Libertarian Leanings

The real Scott Thomas

As just about everyone knows by now, Scott Thomas is Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp.  So it turns out the Baghdad Diarist, who quoted himself saying, "I love chicks that have been intimate with IEDS.  It really turns me on -- melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses," is really a soldier.  But as Jack Kelly writes at Real Clear Politics,

If what Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote in the New Republic isn't true, he's in trouble, and so is the magazine.

If what Pvt. Beauchamp wrote is true, he's in bigger trouble.

So could his story be true?  It could, but there is this to consider:

On his blog (Sir Real Scott Thomas), Pvt. Beauchamp indicates he's an aspiring writer who joined the Army to establish credentials for voicing his liberal political opinions.

"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," he wrote May 18, 2006. "But...maybe I'd rather be both."

But is Pvt. Beauchamp telling the truth about what he sees in Iraq?

In a blog entry for May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp describes an atrocity: "'Put a 556 in his head.' (The caliber of an M-16 rifle is 5.56 millimeters.) On the street below, the man's brown face dissolves in a thick red mist. The lights in the city's houses shut off in unison. Electricity rationing. Water rationing too. You ever tried to survive for more than a few hours in 120 degree weather?"

On May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp was in Germany, where temperatures rarely reach 120 degrees, and the electricity and water work just fine.

OK.  I'm back in vacation mode now.

To the Outer Banks

We're off to the Outer Banks for the next week and a half on another vacation.  They have electricity there, so you may be hearing from me.  But then again...

Best Regards,
Tom

When all else fails...

Slander.  It's what John Kerry would do.  And when it happens, you just know things are going well with the surge.  The left's latest stab at drumming up opposition to the war comes as a series of articles by someone calling himself Scott Thomas and claiming to be a soldier - a soldier on active duty in Iraq. 

One private, infamous as a joker and troublemaker, found the top part of a human skull, which was almost perfectly preserved. It even had chunks of hair, which were stiff and matted down with dirt. He squealed as he placed it on his head like a crown. It was a perfect fit. As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter. No one thought to tell him to stop. No one was disgusted. Me included.

The passage above is an excerpt from one of his stories.  According to "Scott" he and his comrades were having a barrel of laughs as they indulged themselves in their depravities.  That is if you can believe his story.  Unfortunately for The New Republic, nobody who knows anything about the military in Iraq believes it. 

...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...

...As he marched around with the skull on his head, people dropped shovels and sandbags, folding in half with laughter...

...I didn't see the third kill, but I heard about it over the radio. Everyone was laughing, nearly rolling with laughter...

Their unlikely hilarity knows no bounds.  But long after its publication The New Republic has been unwilling to provide anyone with anything except its solemn word that the tales told by "Thomas" are true.  And it's such an unlikely story.  Matt Sanchez, for one, doesn't believe any of it.

I was at Camp Falcon earlier this month and didn't recognize any of what Scott Thomas described.  So, I e-mailed the public affairs officer Major Luedeke at Camp Falcon:

Per COL Boylan's request, I have prepared the following:

1. There was no mass grave found during the construction of any of our coalition outposts in the Rashid District at any time. Such a discovery would have prompted an investigation and close attention paid at levels higher than ours to making sure that the victims were properly interred and attempts would have been made to determine their identities. It is difficult to fathom that a unit's leadership would condone Soldiers disrespecting the remains of anyone in the fashion described.

2. Due to the threat of IEDs, our combat vehicles are driven professionally and in control at all times. To be driving erratically so as to hit dogs or other things would be to put the entire vehicle's crew at risk and would be gross dereliction of duty by the noncommissioned officer or officer in charge of the vehicle. Drivers aren't allowed to simply free-wheel their vehicles however they see fit, and they are *not* allowed to be moved anywhere with out a vehicle commander present to supervise the movement. Therefore- claims of vehicles leaving the roadways to hit animals are highly dubious, given the very real threat of IEDs and normal standards of conduct.

