The Beauchamp story

The New Republic has published an article saying,

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details

I do have a few questions myself on the Beauchamp accusations, as to how did he know the woman's burns had been caused by an IED attack, how does he know that the bones found were children's bones, etc., but those are issues that TNR hasn't addressed, either.

For starters, TNR editor Franklin Foer had previously confirmed that

The first incident--the scarred woman--took place on Forward Operating Base Falcon

Beauchamp didn't even get the country straight. It wasn't Iraq. It was Kwait.

Wake Up America has a detailed post on the story.

TNR is going on vacation while the story goes on. Laughling Wolf is spending his vacation at FOB Falcon.

It so happens that Matt Sanchez is at FOB Falcon in Iraq and is taking issue with Beauchamp's allegations. Today Matt posted that the Army's investigation has concluded the Beauchamps accusations are false.

If you go read Matt's blog, an excellent blog which I highly recommend, you will find that Matt:
1. reports directly from the sites he mentions
2. fully discloses his sources.
As you can read for yourself, he explains clearly where he is and who he is interviewing: Matt's not relying on anonymous sources. He's got the video, the audio, and the photos backing up the information in his posts.

Of course, Matt's being discredited because of his past as a a gay p_rn star, a subject I posted about last March. I find it absurd that Matt's past keeps getting dragged up by the Left, which are supposedly so "inclusive", "open minded" and "non-judgemental". After all, Matt was an adult, participating in actions with other adults, freely and out of their own volition.

To the Left, Matt is not credible, while Beauchamp is credible because he's in the service. Hot Air asks,

given how deeply and fragrantly they love the troops, as they never fail to remind us, does Sanchez's status as a Marine reserve do anything to rehabilitate the credibility he allegedly lost when he did porn?

But this is a side issue; the real issue is TNR's credibility.

Via LGF, Confederate Yankee has also been doing some fact-checking on his own:

I've also attempting to get verification form a total of five PAOs in Kuwait to see if they have any record of Franklin Foer or any other reporter or editor from The New Republic attempting to contact them prior to publishing the revised Camp Buehring claim to see if TNR made a good faith effort to verify that a contractor matching this woman's description was based in U.S. military bases in Kuwait.

My opinion is that, IF any of these acusations are true, the witnesses involved have the moral obligation to come forward and on the record, not anonymously, bear witness to whatever has taken place in their presence.

Where are they?

Until that happens, any further allegations as to Beauchamp's credibility are to be dismissed.

Ace is all over this story like white on rice. Go to his blog and scroll down.

UPDATE
Of Matt Sanchez and Redemption

Some sectors of the Left believe that humanity is perfectible on its own--an idea that is in direct opposition to the idea that mankind is perfectible only by accepting the Sacrifice and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This concept is what many scorners of Christianity fail to grasp--via ignorance, willful or otherwise. What did JC say, time and time again, to those whom He healed? "Go and sin no more."

I think that the Left is ticked not only at Sanchez for the reasons specified above, but at conservatives and Christians because, in our reaction to Sanchez and others like him, we failed to live "up" to the caricatures which they hold about the Right and about Christians.

UPDATE, Sunday 5 August
It's Official: Beauchamp's Claims Debunked by Army Internal Investigation
Commander's Initial Reaction to Beauchamp Allegation