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Combat ConfessionalWhat to make of the New Republic's Baghdad Diarist?

By Phillip Carter
Updated Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007, at 6:43 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

Every soldier has a story. Some are even true. As soldiers, we learn to hide our worst stories from people outside the brotherhood of the close fight. And so the picture of war that gets transmitted back to America is incomplete, always lacking in the awful, gory, human details that flesh out the narrative of combat. These stories are reserved for unit reunions and American Legion halls.

Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp broke that code when he pseudonymously wrote a series of colorful dispatches for the New Republic about his experiences as an infantryman in Iraq. He offered often gruesome details about the realities of war, details that have ignited a firestorm between left- and right-wing magazines willing to stake their reputations upon their truth and falsity.

One question today is whether Beauchamp's dispatches are true. A second, more pressing question is how to better gather and report such stories, and how we should evaluate and verify them. I am deeply skeptical about the veracity of Beauchamp's dispatches, particularly the last one, but disinclined to offer definitive pronouncements at this time. Partisans on both sides of the political spectrum seem to harbor no such doubts. Based solely on the content of these dispatches, some were happy to leap to conclusions about the author's veracity without regard for the facts. And as the argument grows louder, each side turns toward the troops, using them to stand in for their own preconceived ideas about this war.

Beauchamp still serves as an infantryman in Iraq, assigned to one of the most violent parts of the country, just south of Baghdad. He writes in the style of Michael Herr's Dispatches: a series of short, brutal vignettes about life in combat. The stories are ugly and profane, but that's a reality of war often hidden from the people back home. In his first dispatch (subscription required), Beauchamp writes of a young boy who yearned so badly to come to America that he taught himself pidgin English and talked to American soldiers, until the day the Shiite militia came through and cut out his tongue. In his second piece, Beauchamp describes scavenger dogs devouring bodies deposited around Baghdad—the victims of sectarian violence, often killed with just one bullet to the head.

The author is careful to distance himself from these monstrosities, meticulously chronicling the horrors of this war without falling victim to them. But in his third report, Beauchamp breaks with this theme, writing that war has turned him into a monster as well. He describes a scene in which he and some buddies ridicule a badly deformed woman in the base dining hall—making fun of her injuries from an improvised explosive device—as well as two other incidents involving a buddy who wore parts of a child's skull around his neck and another who mowed down dogs with his armored vehicle for sport.

Almost immediately after Beauchamp's third story hit the newsstand in the July 23 issue, right-wing journalists and bloggers launched an offensive against the New Republic and the author, then still hidden behind the pseudonym of his first and middle names. Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard led a number of prominent conservative bloggers to question the author's combat credentials, experiences, even the fact that he was a soldier. Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol charged the New Republic and The Nation (which had just run a front-page article on atrocities allegedly committed by troops in Iraq) with betraying the troops, writing that "those on the cutting edge of progressive opinion are beginning to give up on even pretending to support the troops. Instead, they now slander the troops."

Last night, the Weekly Standard declared victory by claiming that Beauchamp had recanted, quoting an anonymous military source claiming his reports "were exaggerations and falsehoods—fabrications containing only 'a smidgen of truth,' in the words of our source." Military spokesmen in Baghdad declined to confirm this or provide any more details to me about their investigation, saying only that interviews with Beauchamp's unit found that "no one could substantiate his claims" and that this was a closed issue for his unit to handle administratively.

The New Republic's editors countered the Weekly Standard's attack with a bland statement on Aug. 1, a position by which they continue to stand. The magazine's investigation found that sources in Beauchamp's unit could in fact corroborate his stories but also determined that the dining-hall scene took place in Kuwait, not Iraq. The New Republic's conclusions rested on anonymous corroboration from five other soldiers in Beauchamp's company, a unit of about 150 men, as well as statements from outsiders.

In other words, both the Weekly Standard and the New Republic claim that their versions are now confirmed by anonymous military sources and by the same Army public affairs officer. In some circles, this could be called a draw.