3. As for the alleged  woman with severe burn scars, we have nobody matching that description here at FOB Falcon. As Soldiers, we practice the value of Respect: "Treat people as you want to be treated." If the blogger and his friends can't live the Army value of respect, I have little doubt that someone around them who does would have made an on-the-spot correction. The Falcon dining facility is not a spacious one. Anyone being rude, loud or raucous calls immediate attention to himself. It is hard to fathom that anyone would be able to get away with such callous behavior without somebody intervening and stopping it from happening.

What it really means, is that the surge is going better than anybody ever expected.  And that is what the Scott Thomas stories are intended to counteract.

Message from Bud

Friends,

Enclosed is an article from yesterday's (7/23) Washington Times reporting the agreement reached between Sunni and Shiite leaders in Iraq to cooperate in focusing on Al Qaeda. This is exactly what these tribal leaders agreed to do at the June conference with Andrew in Baghdad.  In the immediate wake of public announcement of this agreement Al Qaeda launched an attack against several of the leading sheikhs involved, killing two.  Nevertheless the remaining tribal leaders vowed to press on.  Two impressive lessons emerge from these events: 1. The conference Andrew White convened achieved concrete results in bringing thus-far opposing parties together; and 2. their commitment -- in the face of obvious danger -- is one of conviction and commitment to reconciliation and the defeat of Al Qaeda.

Tomorrow I will meet with Andrew here in Washington. He is to testify before the Congressional Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Best regards,

Bud

Robert C. McFarlane
Chairman
McFarlane Associates Inc.
2300 Clarendon Blvd (Suite 306)
Arlington, VA 22201
Tel: 703 522 8211
Fax: 703 243 9382

Surprised that this made the news

Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute picked up on a poll that shows a growing number of people now say that invading Iraq was the right thing to do.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq.

Back in May 35 percent of Americans said the invasion of Iraq was right while 61 percent said the U.S. should have stayed out.  Apparently news that the surge is working has leaked out.

Al Qaeda in Iraq

George Bush is beginning to make a dent in Democratic claims that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror.  Today he spoke in South Carolina.

Al Qaida in Iraq is a group founded by foreign terrorists, led largely by foreign terrorists, and loyal to a foreign terrorist leader -- Osama bin Laden. They know they're al Qaida. The Iraqi people know they are al Qaida. People across the Muslim world know they are al Qaida. And there's a good reason they are called al Qaida in Iraq: They are al Qaida ... in ... Iraq.

You should read the whole speech.

The European Model

An article at Strategy Page, Inventing New Lies, describes the evolving European stance on Islamic terrorism.  According to the article, Europeans once had an effective informal truce with the terrorists in their midst, providing safe haven for terrorist organizations and welfare benefits for terrorists and their families.  In return, host countries were relatively free from terrorist attack.  The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq ruined that arrangement. 

After that, European intelligence agencies began tracking the terrorists and sharing information.  It soon became evident that Islamic terrorists were far more numerous and better organized than anyone imagined.

Despite the European intelligence agencies now realizing that they had a serious Islamic terror threat even before 2001, European politicians and media still cling to the old ideas that negotiation and understanding would have kept Europe safe, were it not for those reckless Americans. Politicians and journalists would rather invent new lies, to justify the old ones, than admit that they had made a mistake.

Our Democratic party and their allies in the mainstream press bear a stiking resemblance to those European politicians and journalists.

The Central Front

As Thomas Joscelyn observes in the Weekly Standard, Democratic presidential hopefuls are unanimously of the opinion that the war in Iraq has little to do with defeating al Qaeda.  That's not what al Qaeda thinks.

Here's Bin Laden in December, 2004:

I now address my speech to the whole of the Islamic nation: Listen and understand. The issue is big and the misfortune is momentous. The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.

The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation. The nation today has a very rare opportunity to come out of the subservience and enslavement to the West and to smash the chains with which the Crusaders have fettered it.

