...Look for Mr Scott Thomas to get assigned lead humvee on the next patrol up IED blvd. however."

The name Pat Tillman comes to mind...
_________________________

Oh, great, now Sergeant Tillman wasn't simply killed by accident, he was assassinated. No doubt because he had discovered we weren't really looking for Osama bin Laden.

What's most likely to happen to Private Beauchamp is that he'll be treated with kid gloves to prevent anyone from physically registering their objection to his stories. His battalion commander will tell the company commander to get him out of there before anything happens to him. Then the lawyers will get involved and recommend he be given an early honorable discharge. After which, he'll be welcomed into the bosom of the Left. After that, who knows, maybe Hollywood will beckon.

Nope, the events cannot be disproved. But the people who are really pissed aren't chickenhawks.

Are they the same people who threatened to kill Joseph Darby and forced him out of the Army for telling the truth about Abu Ghraib?

Kevin's post is weak and, I guess, trying to preemptively set up a defense for a liberal guy who already has shown himself to be a total jerk and who probably will look much worse before this is over.

Why can't everone agree at this point the principal issue is whether he was telling the truth?

Kevin states he is afraid that Thomas' character will be dragged through the mud. This is a guy who already wrote about how he made hideous fun of a woman whose face was scarred in an IED attack. Can't we agree he is offensive jerk based on his own conduct?

He gets no points for "going public." The brilliant pseudonym he came up with was his first and middle name and his wife/fiance worked for TNR - he obviously was not going to stay unknown for long.

He also has been disclosed as a very liberal democrat, supporter of Howard Dean. I guess the liberals are bracing for his disgrace, but what you should be doing is attacking him for his admitted grossly offensive conduct and finding out if he is telling the truth about others.

By the way, I don't think many "conservative sites" said he did not exist. I'm afraid Kevin may be making that up, or at least exaggerating. Truth is the anecdote for all this.

Wow, the troll droppings are thick on the ground tonight. Looks like this one is cutting too close to the bone.

"Truth is the anecdote for all this."

Heh. Just like a wingnut--to them, all truth is merely an anecdote.

Joel,

That is not what I said. If you are interested in being serious about it, why don't you agree that we should focus on whether the guy was telling the truth? It seems like a simple proposition.

"'But the people who are really pissed aren't chickenhawks.'

Are they the same people who threatened to kill Joseph Darby and forced him out of the Army for telling the truth about Abu Ghraib?"
_______________________

Since the perps at Abu Ghraib were mostly Reservists and Beauchamp is in the 1st ID, no, they aren't. Or was it your point to suggest that one can't expect anything but lies from those who might feel they've been defamed? Some sort of universally nefarious military mind, perhaps?

Uh, Brian, it's exactly what you said:

"Truth is the anecdote for all this."

To you, by your own testimony, truth is merely an "anecdote." Some of us place a higher value on truth than on anecdodes. Clearly, by your own admission, you don't.

Smarter trolls, please.

The claim that he didn't exist and that his stories were fabricated was hilarious coming from the Right which has repeatedly mass e-mailed false stories by soldiers or about soldiers, about Democratic politicians, about outrageous lawsuits, etc.

Even more funny coming from right-wing blogs who seem to specialize in lying and passing around the same or similar false stories.

Yeah, I'm talking about you Drudge and you Instahack.

Yeah, "the perps at Abu Ghraib were mostly Reservists." Right, the Bush administration fully evaluated the issue and all they could find were a few reservists causing trouble.

Maybe in a world where the sky is green and there is serious discussion of the aerodynamic properties of porcine mammals. Here in the real world where Rumsfeld made every effort to keep the evidence from coming out there is no reason to believe the results of an investigation by people who stand to gain from a cover-up.

focuses on a few bad apples...? I don't agree.

It sounds like rather standard behaviors of personnel experiencing symptoms of detachment and/or buried emotions stemming from battle conditions. How can a human be asked to shoot to kill in one situation and then re-engage compassion and sympathy the next? Sure, some can probably do that, but wouldn't it be less agonizing for personnel on missions to simply put emotions into neutral and get the job done? Running over dogs does not seem strange when viewed from the angle of what these folks enforced mental state must be.