Among military circles, the reaction to Beauchamp's stories has been mixed. A number of my friends were disturbed by the article, especially what it implied about his unit and its leadership, but very few questioned its basic truth. Everyone's war is different, and it's nearly impossible to judge the veracity of another person's combat experience. When I read Beauchamp's first two articles, I was disturbed but not surprised. His tamer reports echoed my own experiences of Iraq and mirrored stories I'd heard from other soldiers there. The third dispatch, however, struck me as too fantastic to believe, in part because I could not imagine soldiers making fun of anyone who had been wounded by an improvised explosive device, especially an infantryman like Beauchamp who himself faced the dangers of these bombs. But, as was the case with the other veterans I spoke to, I could not rule out the truth of the articles. Every soldier experiences fragments of the larger war. Beauchamp's tale was neither believable nor patently untrue on its face.

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Phillip Carter, an Iraq veteran, is an attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP and a principal of the Truman National Security Project.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Slate's article on this controversy gives pause. Media coverage, particularly the extent of embedded coverage imposed by US authorities in this case, has seemed less than objective from the start; journals and newschannels are too readily typed as for or against. Many seem enchanged by Al-Jazeera as a voice of balance. They are doing a good job, but is it that much better than or in conflict with the BBC or CNN?

It is heartening to read--and should not surprise--that the US military is taking its job seriously. It is not a soldier's place to question the foreign policy decisions that put the conflict in play. Sadly, even if only partially credible, reports of atrocities, cruelty and suffering remind those of us who sit in salons and boardrooms that it is imperative to hold those charged with responsibilities accountable on the most fundamental of terms.

This real war seems awash in too much rhetoric, noise and ignorance.

--hommesuisse

(To reply, click here.)

I think it would be unlikely that someone would tease a stranger about disfigurement to her face, but not at all unlikely that soldiers would joke about it with each other. Gallows humor is always prevalent in the Army.

Other things that he claims, like chasing down a dog, sounds unlikely, only because it would further endanger the vehicle and crew by going off road. Plus, you still have to clean all that stuff up, and who wants to wash dog guts off a truck in a 130 degree weather? Plus leaving a carcass in your route just provides a new place to hide a bomb.

On the otherhand, not stopping or swerving to avoid a dog makes sense, so you stay on your route, do not smash your gunner around in the turret, or impede the convoy. It may still leave the carcass, but the driver avoids getting kicked really hard by the gunner once he recovers...

I don't find the skull thing too surprising, either, unless the claim is it was visible outside the uniform. That would be corrected pretty quick.

Anecdotal snippets like that offer little to understanding this war. I also think there are many men who don't need a war to make fun of someone with his friends, run over a dog, or find skulls fascinating. That Beauchamp found himself doing those things is an indictment of his upbringing and gender more than it is the army or the war.

--clown_nose

(To reply, click here.)

This war has already produced many well-documented stories of murder, rape and torture inflicted by American servicemen on civilians or prisoners of war. Why should it be so hard to believe American soldiers taunted a disfigured civilian or ran over a dog? That stuff is perfectly consistent with how American soldiers have behaved in every war (with the possible exception of WWI, in which most of the combat was somewhat isolated from the civilian population).

As an interrogator in Vietnam, I arrived at a field hospital to talk to an incoming POW who had been reported by radio as having "light" injuries. The people at the hospital showed me a body with a bullet hole in the chest.They said he arrived that way. Draw your own conclusions.

I also interviewed a farmer the tip of whose penis had been shot off. Someone in a passing truckload of GIs had popped one at him. Couldn't identify perpetrator, so CA gave him some money and let it go at that.

Another problem we were aware of was GIs shooting water buffaloes--again, usually from passing vehicles. Aside from the fact that it was common for kids to be riding them, the water buffalo was a typical farmer's biggest investment, comparable to an American farmer's tractor. Its loss was a major financial blow. Yeah, we'd pay them for it in some cases. But that scarcely made wanton destruction all right, from either the military discipline or the civilian relations points of view.

Many times I saw GIs verbally abuse Vietnamese civilians (never called anything but "gooks," or "goddam gooks") or force Vietnamese women to listen to what the GIs considered very witty sexual banter. GIs thought nothing of bluntly offering a woman money for quick sex, regardless that the woman obviously was not a prostitute. I spoke with Viets who thought that most Americans were little better than animals in the coarseness and stupidity of their behavior.

The simple fact is that war almost invariably degrades conduct, and that Americans have for too long believed that American soldiers are somehow exempt from that. Bullshit.

--Fritz_Gerlich

(To reply, click here.)

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