Thursday, July 26, 2007
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Franklin Foer's Man in Baghdad
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Posted by:
Dean Barnett at
10:05 AM
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This is from Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s blog, back on May 18, 2006 when he was stationed in Europe training for deployment:
I know that NOT participating in a war (and such a misguided one at that) should be considered better than wanting to be in one just to write a book...but you know, maybe id rather be a good man than a good artist...be both? Some can and some cant...i guess it all depends on how great an artist, or how great a man they want to be. Sometimes it feels like i have to choose between being totally loyal to thoughts of my future family OR totally loayl to chasing down the muse. must find a middle ground.
Also from his blog, under the heading “what defeats people is a double confession”:
"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think that if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have to put another government in its place. What kind of government. Should it be a Sunni government or a Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or a Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic Fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the the government once the US forces withdrew? How many casualities should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a president to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the president got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq." - Dick Cheney, the Washington Institute's Soref Symposium, April 29th, 1991.
I miss political arguments. There seems to be a consensus with all the boys overseas...we laugh harder at CSPAN than comedy central. Silly republicans.
I highly recomment you read the whole blog. It's not a lot of reading, and it will shed a lot of light on both what TNR and Beauchamp wanted out of their shared mission.
Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.
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Help understand the outrage. This individual wrote an article detailing misbehavior and risk seeking among a demographic of 18 to 20 something men and women in the military in Iraq.
I can go to youtube and find similar observations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXzpUawlEGQ
Better yet some journalists have the courage to document and interview those involved with Rumsfeld and Cheney. And no dark conspiracy, you have a set of leaders locking down a silo of conversation to push poor decisions.
I'm not outraged at Scott Thomas. I'm outraged at the mess that Rumsfeld and Cheney have created. |
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"Did you read the comment made by Cheney in '91? Why are there no comments on Townhall's good old granddad hawk who apparently doesn't know how to read the writing on the wall let alone remember how he felt about Iraq invasion and inevitable occupation?"
Things changed a bit in 12 years. There was still some belief or hope in those days that the UN was serious about enforcing its resolutions and not rotten with corruption (Oil For Food), and that they wouldn't send rapists to crisis spots disguised as peacekeeping troops.
Most importantly, 9/11 hadn't happened yet so there was no incentive for America to have to go in and drain the terrorist fever swamp.
Also at that time, Saddam's dealings with Islamist terror groups was relatively minimal but picked up quite a bit as the years went by, a sort of Non-Aggression Pact in the Middle East, with each side, the jihadis and Saddam's Baathists, seeing the other as useful idiots who would be dealt with after America was kicked out of the region.
So the cost-benefit analysis in 1991 was very different from 2003. |
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He literally sounds like one of the teenage girls I work with who muse on themselves endlessly--you know, that narcisitic, enless self-musing: me, me, me...how important I am and will be.
How old is this guy? And how did such an unmanly guy like this impress TNR...oh, never mind that last question. I'm surprised Scotty BeauCHUMP's picture doesn't show him drinking coffee with a saucer. |
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Did you read the comment made by Cheney in '91? Why are there no comments on Townhall's good old granddad hawk who apparently doesn't know how to read the writing on the wall let alone remember how he felt about Iraq invasion and inevitable occupation? |
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This guy's comments of working in the motor pool as a mechanic is very enlightening. my husband was 'in the motor pool' during his army years, there are those that are mechanics and there are those that are drivers. doubt that this guy was ever in the driver's seat. his disturbing inability or unwillingness to use military verbiage is still bothersome, as you would think a 'writer' would want to add realism to his 'tales'.
i can't wait for the final investigation to be brought to light. this guy has probably never left Germany! |
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Dean, what is going to matter is if these Scott Thomas Iraq stories hold water. Now that he has revealed himself, I am sure the military authorities and pershaps some journalists on the ground reporters like Yon and others will look into it far more closely. A John "Winter Soldier" Kerry slander piece or not, if the facts are wrong Foer and The New Republic are going to look pretty darn bad.
I mentioned A Million Little Pieces (rather than Stephen Glass) when this story first broke because the narrative had that feel to it. The Scott Thomas blog seems to support that. Private Beauchamp seems to be an aspiring writer who tries to pass off poorly written fiction as biographical fact. |
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