That the dogs died needlessly is not to be made light of and that the soldier will carry the memories for life is equally serious. But time and again these stories come out and I believe them. Killing or battle conditions is not the natural state of being for these kids, no matter how good the training or how noble the purpose for war is made out to be for them. The conditions these soldiers work in surely demand that emotions or feelings be put aside in whatever way a soldier can. For many that detachment must take a toll, exacting some kind of mental price which has to be paid, if not at the moment then later in life.

I don't feel these soldiers are bad apples at all, I imagine they are coping with war.

….now Sergeant Tillman wasn't simply killed by accident… trashhauler at 8:32 PM

…However, the medical examiner said Tillman had been killed by "three head shots to the forehead in a pattern about the size of a half dollar". That doesn't sound like the chaotic and confused firing described by the investigators. In fact, it sounds like an expert sniper's shooting. And if the shooter could do that, it's obvious they saw who they were killing….

Details of Tillman's death do not match scenario described.

…"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.
The doctors whose names were blacked out said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away….

On the basis of factual statements, you're hitting less than zero. There is no doubt, none, that Abu Ghraib was instigated not by reservists but by experienced higher ups. Reservists would not invent those tortures on their own nor would they commit them without approval of senior officers.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio....

"Tillman had been killed by "three head shots to the forehead in a pattern about the size of a half dollar". That doesn't sound like the chaotic and confused firing described by the investigators. In fact, it sounds like an expert sniper's shooting. And if the shooter could do that, it's obvious they saw who they were killing. The whole thing stinks."
_____________________

In fact, snipers do not fire in bursts of three. They fire one shot at a time. It is common, however, for a soldier to have his rifle on the three round burst setting. Even so, shooting for the head is a pretty chancy thing. Center of mass is the way to go. Three rounds fired high, catching someone in the head. It sounds exactly what might happen in a chaotic firefight. Tillman was tragically unlucky.

I'm not questioning your right to believe all sorts of conspiracy theories, Mike. But they aren't all necessarily true, just because somebody wrote them up in conspiratorial tones.

Holy Toledo, Milo. You mean this guy is not an anti-American, anti-troops sort of guy? We DO support the troops, right? I mean, we really should....

When you ask us to support the troops, do you mean the troops who are alive or the troops who are dead or wounded?

Where is Tillman's journal? If that wasn't missing, I might not have nearly so many questions. But at this point so many lies have been told, I am accepting nothing just because they say it. That the ME's tried to get an investigation going to determine if a crime had been committed and were rebuffed, makes me have thoughts I would rather not have.

Maybe some are a tad to given to conspiracies. But then again, maybe others are not given enough to them.

… But they aren't all necessarily true, just because somebody wrote them up in conspiratorial tones. trashhauler at 10:20 PM

If you want to address the case, make the facts public instead of your usual speculation, spin and smear. That should not be too much to ask of what is supposedly a democratic, not despotic, government.

Joel,

It is not "smart" for you to twist "Truth is the anecdote for all this" to "all truth is merely an anecdote." You are twisting what I said into something I did not say. I assume most readers here can see that.

And why have you not answered my question of "why don't you agree that we should focus on whether the guy was telling the truth?"

Or why you don't agree that the guy is a offensive jerk, since he admittedto mocking a disfigured IED victim, regardless of whether he is liberal, conservative or something else.

I never understand why partisans like Joel are unwilling to engage in serious and respectful dialogue.

brian, aside from your general ignorance about military matters both at the tactical and strategic levels, you are having trouble because you are being mocked for your inability to understand the difference between two words that sound similar, but not alike: anecdote and antidote. It makes you sound even more foolish than you already do when talking out of your depth. It even makes you sound more foolish than when you accuse others of "partisanship."

Of course, the armed services are not exactly attracting the cream of the crop, if you know what I mean.

….how the soldiers feel about being slimed by "Scott Thomas"?….Took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights at 10:36 PM

…Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported -- and almost always go unpunished…..

If you don't want to read about atrocities, don't commit atrocities.

