08/03/2007
Matt Sanchez Back as the Weekly Standard's 'Credible' Source
Max Blumenthal reported today for Media Matters that the Weekly Standard recently wrote an article attempting to debunk an article in The New Republic written by Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp.
The TNR article, in the form of a "Baghdad Diary" and written under Beachamp's pseudonym "Scott Thomas", exposed atrocities committed by American soldiers.
According to Blumenthal, "Thomas alleged that while eating in the mess hall at Camp Falcon, he and several other members of his platoon mocked a woman disfigured by 'IEDs.' Thomas also told the tales of a fellow soldier who ran over dogs with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle for entertainment and another who played with the skull of a dead Iraqi child."
Beauchamp revealed his true identity (and was disciplined for it — "the Army punished Beauchamp by revoking his cellphone and email privileges")in response to right-wing allegations that the claims of the atrocities were false, but not before the Weekly Standard published a hit article alleging that Beauchamp's claims were "looking more and more like fiction."
The Weekly Standard's was a story that relied solely on anonymous sources, except for one: Marine Corporal Matt Sanchez.
And if you're unfamiliar with that name, here's some background.
Posted 2:55 PM EST by Andy Towle in Iraq, Matthew Sanchez, Military, News | Permalink
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Well put, Charles. And you've given me an idea relative to one of the current fads in trendy restaurants. E.g.,
"Ballotine of smoked quail, rosemary oil, and Right Wing foam."
Posted by: Leland | Aug 3, 2007 7:17:15 PM
Is Cpl. Sanchez still a member of the Marine Corps? And if so, why? He is a documented cocksucker/suckee, a paid male prostitute and a pornographer. He has performed "unnatural acts" according to the UCMJ and judging from his penis size, the penetration would have been more than "slight" which is required to complete the offense.
Other military personal, providing greater service (legitimate as opposed to sexual) to our country have been discharged and courtmartialed under DADT with even less graphic evidence available. Some have been discharged on allegations of sexual misconduct alone.
Also, given the outspoken opinion of homosexuals and morality expressed by Peter Pace, The Commandant of the Corps, why does he allow Sanchez to continue to wear the uniform and represent the corps? Does Sanchez have pictures of important political or Pentagon officials servicing/being serviced by him? Why are some out or outed homosexuals discharged under DADT and others aren't. What happened to "equal protection under the law", the doctrine that brought GW to the White House?
Something really stinks here, either our military/civilian system of justice, DADT or the Marines.
Posted by: Tom | Aug 3, 2007 7:20:07 PM
Tom, if you go to my website (cplsanchez.info), I discuss Sanchez's USMC status in detail. The short answer is that, as of last spring, he was an inactive reservist. If the USMC separated him as the result of its investigation, federal privacy rules actually forbid them to say so.
I do have a Freedom of Information Act request in for the investigative file, but given the Bush administration's track record on FOIAs I'm not holding my breath.
Meantime, I think an even more interesting couple of questions are who has paid his expenses to the Middle East, and how has he managed to become "embedded" with American military personnel there?
My partner, who did 20 years in the Navy, thinks he must have friends in high places. I'm starting to wonder.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 3, 2007 8:05:26 PM
Can I take a moment to say thay I love Max Blumenthal?
Posted by: zabadak | Aug 3, 2007 9:12:26 PM
Charles, I do believe he's in the Jeff Gannon School of Journamalism. He's probably poking someone high-up in the White House, just like Guckert was.
I'm just so astounded that he has been given the boot when much more qualified and credible gays were. It's incredible that someone who *still* has a profile floating around here and there promoting his prostitution is still in the military.
Posted by: Tread | Aug 3, 2007 9:39:28 PM
I'm just so astounded he *hasn't* been given the boot...
PS. Never type comments while you're Manhunting. That's a lesson you'll never learn, is it, Sanchez?
Posted by: Tread | Aug 3, 2007 9:41:20 PM
Charles, I do believe he's in the Jeff Gannon School of Journamalism. He's probably poking someone high-up in the White House, just like Guckert was.
