Redstate

Although I think that I've worried the last bit of meat off of this particular bone.

By Moe Lane Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I'm putting pretty much all of this after the fold, for the benefit of our readers who are uninterested in or bored with TNR's continuing meltdown. Gist: this wasn't really a great time for them to go on vacation.

Read on.

Let's review. TNR publishes an article called Shock Troops, which included this section:

I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn't really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor. The thing that stood out about her, though, wasn't her strange uniform but the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head. She was always alone, and I never saw her talk to anyone. Members of my platoon had seen her before but had never really acknowledged her. Then, on one especially crowded day in the chow hall, she sat down next to us.
(bolding mine)

What the author did to this woman later was one of three anecdotes that had been contested by quite a few bloggers, many of whom expressed disbelief that the author was even military. In the process of pushing back on that, publisher Franklin Foer indicated:

As for the specific accounts in the stories, Foer said that the articles were rigorously fact-checked before they were published. "We showed the stories to people who'd been embedded in Iraq to make sure that it all smelled good. We talked to one of the members of his unit to confirm the woman, a female contractor. We talked to a medic who'd served in Iraq to make sure that a woman could be in an FOB. We spent a lot of time with him on the phone asking hard questions."

Note the emphasis on the female contractor being in Iraq. This is important, because in their latest pushback, TNR indicated:

Beauchamp's essay consisted of three discrete anecdotes. In the first, Beauchamp recounted how he and a fellow soldier mocked a disfigured woman seated near them in a dining hall. Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. He told us: "We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right."

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

With me so far? Good. Now let's unravel this thing and look at the details.

If this incident took place - there's only corroborator to it; the other soldiers just remember the woman - it took place before Beauchamp actually got to Iraq and presumably turned into a new Colonel Kurtz. Or, as Steven Spruiell of The Corner noted, "That's a rather significant detail to flub, given that the author's intent was to illustrate the morally deadening effects of war." H/T to Ace for the Corner link, and check out his expansion on this theme. Ace later stated that Foer has been lying all along. Can't be proven with the information that we have, I'm afraid - but the dance there was almost impressive and definitely interesting, nu?

Moving over to Jeff Goldstein, he comments here:

So now we’re doing “accurate,” just in a completely different context, before Beauchamp ever saw any combat, according to a couple unnamed corrobators, and potentially, according to the people who make equipment they probably don’t want to say can’t do certain things — or at least, are not used in such a way by the people who routinely drive them.

As others have noted — and as I noted before — Beauchamp wrote about things happening in war that didn’t happen in war. He wrote about how war dehumanizes, when in fact the dehumanization was grafted onto war by those so expecting to see it that they evidently acted it out in advance of seeing combat.

And this is being held up as vindication? Of what, exactly? That bad people can behave badly — but then, when you transfer that behavior to combat zones, it has more poignance, can have larger significances, and is the kind of thing one can easily sell to those who share your same selection biases?

He also links to baldilocks, who notes that The Weekly Standard worked out that the contractor incident wasn't in Iraq, thanks to the work of Matt Sanchez*. He also links to - and I apologize to author Melissa McEwan in advance for the link** - to Shakespeare's Sister, who has also noticed the discrepancy, and who showed a bit of moral courage for noting her problems with it in public.

And that, pretty much, is where things stand until either the military finishes its investigations or TNR comes forth with new clarifications / explanations / rationalizations (pick whichever you like). I will note that the walkback on the details about the female contractor anecdote makes me more suspicious of TNR's claims regarding the child's skull and bisected dog ones. As I didn't particularly believe them as presented in the first place... well. I'm not TNR's primary audience, am I?

All in all, a bad week for them to go on vacation.

Moe

*Who apparently worked in gay porn. I mention this solely because John Cole is worked up on the subject (be damned if I'll give him direct traffic for gay-baiting). Personally, I don't give a f*ck, but at least Cole's found his level.

**I'm not sure why: after all, we've been told by the reality-based community that the reality-based community is a haven of tolerance and respect, so she should be perfectly safe expressing an opinion that threatens to violate the consensus. Right?