This is the same as the Tiger Force in Vietnam. The fact is war is savage and dehumanizing.

heavy,

thanks for the correction of anecdote (although the rest of your post is harsh and unsubstantiated and supports my observation about a lack of serious and respectful dialogue)

embarassing as my error is, and as much as I hate to acknowledge "victory" by Joel, my other points stand with the substitution of antidote for anecdote. cheers.

osama_been_forgotten: "I wasn't implying that everyone in the military is bad, or commits attrocities."

Why should you apologize to ex-liberal, who purposely misconstrued what you originally said? Bad things can and do happen in war. Period.

I have in my possession three different photos of my father's activities in the Vietnam War, and I'd like to tell you about them. He was a senior USMC advisor to MACV, well prior to the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

First up is a photo that appeared in the January 1964 Marine Corps Gazette, which shows him passing out CARE packages to Vietnamese children living in hamlets along the Mekong Delta.

The second is a 2 Nov 1963 photo of him in the process of personally positioning his 4th Vietnamese Marine Brigade around the Presidential Palace in Saigon, in preparation for the imminent military coup d'etat against President Diem. After my father was finished with his deployments, he withdrew to the U.S. embassy to avoid official culpability, the coup began, and President Diem was subsequently killed.

The third photo shows the aftermath of the 16 Feb 1964 Viet Cong bombing of the Capital Kinh Do Theater in the American compound in downtown Saigon, in which my father was killed while saving the lives of hundreds of American civilian and military personnel attending a showing of a then-popular movie, The List of Adrian Messenger (for which he was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross).

Now, you can either ask yourself or tell me and everyone here -- which of those photos would you consider best representative of my father's activities in Vietnam, or even of our nation's collective Vietnam experience?

And then ask yourself, are there truly any right or wrong answers to that particular question?

focuses on a few bad apples...? I don't agree.

It sounds like rather standard behaviors of personnel experiencing symptoms of detachment and/or buried emotions stemming from battle conditions.

An important point: the two positions above, like the "Americans would never do that!" and "Of course they would, they're imperialist thugs!" positions is that they propose essentially either/or answers to questions that can only be answered statistically. You cannot say what a soldier will do in a war zone, you can only estimate what he might do as an individual or give a likely percentage of deployed soldiers who might commit callous acts or atrocities over a period in country.

Given that the American army is composed of human beings, a certain number of them will commit, witness, ignore, or cover for heinous acts. If you were part of the Japanese army that sacked Nanking in 1938, the atrocity rate might be near 100%. If you were with the American 9th Army in Germany in 1945, the atrocity rate would be be closer to 1%.

You need studied evidence, not anecdotes, to judge the severity of the problem in the US army in Iraq. The troops there are stuck in a losing war with an enemy who deliberately tries to wear down their discipline and alienate them from the population. Many are on their third and fourth tours, being recycled until dead or crippled by a cowardly adminstration that has never even attempted any national mobilization that might offer them relief from the kill zone.

Nothing that appeared in the New Republic can tell us just how cruelly our army treats the Iraqis. The only thing we know is that it is a problem and people who serve there are risking their careers to warn us of its severity.

Addenda, assuming this sentence means what it says . . .

It sounds like rather standard behaviors of personnel experiencing symptoms of detachment and/or buried emotions stemming from battle conditions. How can a human be asked to shoot to kill in one situation and then re-engage compassion and sympathy the next?

Asking soldiers to do just this has been the policy of the US army since George Washington's day. Training the soldiers to handle the killing part of their job without going crazy is hard, but it is something warriors, soldiers, and police have been doing throughout human history. I don't buy the notion that modern Americans are too emotionally fragile, ill-disciplined, and self-centered to be trained as the soldiers of a civilized nation.

Literally millions of their cultural ancestors learned these essential coping mechanisms in the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, often after only a few months of military training. Given that the soldiers in Iraq, have, at least in the regulars, years of training and indoctrination in military discipline and conduct, they should be able to keep war crimes and destruction and cruel conduct to a minimum.

If the situation is getting worse, it can only be because our military in Iraq is over-committed, incompetently led, and stupidly deployed.

But, we already knew that, didn't we?

Life Magazine May 22, 1944

PHOTO CAPTION: “When he said goodbye two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: '‘This is a good Jap, –a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach,'’ Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing.”

why isn't GOP Spooge-Mouth Malkin serving her country as a soldier? Seriously -- she's good at trash talking, let's see her walk the walk.

