Scotty Beauchump - nailed to a wall

So much for standing by your story. Hmmmmmmmm.

According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

Emphasis mine. How's that working out for ya, Scotty? Can anyone explain to me why ANYONE trusts the Has-Been Media these days?

UPDATE - I had published the post, and then got to thinking about why this story upsets me so damn much. My thoughts are pretty much falling into place once I had a chance to sit back and think for a minute:

--Scotty Beauchamp lied. Plain and simple. And he used his lies to make the Army look as bad as he could. His stories painted a picture of inhuman soldiers delighting in death and mocking someone elses injuries. And they were all lies.

--The New Republic published his lies without even so much as a faint background check into them. Simple questions asked by amateurs from the Right side of the blogosphere turned up answers that should have made the TNR editors at least think twice about running Beauchamp's lies, but they didn't even bother to do that. No, they ran those stories as quickly as they could. Why? The only answer I have, other than gross negligence and sheer incompetence, is that they ran the stories because the stories confirmed their view of the military. Fact-checking and doing a little background search would have poked holes in Beauchamp's lies, and their worldview along with them. So rather than do the right thing, they ran with a bunch of cooked-up bullshit that jived with the way they already think. So much for actual reporting.

--The screeching moonbats who defended both Scott Beauchamp and TNR have done everything in their power to shift the focus of the issue. Point out that Scotty lied, and the blithering idiots say "But he's a real soldier! So it's all true! You baby-murdering chickenhawk!" Every tinfoil-hat wearing asshole latched onto this story as proof that the military was full of brainwashed killbots who revel in carnage, once again because it confirmed their view of the military. Now that the stories are exposed as lies, they are doing everything in their power to avoid dealing with the truth. Just how many times has the MSM been caught lying? Hell, I'll make it easy. Start in 2004, with the Dan Rather memogate. "Fake but accurate". Um, if it's fake, then by definition IT CANNOT BE ACCURATE! They've been caught with their pants down time and time again, and yet rather than deal with the fact that the modern media is a biased load of horseshit, they make excuses, lie, obfuscate, move the goalposts, slander and insult the people who point out the lies, and generally act like a three-year-old with a full diaper and one hand in the cookie jar, throwing a tantrum in the hopes that mommy will forget about the damn cookie and just deal with the tantrum.

--The current Leftist meme is now "Oh, it doesn't matter." Jeff G. links to an article where someone says "It's a proverbial tempest in a teapot." Excuse the fuck out of me? Teapot my ass! The MSM has been caught lying, AGAIN. They've been caught printing unsubstantiated lies, AGAIN. They've been exposed as biased, agenda pushing propagandists for the Democrat American Communist Party, AGAIN. They have done everything in their power to smear, slander, and insult my Army, AGAIN. And now that they've been exposed as partisan shitsmears, AGAIN, they're doing everything in their power to brush it off as no big deal, AGAIN. We as a country cannot let that happen. We cannot continue to let the MSM pass themselves off as objective or neutral, because they simply are not either of those. We've got to hammer them flat until they either tell the truth, or go out of business.

Truth matters. It really is that simple.

I think that's enough on this subject for one day.