An AP story today begins:
A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym.There’s more in the AP story here.
The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured woman sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers.
Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.
Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp.
The stories, which ran under the name "Scott Thomas," were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.
Glenn Reynolds says TNJ “looks awfully bad” in the story. I agree.
How about you?
I plan to comment later today on TNR, Beauchamp and related issues.
11 comments:
Actually, TNR looks exactly how I thought they looked.
But it's nice that it is out in the open anyway.
-AC
Sorry, meant, "out in the open again" (cough, Glass, cough).
-AC
agree on the shuttle. Saw it from Port Orange (by Daytona) last night and it is spectacular from that distance. Agree it is even more spectacular from Merrit Island.
This is what the Soviets called "dezinformatsiya" or disinformation. They would find a publication in the enemy territory which is willing to print the propaganda, making it look home-grown. Many of the publications were given the name "useful idiots" by the Sovs. I see they're still with us. The idiots, not the Sovs. Also, anyone who has ever been in a combat zone can tell you, soldiers often do brutal things--but it is never condoned by our military authorities.
Addendum to my 12.33: If I remember correctly, didn't US Senator John F. Kerry accuse servicemembers in Vietnam of acting like Atilla the Hun, murdering and torching villages, etc. etc.? Whatever happened to him?
I don't remember that about Kerry at all. In any event, most of the reporters in Irag should be tried for treason. Never report on the good stuff, the USA is doing - like restoring the ecosystem and lifestyle of the Marsh Arabs. One of the groups that Sadam tried to exterminate. No wonder papers are failing with the reporting going on. Undaunter, the papers persist in publishing this stuff. We are not saints but not devils either,
I voted for George W, but Kerry was crucified for serving his country in Vietnam. In a time when those who could stay in University(like Duke) did so or ran away to Canada,Remember the false "Swift Boaters". Kerry did his share for the USA,
Re: 12:33, 10:03 & 10:07
At the risk of becoming a 'johnny one-note' (no offense to those named John, especially our esteemed bloghost), I point you to a Feb. 26, 2004 article by Ion Mihai Pacepa at the National Review Online, titled Kerry's Soviet Rhetoric.
It may be found at this URL:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTE0NjIwNDM4Y2JmM2JlOGM5ZTkxMDI4M
TQ3NTU4NTg=
(sorry for the need to cut & paste)
Pacepa also had a related article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal. I added that to the comments associated with JiC's Hiroshima post.
Yes, TNR has fallen again and I doubt it can get back up anytime soon. AC has it right, they're 'out in the open again'. So is much of the MSM, who were weaned on planted propaganda durng the Vietnam years, as I was.
We've been played for fools. I pray we're strong enough to overcome it anyway, as we seem to have outlasted the Sovs, so far and for this round. (who knows with Putin's comback attempts...)
TombZ
11:34 My friend San says "The Soviet Union outspent themselves six weeks before we did."
To 10.03: Kerry appeared before a Senate Committee in Washington in the late 1960's and claimed that US servicemen were committing war crimes against the Vietnamese people. Maybe you aren't old enough to remember, but that is a fact. Kerry was asked many times for facts to back up his outrageous claims, but never provided any further information.
correction to my 7.12: Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, accusing his fellow soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen of committing war crimes on a day-to-day basis with the full knowledge of their superiors. He has never shown any proof of this, and even his fellow Vietnam Veterans Against the War activists refused to sign onto his accusations.
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