But no, she has too much spooge to swill here... and then vomit it out as "truth."

Sigh.

According to the reverse threaded wingers the troops are all volunteer conservatives.

Welcome to Orwellia.

All Democrats are Godless, are communists, and hate America.

Yet 65% to 70% of Americans tire of this war. Odd how America went from being 90% Conservative to 70% Liberal in just a few short years.

Anne Coulter can't even explain that one. Of course they don't deal in reality but projectionism. If they think your a Lefty, then by God, by the power of hypocrisy and projectionism your a Lefty! Don't even try to deny it!!!

They see themselves as psychic judges. Really weird. Tin foil hat weird. Truth detector in the head weird. More lame blamegame BS. Fingerpointers all the way!!! YAY Fingerpointers!!!

It is common, however, for a soldier to have his rifle on the three round burst setting.

Three rounds fired high, catching someone in the head.

Tillman had been killed by "three head shots to the forehead in a pattern about the size of a half dollar

It sounds exactly what might happen in a chaotic firefight

ROFLMAO!

Take off the tinfoil hat Drum, it's not a good look for you.

A lefty publication writes horrible things about soldiers, various soldiers point out the stories seem unlikely where not physically impossible, and the resultant crisis of journalist credibility strikes you as some kind of weird, pathetic right wing conspiracy to distract the world from the war (which still seems to show up in the headlines)? Ooookay.

Yeah yeah, I'm sure those 1971 memos weren't really typed on Word either.

Enjoy "reality."

>Even more funny coming from right-wing blogs who seem to specialize in lying and passing around the same or similar false stories.

It isn't a specialty of either the left or right or any other region of a political spectrum or map. Foaming rage or celebratory crowing on the basis of insufficient and/or questionable information is highly fashionable these days.

So, the usual suspects on the right look stupid for unwarranted suppositions, as do some on the left, and as will all again in future.

Now the question is the truth of the stories. There must be investigations. If there was misconduct, there should be accountability. If there was not, the "troops" (whom almost everyone supports, remember?) have the right to fight defamation and demand apologies as strongly as any other minority group. In that case, the earlier comments are correct: the righteous squealing of chickenhawks will be (rightly) irrelevant noise for the most part, but the anger of the "troops" will not.

Don't take the word of some wingers on the general character of American troops - ask someone who's been in Iraq a long time like John Burns of the NYT. Trying to portray this jackass and his vignettes as typical of American soldiers is like saying Yoko Ono is a typical Japanese housewife, or Cindy Sheehan represents Gold Star mothers... only the pretentious twits at TNR could be that obnoxious.
I'd like to ask Kevin to comment on just one "coincidence" that Michelle Malkin noted - don't you think it's strange that Beauchamp's unit was stationed in Germany while the German media were having a saturnalia about their troops defiling graves and playing with bones in Afghanistan - and then he reports US troops doing essentially the same thing at his own base? I really think you [Kevin] owe Michelle Malkin a clarification of your statements about her.

Oh, and TNR already fired someone over this grand illusion intended only to distract you from more important matters (which are still in the headlines every day).

No, not because Scott Thomas appears to have gotten a little too creative in ascribing various misdeeds to his comrades and self. No, the employee was fired for leaking to those crazy right-wingers the very embarassing-to-TNR fact that Scott is married to a TNR employee, and probably got the job that way.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Donald,

It's late in time to say that I'm sorry to hear about your father. But your post eloquently illustrates a point that needed making. Thank you.

I'd like to ask Kevin to comment on just one "coincidence" that Michelle Malkin.

Michelle Malkin lost all credibility when the AP handed her her ass. She is not a credible journalist and plays loosely with words and facts. Much like Judith Miller. A partisan hack in my book.

Berken: If the situation is getting worse, it can only be because our military in Iraq is over-committed, incompetently led, and stupidly deployed.

Leave out the over-committed part and you describe the Vietnam experience, as well. With an ill-defined mission, and an enemy indistinguishable from the "friendlies," atrocities are going to happen more often. This doesn't excuse any individual from responsibility from his or her actions, but the leadership is responsible as well, for putting them in that situation.

