Posted on 08/03/2007 5:42:46 PM PDT by milwguy
cott Thomas Beauchamp is a U.S. Army private serving in Iraq. He came to THE NEW REPUBLIC's attention through Elspeth Reeve, a TNR reporter-researcher, whom he later married. Over the course of the war, we have tried to provide our readers with a sense of Iraq as it is seen by the troops. Usually, these stories have been written by journalists who have traveled to Iraq and interviewed soldiers there, but last January Beauchamp sent us a first-person vignette that seemed a powerful contribution to the genre. It told the story of a young Iraqi boy who befriended American troops and subsequently had his tongue cut out by insurgents. Conservatives and liberals alike praised this essay.
We granted Beauchamp a pseudonym so that he could write honestly and candidly about his emotions and experiences, even as he continued to serve in the armed forces and participate in combat operations. Over the next six months, he published two other short personal accounts in our pages. Beauchamp's latest, a Diarist headlined "Shock Troops," was about the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war. The piece was a startling confession of shame about some disturbing conduct, both his own and that of his fellow soldiers.
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. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
STB is another narcissist out for money and attention.
TNR just a co-dependent.
Hey, how would TNR find a military expert in the circles its staff runs in? It’d be easier for them to find a million Gays than one military man.
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