Ravi Zacharias is a high profile Christian apologist and author who appeared on the radio show of my Salem colleague Paul Edwards, and discussed the Romney candidacy.  

Military historian D. M. Giangreco thinks it wise to expect a Tet-like offensive from Iraq's various bad guys, noting that "[f]ive times within the last 100 years, the US Armed Forces have had direct --- and painful --- experience with enemies who have tried to turn around a deteriorating situation by lashing back in one last, massive assault." He suspects #6 is coming soon:

 

This is from Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s blog, back on May 18, 2006 when he was stationed in Europe training for deployment:

I know that NOT participating in a war (and such a misguided one at that) should be considered better than wanting to be in one just to write a book...but you know, maybe id rather be a good man than a good artist...be both? Some can and some cant...i guess it all depends on how great an artist, or how great a man they want to be. Sometimes it feels like i have to choose between being totally loyal to thoughts of my future family OR totally loayl to chasing down the muse. must find a middle ground.

Also from his blog, under the heading “what defeats people is a double confession”:

"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think that if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have to put another government in its place. What kind of government. Should it be a Sunni government or a Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or a Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic Fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the the government once the US forces withdrew? How many casualities should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a president to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the president got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq." - Dick Cheney, the Washington Institute's Soref Symposium, April 29th, 1991.

I miss political arguments. There seems to be a consensus with all the boys overseas...we laugh harder at CSPAN than comedy central. Silly republicans.

I highly recomment you read the whole blog. It's not a lot of reading, and it will shed a lot of light on both what TNR and Beauchamp wanted out of their shared mission.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

 

Scott Thomas has outed himself. His real name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and he has penned the following self-pitying letter to The New Republic’s readership:

My Diarist, "Shock Troops," and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for The New Republic using my real name.

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discreet view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

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. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

--Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Lest you shed a tear of pity for the embattled Private Beauchamp, besieged as he is by chickenhawk critics, let’s remember who this man is. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, according to his own reporting, taunted a badly wounded female victim of an IED attack who had the misfortune of sitting near him in the “Chow Hall”:

“I think she’s f*****g hot!” I blurted out.

“What?” said my friend, half-smiling.

“Yeah man,” I continued. “I love chicks that have been intimate—with IEDs. It really turns me on—melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses . . . .”

“You’re crazy, man!” my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue.

“In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? ‘IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.”

My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.

It’s odd that Beauchamp thinks the people questioning the accuracy of his account are the ones who are calling his character into question. Hasn’t he done that rather effectively himself?

As I’ve said all along, the real story here isn’t “Thomas” or “Beauchamp” or even the accuracy of his “reporting”, but rather The New Republic’s crass effort to besmirch the war effort with the former “Thomas Diarists”. It’s interesting that Beauchamp writes, “My pieces were always intended to provide my discreet view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military.” While it’s hard to take this claim at face value, in TNR’s hands they served exactly that purpose.

TNR isn’t the New Yorker; it doesn’t publish articles solely for their artistic merit. Rather, as we learned yesterday, TNR under Franklin Foer’s command aims to “explicate ideas.” The idea in need of explication regarding the "Thomas Diarists" was just how sociopathic and depraved our military has become. TNR made no effort to put Beauchamp’s writings into context of the 160,000 men and women who, unlike Private Beauchamp, are serving honorably and nobly in Iraq. What’s more, Franklin Foer’s subsequent comments that Beauchamp’s tales represented “mild practical jokes” implied that the diaries were really just the tip of iceberg regarding American malfeasance in Iraq.

The simple fact is that up until now the American left has done everything possible to discredit the war effort in Iraq. Except for one thing – they’ve at least publicly professed to “support the troops.”

Once again, as I’ve said all along, you can’t “support the troops” while publishing agitprop that suggests the troops are a bunch of sociopaths. The Nation went after the troops a couple of weeks ago; the “Thomas Diarists” were The New Republic’s tepid entry into the field. As regards the accuracy of Beauchamp’s charges, I’m sure we’ll be hearing from his superiors before the sun sets in Iraq. Not everyone runs an investigation at the same leisurely pace as Franklin Foer.

TNR has found this war’s John Kerry wannabe. Time will tell whether his motives are as pure and his accuracy as reliable as his illustrious predecessor.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

 

Betsy's Page is a serious place, a blog respected by left, right and center. She notes the obvious problems with TNR's slander of the military in this post.