Mr. Joscelyn's offers a slew of quotes from Bin Laden and Zawahiri, in addition to the one above, to make the point that al Qaeda really is in Iraq and has been there all along.  He concludes,

...the war raging in Iraq--let us be clear--is certainly not "all al Qaeda, all the time," as some critics now accuse the Bush administration of believing. But the idea that the Iraq war has nothing to do with al Qaeda is demonstrably false.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri's own words tell us that the American project in Iraq jeopardizes everything their group stands for: These two top leaders of al Qaeda have promised the people of the Middle East that al Qaeda will protect Muslim soil from the "Crusader-Zionist" invaders, even if the region's rulers will not, and even if doing so meant cooperating with the "apostate" Saddam.

Zawahiri believes that Iraq is al Qaeda's best opportunity for establishing a true Islamist state in the heart of the Middle East. Democracy does not belong in the region, the two men say, and only an Islamic government based on sharia law is acceptable in Iraq. The mujahedeen will drive the Americans out of Iraq using the same tactics they used to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. America's leaders and soldiers are weak, al Qaeda says. They are looking for a way to run from the fight in Iraq, and they will do so, bin Laden exults, while the "whole world is watching."

The whole world, that is, except the leading Democratic candidates for president.

I disagree with that last comment of his.  I think those Democratic candidates are watching, but they seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that an American defeat is a Bush/Republican defeat.  Unfortunately it's gotten to the point that an American victory is clearly a defeat for the Democrats.  That is something they know with a certainty.

Chikitita

Chikitita agreed to give Josh's web sites a little boost even though she wasn't particularly optimistic about what it would do.  In fact she didn't think it would do any good at all, but Josh seemed like a nice guy so she gave him a break. She doesn't hold Americans responsible for "what the Bush administration has done in their name."  In fact she claims many thoughtful American friends. Josh is one of them.

Though I said the former is a waste of time and the latter is a dating agency [and I’m SORRY FOR SAYING THAT] Josh’s sincerity to make a difference was the only reason for me to promote those two sites.

The web sites are http://www.iraqhasavoice.com/ and http://empathyunites.org/.  There's not much there, and if I had to make a guess, what is there not what Josh expected.  My shoot-from-the-hip sense is that he deplores the occupation and, like those who sport those "endless this war" bumper stickers, believes all we have to do is pack up our troops, bring them home, and peace will immediately prevail.

So what are his Iraqi letter writers writing to him?  They write that the Americans should stay.

Ali from Baghdad:

Well, I think the problem is not with the USA. In fact, if we rewind our memories back to the earliest days of Saddam's regime fall, the first bombing attack in Iraq was done by Al-Qaeda targeting the UN building in Baghdad.Believe me, friends! I don't support the occupation. But if the US armed forces have to leave Iraq in these critical moments, the situation will be more chaotic in Iraq. As soon as the US army leaves; Iran will hurry to support the Shiite and try to export thier Islamic revolution to Iraq, hence, KSA and other arab countries will intervene to help and support the Sunnis there in Iraq. In result, the civil war will become a bigger war and soon the whole middle east will be on fire! I want them to leave but not now!

Linda from Baghdad:

During the early days, I was mad at the bombings and brutality my people faced on the hands of US soldiers. When the Abu Ghraib pictures were made public, I was not in the least shocked or surprised. To me it was a typical thing to do for any invader.

Yet, by the year 2004, something terrible rocked my family and myself. My only brother, who's loved and respected by the neighbours, cousins, friends, his classmates and teachers has become an official detainee under US custody. He was apprehended for mere suspicions based on hearsay evidence. To this day, the authorities could not come up with convincing charges that could justify his imprisonment.

Only then, I could sense the human side of American soldiers. Fellow Iraqis had beaten my dear brother almost to death. His life was spared in the nick of time by American soldiers, who had more mercy on him than his countrymen, who saw in him the other sect that deserves to burn in hell.