It's tempting to entertain the possibility, but I kinda doubt it. If you look at the trajectory of Sanchez's careers -- first porn, then whoring, then the Marine Corps while he was whoring, now embedded blogger -- it doesn't say "well-connected D.C. manwhore" like the Gannon thing did.
That said, his presence in U.S. military units surprises me very much. I know that the USMC investigator in his case this past spring was appalled by Sanchez and his behavior, and that the investigator's point of view went well beyond the sexual stuff.
So, the idea that this guy is over there with U.S. military units strikes me as very strange. Even at the string-pulling level, it's weird. Someone is going awfully far out on a limb for Matthew A. Sanchez, or it sure seems that way.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 3, 2007 9:58:30 PM
Oops: The first paragraph in the preceding post was intended to be an italicized quote from TREAD's prior message. I've got to learn to use the Preview button.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 3, 2007 10:00:08 PM
Oh boy! The Weekly Standard's Wingnut Cruise is sailing in March 2008! Book your ticket now!!
Cpl. Sanchez has to be "embedded" with/in somebody higher up. Maybe he's porking Michael Savage, though it's an image I'd rather not get in my head...
Posted by: Sacanagem | Aug 3, 2007 10:53:38 PM
I'm still confused. Beauchamp is being smeared by Sanchez because Beauchamp is gay? Help me out here.
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Aug 3, 2007 11:31:39 PM
A buddy of ours, who escorts, has worked with Matt in a tag team client scene. Matt is one hundred percent faggot, folks. He loves to fuck male ass and apparently is willing to flip to btm when the money is right. This man is one big ole homahseckshul. And apparently very fucked up playing with the likes of Annie Coulter.
Posted by: Bostonian Queer in Dallas | Aug 4, 2007 5:33:54 AM
BQID, tell your friend to visit my website and then contact me. I am very interested in his story. Thanks much.
http://www.cplsanchez.info
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 4, 2007 6:00:52 AM
Matt Sanchez and Alberto Gonzales are two Hispanics that make me, as a Latino, deeply ashamed.
The "Weekly Standard" has lost all credibility. This rag was working hand in glove with the neo-cons in the White House and their (Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz) descredited pie-in-the-sky, middle-east domino theory.
We are now faced with a massive expenditure in Iraq totaling almost 2 trillion dollars (including what we have already spent in Iraq and Afghanistan) through 2017. Meanwhile, our own infrastructure is deteriorating.
To be discussing this peice-of-shit Repug spokesman (Sanchez, gay latino) is just as counterpreductive as talking about Mann Coulter (feMale), Michelle Malkin (female and Asian), Star Parker (female and Black), and whichever else self-loating minority they can embrace.
Posted by: nic | Aug 4, 2007 6:32:03 AM
sorry, that's "self-loathing"
Posted by: nic | Aug 4, 2007 8:11:16 AM
It is so easy to judge people. We as the gay community need to see this. Ann is loud spoken, but she speaks truth. Why do we think as a community that democrats are doing anything for us.
Eight years of cliton and I still can't marry and more importantly
i can not die in war for my country. All Dems want to do is tax me for my start up bussiness, to give it to illegal emmigrants. Why the hell do we care who recognizes our marraige. I live with and do everything with my (partner, husband, mate,...) What the government says dosn't really matter.
As long as they do not tax us out of buiness.
Posted by: Bruce Kahl | Aug 5, 2007 12:37:01 AM
"bruce kahl," are you really that stupid? why did your keeper (trainer, caretaker, govt. provider) let you play on the computer?
Posted by: nic | Aug 5, 2007 1:50:16 AM
Mr. Kahl,
Please share what you're smoking because it must be mighty fine!
Posted by: Tread | Aug 5, 2007 10:23:05 AM
Geez, Bruce, that's quite a string of rationalizations you've got going there. But what does any of it have to do with Matt Sanchez? He's a liar. That's not a judgment, it's a fact.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 5, 2007 4:44:35 PM
This is falling apart like a house of cards. Fake but accurate:
TNR wrote:
In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers...