Not one writer at TNR's blog has had the courage to disassociate himself or herself from the slander, or even to note the growing doubts about it. What interests me is when --and if-- any of these "journalists" will step forward and declare their doubts, or even their confidence, in their magazine's "reporting."

The biggest controversy in media is swirling about them, and Michael Crowley and Jonathan Chait don't have an opinion? Way to step up, gents.

UPDATE: As Dean notes above, there's a note from the author of "Shock Troops," Scott Thomas Beauchamp, posted at TNR's The Plank. Powerline's Scott Johnson notes that "[i]t is striking that Beauchamp's statement does not add any facts to support the veracity of 'Shock troops,' although his identity is certainly a start," and I find it striking that we still have general silence from contributors to The Plank. Are they feeling vinidcated, or worried that the investigation into Beauchamp's account will reveal that the magazine ought not to have rushed to print a slander on the military, even when it came from a serving soldier? 

Posted by Generalissimo

It has not been a good week for Barack Obama. The first term Senator of Illinois and chief thorn in the side of Hillary Clinton on her ascendance to the presidency tripped on a YouTube question in the Democratic debate a couple of nights ago by declaring that no dictator is above meeting with, regardless of the situation, raising the eyebrows of even some of the Beltway punditry. He tripped again today.

Obama found himself in the usually mundane role of Senate chair this afternoon while the Republicans used procedure to tie the Democrats in knots once again. And when put in the position to make a ruling, he gave the Democrats a short-term win, but a long-term loss on the immigration debate. He very well have given critics of his presidential campaign more fodder.

Feckless majority leader Harry Reid had a homeland security appropriations bill on the floor for debate, and thought the day was going to go rather smoothly, until the Republicans showed him up once again by offering an amendment to tie border security elements of the immigration bill to it.

 Read More...

Ed Driscoll has a post leading to a Kevin Roderick post on machinations at the Los Angeles Times that should make the "journalists" there resign, or at the very least blush. What a melt-down. Spiking a very interesting column is a flare signaling that the paper is in the grip of rigor mortis. The Times is in rapid collapse because of the inability of its aging and out-of-touch senior staff to grasp that the world has changed.

If the Tribune Company feels even the slightest allegiance to its shareholders, it will sack the Times' management and most of the editorial department and start over. How a virtual monopoly can will itself into irrelevance is amazing, but we see it unfolding daily in L.A. 

In his interview with me last week, General Petraeus confirmed what had already been acknowledged by other senior military officials: Iran is engaged in actions that are killing Americans in Iraq:

HH: General Petraeus, some of your staff have talked in recent weeks about Iranian government support for various elements of the enemy in Iraq, in the form of sophisticated explosives, some training. Has the amount of material and training from Iran to the enemy in Iraq increased or decreased over the past half year?

DP: Well, it’s hard to say. It certainly has not decreased, and it’s hard to say whether it’s increased or not, but it has remained very substantial. It’s something we track, sometimes we’re able to interdict some of it, sometimes we capture it or literally stop it. We captured, for example the other day, several dozen rockets that were all set up on timers, and aimed at one of our bases, and some of our air assets happened to see them, and we were able to defuse them, all clearly from Iran. Iran has indeed provided substantial funding, training, equipping, arming, and even direction, in some cases, to what are called the special groups or secret cells affiliated with the militia of Muqtada al Sadr. We captured the heads of the secret cells, as you may recall, several months ago, the Khazali brothers. And with them, we captured a senior Lebanese Hezbollah trainer, the deputy head of the Lebanese Hezbollah department that was apparently created to help the Iranian Quds force, the element that does provide this training, equipping, money and direction to the Iraqi secret groups, or secret cells.

Against this backdrop, as well as the announcement today by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran would never stop its nuclear program, the decision yesterday to enter into prolonged negotiations with Iran about security conditions in Iraq is a huge misstep.

I interviewed AEI Resident Scholar Michael Rubin on the decision to enter into prolonged talks with Iran on today's program. Rubin, the author of Eternal Iran, is convinced a crisis with Iran is imminent. The transcript of our conversation will be posted here later this evening. 

