New Republic runs "hit piece" on the troops.

This week The New Republic that bastion of Liberal open-mindedness and tolerance publishes a dispatch (subscription required) that clearly shows where their sentiments lie with regard to our troops. The article titled "Shock Troops" is authored by a reputed soldier serving in Iraq who writes under the pseudonym of "Scott Thomas".

Immediately my B.S. sensors were activated upon hearing about this piece since the dispatch is essentially written annonymously and anything that follows can readily be attibuted to an author and publisher who have an clear agenda and a very big axe to grind. And grind away they do in this delightful bit of anti-American propaganda that harkens back to the cold-war days of KGB authored "news articles" circulated around the newrooms of European publications recounting ficticious acts of outrage committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam. For liberals everything involving the deployment and operations of U.S. armed forces anywhere in the world can be redacted to Vietnam and the 60's.

A number of milbloggers have commented on the disturbing stories that are recounted for the benefit of New Republic readers in the dispatch.

Here are some examples of The New Republic's brand of narrative on the exploits of American service personnel serving in Iraq as quoted by The Weekly Standard and Mudville Gazette:

In their opening salvo aimed at American troops TNR’s diarist recounts a story of how a woman badly disfigured by an IED and wearing an unidentifiable tan uniform in the “chow hall” is insulted and made the butt of jokes by two U.S. servicemen. The woman is so upset that she runs out of the room with her tray of food and nearly falls to the ground in the process.

The Weekly Standard in response to this disturbing item from the dispatch asks, "Is it possible that American soldiers would be so sadistic when confronted by a badly burned woman, who may be a fellow soldier? Well, yes: Anything is possible when it comes to human depravity. But consider: these are enlisted men who, by the author's own account, don't know who this woman is or what rank she might hold. (Incidentally, wouldn't soldiers be able to distinguish a soldier from a contractor--especially if she is a regular at the chow hall?) Would they really ridicule her with raised voices in a public place, on "one especially crowded day"?

Mudville Gazette also smells a rat and adds in his genteele way, ...military people wear military uniforms - the service uniform or the Physical Training uniform, AKA PT gear. and ALWAYS HAVE THEIR WEAPONS. Contractors wear civilian clothes and are rarely armed. (This has something to do with something called the Geneva Conventions, and also common sense.) Anyhow, this makes readily apparent who is military and who is not. In fact, it is the very reason MILITARY PEOPLE IN IRAQ ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO WEAR THEIR UNIFORMS AND NOTHING BUT THEIR UNIFORMS. Again, this doesn't prove Scott Thomas is a liar, only that if he is who New Republic claims he is, his ignorance exceeds that of any soldier of any rank I've ever met.

In another incident recounted by “Scott Thomas” TNR’s man on the scene, American soldiers discover a mass grave in an area southwest of Baghdad. The soldiers find pieces of clothing and human bone fragments buried among household objects. The author writes that a private finds part of a human skull almost perfectly preserved and places it on his head like a crown. The private then playfully marches around with the skull on his head while the other soldiers in his patrol drop their shovels and double-up with laughter at the sight.

The Weekly Standard observes: Again, American troops might be capable of such behavior. But most incidents of soldiers taking such war "trophies," to be blunt, involve dead enemy fighters, not massacred children. The questions pile up. Would a child's skull fit on the head of fully-grown man? Would pieces of flesh and hair still remain so long after the fact? Would American soldiers fail to report the discovery of a mass grave? Are there really units corrupt enough for a private to dare do such a thing for a day and a night?

Dishing out more dirt for his readers enjoyment “Thomas” spins a yarn about another private who loves to drive Bradley Fighting Vehicles..…over stray dogs. According to TNR’s “embeded” scribbler, the private would slow his Bradley down to lure the dog in as as the engine grew quieter would then jerk the vehicle hard to the right and snag the dog’s leg under the vehicle’s tracks. The driver would then drag the dog on the ground until it broke free and lay twitching dying in the road. The roar of laughter would be heard over the radio from other soldiers in the patrol.

These are not the words of any sane person writing about our troops in Iraq. These are the words of the worst kind of propagandist scrawling vile lies for desemination by regimes like North Korea, Hugo Chavez's nationalized media or the mullacracy in Iran. The first draft of this article was probably written in crayon!

Mudville Gazette responds: If you believe leadership in his unit is perfectly willing to allow soldiers to run amok in this fashion then you are ignorant of the US military today. Case in point: a unit here in Iraq was using the radio call sign "Aggressive". They had to change it to something else. Reason: "Aggressive" presents the "wrong image". This isn't an Orwellian effort - it is much more exemplary of the mindset of military leadership today than the sort Thomas describes (or infers from his description of those they lead). If he's actually in the military and he's lying, then words aren't sufficient to describe the sort of low life scumbag he is. If he (or she) is not in the military and is simply demonizing U.S. Soldiers for fun and profit, then he (or she) is simply doing what so many reporters find irresistible these days - providing gullible Leftists with what they are eager to believe.

I go with the latter assessment. The New Repbulic is dishing out what they know their readers want to believe about the U.S. Military.

Sensing an impending Mary Mapes/Dan Rather moment of unimpeachable modern journalistic professionalism The New Republic posted this Note to Readers:

Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist "Shock Troops," written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.
--Franklin Foer

It's nice to know The New Republic will use its annonymous sources to weigh in on the veracity of its equally annonymous author's stories. You would think someone in Foer's position with a modicum of walking-around sense would have vetted a story like this BEFORE and NOT AFTER he published an incendiary piece like this in his magazine. But I guess Foer's readily apparent belief that members of the armed forces of the United States are just a bunch of ignorant, half-crazy, sociopaths with no other possible outlet in life persuaded him otherwise. He probably couldn't resist the chance to publish something that to him must have seemed like finding the Rosetta stone, even if it was written in crayon.

The Weekly Standard has challenged The New Republic on the authenticity of its article calling on the publication to provide more data to shore up the validity of the claims made in the piece.

Michael Goldfarb of the Standard writes, We contacted the New Republic in order to get any information that might help us to verify the authenticity of "Thomas"'s disturbing account, and the magazine, while insisting that it had promised to protect the identity of the author to shield him from retribution by the military, did provide us with some additional details. "Scott Thomas" claims that the incident at the chow hall occurred at Forward Operating Base Falcon. And the mass grave, he says, was discovered a couple miles south of Baghdad International Airport in farmland. We have also contacted the Pentagon in the hopes of getting more information to either corroborate or disprove "Thomas"'s account.

The Standard issues this request to its readers and observant milbloggers, ...we believe that the best chance for getting at the truth is likely to come from the combined efforts of the blogosphere, which has, in the past, proven adept at determining the reliability of such claims. To that end we'd encourage the milblogging community to do some digging of their own, and individual soldiers and veterans to come forward with relevant information--either about the specific events or their plausibility in general.

I believe this story falls into the Dan Rather "fake-but-true" paradigm for journalistic integrity. Don't hold your breath for The New Republic to take the effort to investigate its "source's" truthfulness. And while Franklin Foer will no doubt pronounce himself satisfied, very satisfied or extremely satisfied with the article's veracity methinks this story will wilt under the glare of dedicated members of the milblogging community who will expose this scurrolous pack of lies as the piece of journalistic trash that it is.