Anonymous 4/29/07:

My cousin was one of Saddam's regimes victims. My cousin was executed for no reason other than one of the secret police wrote a false report against him. his family stayed waiting for 6 months having no clue where their son might be till the secret police bring his corpse. To be honest I was dying to see the end of Saddam not because I want to revenge my cousin death but because that monster did the most horrible crimes against the Iraqi people. I would say that the Iraqis would appreciate what the US did if it kept its promises of free democratic country. however the U.S. did not come with clear and well arranged plan. To be fair the Arab and neighboring countries did all their best to destroy Iraq and to halt this new era in Iraq. Leaving Iraq now as Democrats trying to do will be the most stupid idea. the want to fix the situation with worse mistakes without any care for the iraqis'. I also want to clarify that the other U.S. presidents were not angels nor Bush was the worse as it had been stated by Hilary Clinton whose her husband left Iraqis dying under the sanctions.

Anonymous 7/10/07:

I am Iraqi, I don't want the American Army to leave my country now or very soon... I need their help to clean the country from the terrorism of Al Qaeda and Iranian militias... The easiest way stop the blood flooding is changing the current Iraqi government of that prime minster Al Malki... he is slave of Iran he is the head of Dawa part that part created in Iran... the Iranian Militias in ministry of defense and ministry of Interior of Iraq... they are kidnapping killing daily the good Iraqi people they grow the bombs in the sides of the way to explode and kill American soldiers and Iraqi... I know there are many æ many good ladies in America lost their dearest in this bloody crazy war.. I fell sorry for that I swear me as Iraqi admire her country and there are millions smellier to me we want America to be friend to us help us to educated our new generation assist in rebuild our country ... and we want in the same time clean smiley life to our children and want your American sons and daughters to return peace safety to their family....

Three out of five letter writers said they believe it would be better for American troops to stay and one was grateful for finding the human side of the American soldiers, even though she could not understand why they are there.  Finally an Iraqi writing from Cairo, while making no mention of the Americans, ended his letter on a surprisingly optimistic note.

Eng. Hussam, Cairo Egypt:

But I believe that what is happening now is to lead the Iraqi people into this situation and make the whole community and the socila life collapse to make the situation comfortable to those who want to have their own country to govern it as they want and to lead its people in the way that servse thierselves and in the opposite direction of their peoples sake, and this what explains the aims behind the explosions that take place everyday there. But though, it will not continue this way, there will be a day where all of us can go their and enjoy the life that we ever wanted to have in our country, and know the meaning of settling down and having a stable life.

That was it - five letters.  Were they truly from Iraqis?  Who can say.  But the message they send doesn't give the anti-war crowd much in the way of ammunition, and probably isn't the message Josh had expected to hear.

Al Qaeda defectors

According to the London TimesOnline, Iraqis who once allied with al Qaeda are turning against them in ever greater numbers.  What began in Anbar and spread to Diyala is now happening in Baghdad.

The sewage-filled streets of Doura, a Sunni Arab enclave in south Baghdad, provide an ugly setting for what US commanders say is al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the city. The secretive group, however, appears to be losing its grip as a “surge” of US troops in the neighbourhood – part of the latest effort by President Bush to end the chaos in Iraq – has resulted in scores of fighters being killed, captured or forced to flee.

“Al-Qaeda’s days are numbered and right now he is scrambling,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Michael, who commands a battalion of 700 troops in Doura.

A key factor is that local people and members of al-Qaeda itself have become sickened by the violence and are starting to rebel, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael said. “The people have got to deny them sanctuary and that is exactly what is happening.”

Al-Qaeda informants comprise largely members of the Doura network who found themselves either working with the group after the US-led invasion in March 2003, or signed up to earn extra cash because there were no other jobs going. Disgusted at the attacks and intimidation techniques used on friends, neighbours and even relatives, they are now increasingly looking for a way out, US officers say.

This is just what the Democratic congressional leadership hopes to prevent: the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Via Power Line.