From CounterterrorismBlog:

4,000 in UK trained at terror camps.
Daily Telegraph reported that between 3,000 to 4,000 Islamists traveled from the United Kingdom to apparently pre-9/11 terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The July 15, 2007 Daily Telegraph story reported stated that:

"Up to 4,000 Islamic extremists have attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan before returning to Britain, security chiefs have revealed." The July 15, 2007 Daily Telegraph reported that "[a] senior security source said of the al-Qaeda camps: 'There are 3,000 to 4,000 people who went from the UK to Afghanistan and came back. The important question is, where are they now?' The figure is more than double the estimate of 1,600 which MI5 gave last autumn for the number of individuals actively involved in plotting terrorist attacks in the UK."

4,000 are UK terror suspects
The UK Sun reported that the number of Islamist terrorists increased to 4,000 active terrorists with 2,000 sympathizers. The July 17, 2007 UK Sun story reported:

"[the] number of suspected Muslim terrorists in the UK has multiplied nearly four times in seven months, security chiefs have been told. A staggering 2,000 active terrorists are under watch in Britain.And there are another 2,000 sympathisers. It is a massive rise from the 1,200 warned about by MI5’s former head seven months ago. The chiefs of MI5, Scotland Yard and MI6 were told the figure last week."

 

For: John Boehner, Roy Blunt, and NRCC Chair Tom Cole

From: A Longtime Supporter

Subject: The Cash Crunch And The Elections of 2008

We all know you are getting crushed by the Dems when it comes to fundraising.

We also know you are working hard to turn this around. We also see that the Pelosi Democrats are significantly to the left of the public face they put on last fall, and that on a number of issues the GOP caucus has held together and scored wins.

So why is there this gap? Why isn't the money flowing in with which to take back the House?

The answer has to be that people don't give to unknowns, and they certainly don't want to give to any GOP candidate who isn't solid on the war, on border security, on spending and taxes. They aren't buying --or sacrificing for-- the hope that the candidates who emerge in 2008 will be the sort they are proud to back.

The key to getting some energy back in the donor base --small and large-- is to identify the challengers on whose success will come the return of the majority.

Some GOP leaders say the party doesn't play in primaries. That's nonsense. Yes it does, when it wants to, and we know that.

Some say it is too early to push hard. That may have been true under the old calender, but the old rules are smashed up and the lead the Dems are building may become insurmountable unless you folks wake up and start acting like a party that wants the majority back --badly. The contrast between the parties is already as sharp as it is going to get. If you can't raise money right now, it isn't because your donors don't understand who's in charge on the Hill. They do know, but it is also clear that they don't trust you to mount the sort of campaign necessary to win in '08. They aren't going to send scarce resources to a gang that can't shoot straight politically, even if your agenda is a good one. If you won't make the tough calls or take the hard steps to start a long and difficult campaign, they aren't going to send in the money such a campaign requires.

You need to make the base believe you can win back a majority, and that takes candidates in districts currently held by Democrats. There are 233 Democrats and 202 Republicans. That means the GOP needs to find at least 16 new faces to take seats away from Democrats, and probably a couple of more given the weakness of some of the GOP incumbents.

So make some moves to prove you are serious about getting the majority back and not just protecting the incumbency of Members comfortable in the minority.

Establish a fund for challengers only and do the legal footwork necessary to segregate it from the NRCC's general fund.

Then carefully identify those candidates who will benefit from that fund and make an absolute commitment that they and only they will get these funds, and get them on an equal basis. It doesn't have to be a list of 16 right now, but it should be growing in that direction, but carefully. Before adding anyone to that list, do a thorough vetting with the donor base on whether they want that candidate to benefit from a fund designed to help the top priority challengers. The internet allows you to govern the addition of names via a poll of the donors who have given, say, at least $100. Not only would this protect against the fund being crippled by the addition of a round-heeled Republican, it would also provide you with a reason for saying no to weak candidates demanding access to the money. Transparency at every step is crucial because the base doesn't trust you.

Then --and this is the crucial part-- flood the challengers' fund's site with information about each of those races. If you want to take back the House, show the donors how that can be done, and where it is happening.

Don't make the mistake of throwing into the mix a favorite son or daughter who is on the wrong side of any of the key issues.

Do the smart thing and make sure the list of key challengers is heavy with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. (In fact, a list of challengers that was exclusively made up of such candidates would swell with donations overnight.) Make sure that when the GOP campaigns for a return to majority status, the donors --and the public-- know it is on a platform of winning not retreating in Iraq specifically and the war generally.

These steps are so obvious that not taking them raises fundamental questions about the leadership's commitment to trying to win back the majority.

It seems clear that right now the GOP is not poised to do anything except give up more ground in the House. That's obvious, and so your response should be obvious as well.