The Hammond Report

Two issues came up last week related to how the Liberal's propaganda against the Soldiers and Marines fighting the war on terror is beginning to unravel. The first is the so called Haditha «massacre» case where charges against the accused Marines are now being dropped due to the lack of evidence and the second is revelations that Scott Thomas Beauchamp's Shock Troops story published in the New Republic were made up (aka phony).

Haditha

Democrat Representative, John Murtha was quick to condemn the Marines who were charged for murder in Haditha before there was even a trial. I would bet that most of the anti-war Left were in agreement with Murtha and cheered him on for his condemnation.

A decorated Marine colonel turned anti-war congressman has said Marines killed at least 30 innocent Iraqi civilians «in cold blood» in Haditha in November, suggesting the death toll may be twice as high as originally reported.

«There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood,» Murtha said.

Murtha, who was decorated for his service in Vietnam, said the death toll may be more than twice as high as originally reported.

«They actually went into the houses and killed women and children,» the congressman said.

Sadly our MSM is doing a very poor job of reporting the fact that the charges against the Marines are being dropped and/or reduced. I had to find an article in the Guardian Unlimited about the case unraveling.

The case against US marines involved in one of the most infamous incidents of the Iraq war, the killing of civilians at Haditha, was on the verge of falling apart today.

eventeen civilians, including women and children, and seven alleged insurgents were killed at Haditha. The accusation was that US marines went on a killing spree after one of their comrades died in a roadside bombing.

But one by one the charges against four marines have either been dropped or reduced. Four marine officers were also charged with allegedly failing to investigate the incident but the case against two have already been reduced or dropped.

Beauchamp

Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army Private wrote for The New Republic, a story called Shock Troops claiming inhumane conduct by soldiers on Iraq. It is turning out that Mr. Beauchamp has trouble with being truthful in his stories. He claimed some pretty horrible things.

«I love chicks that have been intimate with IED'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.

The Army investigated and found his accusations and claims to be false. In fact, he even recanted on the first day of the investigation and signed an affidavit.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed «Shock Troops» article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous «Baghdad Diarist» columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only «a smidgen of truth,» in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation.

Despite Beauchamp's recant, The New Republic is standing by the stories and claiming that Beauchamp himself is reversing his official recantation. So there appears to be some controversy about how the Army investigators conducted the investigation and The New Republic is spinning that side to protect their damaged credibility.

I have to agree with Peggy Noonan in her WSJ piece on the Beauchamp issue, Apocalypse No where she said the following:

That's not Iraq, that's a Vietnam War movie. That's not life as it's being lived on the ground right now, that's life as an editor absorbed it through media. That's the dark world of Kubrick and Coppola and Oliver Stone, of the great Vietnam movies of the '70s and '80s.

If that's what you absorbed during the past 20 or 30 years, it just might make sense to you, it would actually seem believable, if a fellow in Iraq wrote for you about taunting scarred women, shooting dogs, and wearing skulls as helmets. This is the offhand brutality of war. You know. You saw it in a movie.

If you'd had a broader array of references, and were less preoccupied by the media that is the great occupying force in our own country, and you were the editor of the Thomas pieces, you might have said, «Whoa.» Just whoa.

The anti-war Left want so badly to believe these stories about our troops that they jump on quickly to tell the story despite any actual proof. They are painfully slow, however, when the stories unravel and the evidence shows the claims to be untrue. They are so willing to believe the worst because, as Peggy Noonan said, they saw it in a movie.