An analogy; when unemployment rises, domestic violence increases. We don't excuse wife-beaters for any reason, but we should try to keep the unemployment rate down.

various soldiers point out the stories seem unlikely where not physically impossible, and the resultant crisis of journalist credibility

There is no "crisis of journalist credibility." There are a bunch of right-wing bloggers, vets and chickenhawks alike, picking at minute details of the stories to argue why nothing could have possibly happened the way the Pvt said it did, because that's all they have to pick at. Now that the Pvt has revealed himself to stand by his claims, demonstrating moral as well as physical courage, they have nothing to say except to call him a "dung beetle" and deliberately mis-read his use of the word "character" to yet again twist his argument back on him.

It's pathetic, and it changes nothing. You may disagree with me, but that does not change how pathetic the right-wing is at this point. It is rightly enraging when someone like Kurtz bothers to pay attention to this kind of bloviating. The right-wing has gotten quite used to being able to throw its weight around on these matters. Well, the left has begun to throw its weight back, and the "mainstream" media has begun to listen. The influence of these right-wing blogs on reality is zero, and their influence on the media is now also waning accordingly. There will never be a time when war-mongering idiots don't have access to the internet, but there may come a time when their influence accurately mirrors their honesty and integrity.

Contrary to the comments above, the people most upset with the stories are deployed soldiers and the near concensus opinion among them is that they know of nobody who has acted or was likely to act in the manner described by Scott Thomas.

Posted by: trashhauler on July 26, 2007 at 8:02 PM
--------------------

It's been 30 years since I was in the Army, but the things he details sound an awful lot like the guys I knew. We were a bunch of kids goofing around most of the time. Maybe today's Army is different, but I doubt it.

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

None of Scott Thomas's stuff is new or surprising.

Our nation has a policy of torturing people. With that standard set, why should other outrages surprise people?

TallDave, dry your pussy. Stop trying to prove Bradleys can't run over dogs with tanka toys. It's all about the steering yoke bitch!

Folks, we had been in Iraq for about a year, and Nate Sassaman himself pissed all over the Honor Code and ended his career. The first QB to secure a bowl championship for the Point, a battle tested officer on track for stars. And one incident in Samarra ended it all.

And Odierno, by the way, has been fanning the flames since the beginning.

Google "Lion of Samarra"

TallDave, dry your pussy. Stop trying to prove Bradleys can't run over dogs with tanka toys. It's all about the steering yoke bitch!

brian, you have a history of making idiotic attacks on our host's military posts. They reflect poorly on you and your ability to understand the military especially in the big picture. Of course my post was harsh. You aren't interested in "truth." Like all water carriers for the Republican Party you are interested in discrediting those whose information might damage the partisans with which you align yourself.

The people demanding a full scale accounting of all the details in this issue are the same ones who insist that there is nothing to the USA scandal - in spite of the mountain of evidence that indicates the Executive Branch has politicized every office it could.

The people, like you, who are demanding that we know everything are the same ones who looked at the investigation into Bush's failure to serve and found a single (though large) error and concluded that there was nothing there - in spite of, once again, a mountain of evidence showing that Bush was derelict.

If you are really interested in the truth, I would be surprised. It hasn't ever shown before on this board.

What's most hilarious in all this is that lefties are determined to concoct weird, pathetic conspiracy theories, instead of making the common-sense assumption that people on the right are just mad that TNR appears to be smearing our troops with vicious lies in the middle of a war, just like John "Jenjiss Khan" Kerry did thirty-some years ago.

Fortunately for America, none of you are in touch with reality enough to figure any of this out, and you'll probably be running Senator Beauchamp for President in 2038.

If some American troops dont engage in such contemptible, inexcusable activities, then maybe American exceptionalism is true. The manichean perspective can not admit that good people(our side) do bad things, especially in war. Which raises the question, 'why would a manichean buy a color TV?'.

This guy's not playing with Tonkas:

I served 4 years in the Army, including service in Desert Storm, and was in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle battalion, the 1/9 Cav Regiment out of Ft. Hood.

