Posted on 10/26/2007 5:48:58 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
"I love chicks that have been intimate with EDS's," he announced to his fellow soldiers sitting in the chow tent in Camp Falcon in Baghdad. "It really turns me on--melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses." The soldiers laughed so hard they almost fell from their chairs. They enjoy running over dogs in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, luring them in and then crushing their bones as they whelp. When a soldier comes upon a mass grave, he picks up a human skull, places it merrily on his head, and marches around.
This is from the now-famous "Baghdad Diaries," in The New Republic, carrying the byline of soldier-writer Scott Thomas. They are an attempt to capture the tragedy and dehumanization of war, how it coarsens men in ways that you, safe in your bed, cannot fathom. They are a lost generation, battered by war, and struggling, with the real weapons of war's survivors--mordant wit, pitiless humor, the final surrender to nihilism--to survive in a world they never made. Do I overwrite? Do I sound like an idiot? I'm just trying to fit in.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The Editors of TNR actually think that is real life.
As Rush often says (paraphrase). “If it fits the template, they’ll print it, whether it’s true or not.”
Pretty much. Beauchamp insulted their intelligence by submitting such drivel. Then TNR confirmed the accuracy of his disparagement by printing something that utterly ludicrous.
Hmmmm..... I'm trying to imagine the reaction to this at any one of Balad/Anaconda's four DFACs, where the presence of female enlisted soldiers isn't huge, but it is significant. And the soldiers weren't barbaric pirates, they were fairly polite for the most part.
I tend to think that this greenhorn "soldier" and his (fictional) cohorts would have been challenged to many fistfights, and had the crap kicked out of them with regularity.
If I (a civilian) had heard that sort of talk in my office, they would have been out within seconds and a report made to their CO.
Truthiness
As Eric in the Ozarks has observed, by early in their career, reporters know how to do one or two stories. The faces and locale may change but its the same template.
They have had good lives, happy lives, but there is a sense with some of them that they didn't so much live it as view it. That they learned too much from media and not enough from life's difficulties...."
Wow, nailed it. They live in an insulated liberal bubble, protected from life's cold, hard truths, truths that we must all face, and which make us more well rounded and complete as humans. In other words, they are ignorant, spoiled hacks who know of know other world view than their own.
The blessed little I have read in The New Republic has always struck me as the resulting of writing while on drugs, serious drugs, not your everyday uppers or alcohol.
And then not re-reading it during a (brief?) period of sobriety.
That’s the writers: what excuse do the editors have?
“Everyone’s entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts,” should be chiseled in stone above the doors to newspapers and TV stations alike.
The political Left in this country lives in a world of illusion. It’s been that way since the 1960’s. The New Republic’s actions are further evidence of this. Unfortunately, their illusions now permeate a large part of American culture.
It will take a long time to undo the damage.
His wife, Elspith, was the fact checker at Lu Republic
When his wife is the fact checker, anything and everything is going to make it through and into print.
The New Republic needs to be reclassified as fiction....
There can be no doubt these loonies exist in an alternate universe.
“It will take a long time to undo the damage.”
It will. I DO NOT share the forgiveness of Beauchamps C.O. and Michael Yon. This guy should be charged with conspiracy to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces of the United States, among other things.
(Yons article about Beauchamp posted yesterday)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1916387/posts
That is a fantastic analogy. Take that DBM.
Welcome to the party, Ms. Noonan.
Better late than never.
The BEST part of this story is Michael Yon’s reportage about how Beauchamps Commander is trying to salvage this lost soul!! The story was a thread yesterday and a VERY good read!!
Only trouble with Thomas’ piece is that none of it ever happened - and the New Republic accepted his fiction as historical fact. The editors are Useful Idiots, and don’t want to admit it, while Thomas is a villain and a traitor to his country.
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