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Glad to see someone else that knows the score and the teams is countering this tool's twaddle:

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq.

Pvt. Beauchamp, while I'm happy to see that you have finally done the right thing, that statement is not correct and you know it.

Many of the people questioning your accounts are currently stationed in Iraq. They are your comrades, your fellow soldiers, sailors, and Marines, and they have major problems with quite a few of the details in your stories, like the idea that the driver of a Bradley has time to suddenly swerve to hit dogs, taking his eyes off the road (or possibly snipers) and placing his entire crew at vastly increased risk of running over an IED (the #1 killer of our troops over there). Such an act would be madness, and even if a driver were so inclined, no one else would let him get away with it more than once. It would be suicide.

But not according to you. Apparently drivers have time to hit dogs, write in notebooks, watch for snipers and civilians, and avoid running over IEDs all at the same time! And of all these vital tasks, hitting dogs is the #1 priority!

Yeah. That's plausible.

And then there's the idea that an entire mess hall (the one at FOB Falcon is not large) would overhear someone mocking an IED victim and NO ONE would say anything. Do any of the other readers have any idea how many of these people would have known someone killed by an IED? Do they really think such a "joke" would be amusing to them, that it wouldn't rub someone's nerves just a bit raw?

Yes, we (and I do mean "we" - my husband is a 26 year Marine Corps active duty officer currently stationed in Iraq) do have questions. We have that right. This is America - we have freedom of speech here. If you print something, especially anonymously, you'd best be prepared to defend it vigorously. No one ever said freedom was cheap, or the right to free speech itself came without a price tag.

Other people have the right to their own freedom of expression and that includes the right to question what you have said, if it does not seem right to them. In turn, you have the right to defend what you have said. Hopefully the truth falls out of this somewhere.

It is a sometimes messy, glorious, chaotic, often undignified brawl, but this is America and you are not going to find a whole lot of sympathy by crying 'foul' when people counter your accusations by asking you to back up the inconsistencies in your stories. In fact, having said you witnessed the desecration of a grave site, it is not unreasonable to ask you to explain why you did not report this crime to your command?

Either your story was untrue and should be retracted or you witnessed a crime and allowed the perpetrators to escape punishment and possibly commit more crimes against the Iraqi people. Which is it?

That I even have to ask this question raises serious questions in my mind about your motivation in writing this whole series, because if I had witnessed such an act, I would be talking to my command and wanting to stop things like that from going on, not shoppping the story to the New Republic under a pseudonym.

But that is just me.

#4 -- posted by tavernel@erols on 2007-07-26 07:57:20

Of course, nothing said there is true; just ask Fat Jack Murtha!

The story about mocking someone disfigured in an IED attack drove me nuts (BTW - 2 of my kids were in Iraq, and I’ve been in Afghanistan). How could anyone not know if someone in the chow hall was a soldier or a contractor? Soldiers wear uniforms everywhere, including chow halls. Special ops types sort of do - and they stick out like sore thumbs. Contractors wear civilian clothes or uniforms marked DOD civilian.

I also cannot imagine anyone mocking someone hurt by an IED when you know you will be going out tomorrow to face the same threat. Nor can I imagine anyone sitting quietly by while someone else did so. And doing that to a woman? I don’t think so.

This moron has be disgracing his fellow soldiers...bet he’ll have a real good time for the rest of his tour!