As with most things written by the the traitorous media, the Shock Troop story is a collection of lies, complied by sissy leftist who don't even do enough research to make their lies believable. Sort of like the story of flushing a Koran down a toilet.

I've been in the drivers seat of a Bradley, and as Stuart Koehl says, you have terrible visibility on the right hand side. The engine is over there, and it's like trying to put a Ford Excursion in a parking space for a compact car.

The closest you can see on the right side is probably 15 feet away, and that would be with the seat all the way up, and the hatch fully opened back. No trooper is going to ride down a road in Iraq sitting that high, he'd be a sitting duck for a sniper. They either roll with the hatch fully shut, looking through the periscopes for visibility (think driving a sub down the street), or at most, with the hatch at half-cock, where you look though a slit (think sitting in a trash can with the lid on your head).

You're not going to be able to see a dog over there, so that's one lie.

Another lie is running things over with the Bradley. Take a look at the front it. The first thing that sticks out is the tracks, which are also the most vulnerable part of it. If you went around running into buildings or concrete barriers with your Bradley, you'd throw a track, and after your BC (Bradley commander) put his boot up your ass for being a dumb-ass, you'd spend the rest of your tour demoted down to sitting in the dreaded side turret jump seat between the driver and the rest of the crew, breathing diesels fumes, mixed in with BO and MRE gas from the dismount team.

Other lies - how does a dog sit in the road and get run over by an armored vehicle? How many dogs have you ever seen run over like this? Dogs aren't dumb, they get out of the way of a 23 ton armoured vehicle. The Bradley is not a Formula 1 race car either - the usual rolling speed is about 20-30 MPH. The article makes it sound like the BFV (Bradley Fighting Vehicle) is some sort of Klingon warship with a clocking device and a sound silencer, capbale of sneaking up on sleeping dogs and running them over before they can get up and move the 2 feet they'd have to get out of the way.

Then there's the story of a dog getting run over, with the two sections twitching around. Notice how it's written for shock value, with some lie about the head just staying there. The tracks of a Bradley are pretty wide - it's not a tire, it's a track. That would have to be one damn big stray dog to be cut in two by a Bradley, and still have identifiable parts on either side. Besides, how did he know what happended after he had run it over? Did he stop, get out of his vehicle, and walk over to it to take a look? You don't have real view mirror on a BFV.

Ian Kress
US Army, 1989-1993
MOS 11H (Infantry - Anti-Armor)
1/9th Cav Regiment, 1st Cav Division, Ft Hood.

Michael Vick and others kill dogs for sport. Why does anyone find it shocking that troops occupying Iraq would do the same thing?

Good post, TallDave. Thanks for the info. It does give one pause....

I'm withholding judgment for now, on both PVT. Beauchamps and the war stories he relayed. But yeah, they do read like war stories. And that is not meant to be complimentary.

"The very inability to disprove the Scott Thomas allegations is what makes them so infuriating."

Perhaps. I have yet to see anyone making that point, though.

"Contrary to the comments above, the people most upset with the stories are deployed soldiers"

Sorry, but that is demonstrably false. Case in point: Michelle Malkin who, the last time I checked, is not a soldier. There are a myriad of right wing pundits and bloggers who are frothing at the mouth over this, not one of whom is a soldier.

"and the near concensus opinion among them is that they know of nobody who has acted or was likely to act in the manner described by Scott Thomas."

Anecdotal evidence that is absolutely worthless. To the contrary, if you look at actual evidence from a variety of sources in a variety of wars, behavior of this type is not even remotely beyond the pale.

"Run over dogs with a Bradley? Anyone who's ever sat in the driver's seat of a Bradley knows you can't see the ground close enough to the vehicle to run over a dog unless he's already dead."

John Cole, a conservative blogger at Ballon-Juice.com has, in fact, driven a Bradley, and he strongly disagrees with you:

Not to get facts in the way of your spin, but I actually have driven a Bradley, and probably have a thousand hours in the driver’s seat of an M1 A1 Abrams.

In the M1, you sit in a reclined position in the center of the hull of the tank, equi-distant between both tracks, neither of which you can see. Additionally, most of the time driving, my hatch was closed, and I was navigating using a series of thick glass periscopes that were about 9-10” wide and 2-3” tall.

