When the WWS and others first raised questions about the New Republic's Baghdad Diarist, the lefty blogs were mostly silent. Only one even mentioned the controversy, and that was to say the Beauchamp's story "has a faint whiff of bullshit about it." But the left has since closed ranks--the revelation that Thomas is indeed a soldier seems to be proof enough for them that his stories are true. And they've arrived at this conclusion for two reasons.
First, there was the argument that "by the numbers...it would be shocking if there weren't random acts of cruelty happening in Iraq." In addition, lefty bloggers claimed that "so far, there has been nothing substantial brought forward to doubt his story."
Neither argument is very persuasive given that the question was never 'do bad things happen in Iraq', but rather 'did these bad things happen in Iraq'. And the New Republic, which seemed to do no fact-checking beyond making sure the story "smelled good," has failed to corroborate a single aspect of the piece. Further, the fact that no one has come forward to say they recall a badly disfigured woman at FOB Falcon as described by Beauchamp is substantial reason to doubt the private's account--we've heard from a lot of soldiers who served and are serving at FOB Falcon while Beauchamp's been there.
But now the DailyKos has put forward what is surely the most disturbing defense of the Baghdad Diarist--that those who are questioning Beauchamp's credibility do so as part of a larger effort of "intimidating whistleblowers." But Beauchamp is no whistleblower...he claims to have been a participant in every grotesque tale he recounts. If Lynndie England had penned an anonymous account of her crimes at Abu Ghraib, would the left have defended her as a whistleblower? Of course, not. They'd have demanded that she reveal herself and face the consequences of her actions.
If Beauchamp's story is true--and at this point we have no reason to believe the stories he's told are any different from the vivid fictional accounts of life in Baghdad that he was writing before he was deployed--then he is not a whistleblower, he's a disgrace to the uniform. A whistleblower is an employee who reports the misconduct of his employer--but the Army didn't order Thomas to ridicule an IED victim or to desecrate corpses. If Beauchamp did those things at all, he did them of his own volition.
So one wonders, why is it that the left not only wants the stories to be true, but wants to afford Beauchamp the same status as Joe Darby, the man who blew the whistle on the goings on at Abu Ghraib. The first question is fairly easy to answer--lefty bloggers believe the soldiers are both victims and perpetrators of the violence in Iraq, and Beauchamp's tales perfectly conform to that narrative. But I've failed to come up with an answer to the second question. Whether the stories are true or not, Beauchamp is no kind of hero.
Also read Bryan's column at Hot Air on the importance of this story.