And guess what- I could run over a dog.

Please STFU about things you don’t have any experience with and do not understand.

"Besides which, any driver goofing around like that would get the track commander's boot up his ass."

John Cole, oddly enough, has an answer to that, as well:

Additionally, vehicles are moved ALL THE FUCKING TIME without an NCO or officer as the “track commander.” What they mean by track commander is that there is never just a driver in the vehicle- there must be a driver and one other body up top to watch for blind spots. The “track commander” in that case can be a PV2 fresh from Ft. Knox. Ideally, you would want an NCO, but let’s face it- you idiots do not understand what SOP means- standard operating procedure. Yes, you try to adhere to it, and yes, if something goes wrong and you are violating SOP there will be hell to pay, but does that mean SOP is always followed? Of course not.

You fucking idiots sound dumber and dumber the more you plumb the depths of topics you have no fucking experience with.

This is precisely why the left side of the blogosphere is watching the right side with much bemusement. We neither know, nor care much, whether Beauchamp is telling the truth. What we do know is that the objections being raised are mostly silly ones from people who have no idea what they are talking about.

The upshot of this story is that bad things happen in a war zone, particularly a prolonged war in a hostile country where everyone around you can be an enemy. This is news? I'm supposed to be surprised by this? Or concerned that of all the bad things that are happening in Iraq, maybe these didn't happen or are exaggerated? Why?

"The closest you can see on the right side is probably 15 feet away, and that would be with the seat all the way up, and the hatch fully opened back. No trooper is going to ride down a road in Iraq sitting that high"

Oh, good grief. Nor would they need to. Jeez, people, get a grip. When you've spent enough time in a vehicle, you know where the flipping right tire/track/whatever is, certainly within a few inches. You see a dog ahead of you, you aim for it, and maybe you hit it and maybe you don't. It ain't rocket science and it's definitely not impossible.

As for the bit about the width of the track, that's silly, as well. The track just isn't that wide -- roughly half a meter, I believe. It just wouldn't take that big a dog.

I have no idea whether these stories are true or not, nor do I much care, but can we please stop with the egregiously silly attempts to debunk it?

The upshot of this story is that bad things happen in a war zone, particularly a prolonged war in a hostile country where everyone around you can be an enemy. This is news? I'm supposed to be surprised by this?

Posted by: PaulB on July 27, 2007 at 12:26 AM |
----------------

But our troops are good CHRISTIAN soldiers, bestowed by God with virtue.

They've changed a lot since my brothers and I were enlisted men. That's all.

They don't drink, they don't fuck, and they damned sure don't run over poor little dogs in third world shitholes.

"What's most hilarious in all this is that lefties are determined to concoct weird, pathetic conspiracy theories"

Dear heart, I'm not seeing a whole lot of "conspiracy theories" from anyone on the left. Just mild bemusement and speculation as to why people on the right are overreacting and frothing at the mouth so viciously, well beyond what the situation warrants.

"instead of making the common-sense assumption that people on the right are just mad that TNR appears to be smearing our troops with vicious lies in the middle of a war, just like John 'Jenjiss Khan' Kerry did thirty-some years ago."

Dear heart, since Kerry did no such thing, forgive us if we don't take this rant any more seriously than anything else you write.

"Fortunately for America, none of you are in touch with reality enough to figure any of this out, and you'll probably be running Senator Beauchamp for President in 2038."

ROFL.... Dear heart, if anyone is "out of touch with reality" in America today, it ain't the left. See you in 2008, dear.

Nice try TallDave. I was once a Bradley driver too. I could make it dance a jig. 90-94 DS vet. 2/5 cav. My credentials...

I was an MP from 75-78, most of it at a secure site a few miles from Camp David. One of my brothers was a forward artillery observer in Germany in the 80's, and our youngest brother was a ground pounder with the 82nd Airborne.

One of the great things about being a veteran is we not only belong to the nation's largest fraternity, but we also have stories about goofy shit we did or saw done while in the Army.

My outfit had a bunch of drunk kids with security clearances. We had a handful of born again Christians, but at that time they were outcasts, weirdos. Maybe things have changed. Maybe our troops today really are a bunch of skirted Christian Warriors