Well the Kuwait PAO gave them (specifically, editor Jason Zingerle) "assistance" -- telling them that the burned woman did not exist as far as they could tell, and seemed to be an "urban legend or myth" --
Posted by: Tom | Aug 6, 2007 1:14:34 AM
Not that this will matter to TOM, whose mind is made up, but a dispassionate observer would need to weigh the credibility of TNR against that of the Army in light of self-interest.
The soldiers in Beauchamp's unit have every reason to deny the story. To do anything else would expose them to prosecution and/or public scorn. The Army, as an organization (the PIOs) also have reason to deny it, because to acknowledge it would expose the Army to public scorn.
TNR's editors, on the other hand, have relatively little incentive to insist that Beauchamp told the truth. It would be easy for them to cut him loose without damaging the magazine's image.
In fact, if anything, TNR has an incentive to lie in the other direction, i.e., to say or imply that Beauchamp's story was false. If TNR had done so, then it would have earned the approval of its wingnut detractors.
Given that TNR and the Army are both sticking to their respective stories, how should a dispassionate observer regard them?
On the one hand, there is the often-observed tendency of writers in general to embellish their stories, all the more so when it comes to war stories. Beauchamp wouldn't be the first to add a few floors to the building.
Moreover, given that TNR is a war critic and Beauchamp's story reflects badly on the Army, there's reason to think he could have been telling his editors and readers what they wanted to hear, truth aside.
This isn't only a left-wing tendency. For example, the wingnuts said nothing when their darling, a blogger known as Michael Yon, told the tale of al-Qaeda soldiers butchering and eating a young girl. No demands for independent verification. In fact, when Beauchamp himself wrote a story about enemy brutality, the wingnuts stayed silent.
On the Army side of things, we have an organization that has every self-interested motive to deny Beauchamp's story, and which has been observed telling lie after lie during the Iraq War.
There was the Jessica Lynch concoction, the denials of torture, and the Pat Tillman coverup that continues to this hour.
The bottom line is that no one can know who's telling the truth, but the balance tilts somewhat in favor of TNR. The wingnuts ask us to accept Army denials as proof that Beauchamp lied, but that's absurd.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 6, 2007 1:45:36 AM
osted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 6, 2007 1:45:36 AM
What a great post. As you've mentioned, the military has summarily denied almost every negative story once it broke, only to change their tune when facts couldn't be forged into propaganda.
Posted by: Marco | Aug 6, 2007 1:01:54 PM
NIve spin, but the truth came out:
Beauchamp Recants
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.
Now who at TNR will be first to resign?
Posted by: Tom | Aug 6, 2007 11:06:49 PM
TOM, apparently you didn't see TNR's response to the Weekly Standard's report. Turns out that anonymous source's information (hmm, I wonder if Sanchez was involved) is denied by the Army.
In any case, I think it's safe to say two things. First, this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. If Beauchamp's war stories are is photographically accurate, or if they're entirely phony, they amount to little.
Second, no one is ever going to agree about it. Beauchamp's detractors will be satisfied with nothing less than a complete retraction, and he and his editors insist that the incidents happened, albeit that one happened in Kuwait rather than Iraq.
All of this leaves the question of why the far right wing has its collective panties in such a bind. On that score, I think an article on a blog maintained by Andrew Sullivan (who I usually loathe) put it best:
But mainly, it seems to me, the conservative blogosphere has taken such an almighty empirical beating this last year that they have an overwhelming psychic need to lash out at those still clinging to sanity on the war. This Scott Thomas story is a godsend for these people, a beautiful distraction from the reality they refuse to face.
It combines all the usual Weimar themes out there: treasonous MSM journalists, treasonous soldiers, stories of atrocities that undermine morale (regardless of whether they're true or not), and blanket ideological denial. We have to understand that some people still do not believe that the U.S. is torturing or has tortured detainees, still do not believe that torture or murder or rape occurred at Abu Ghraib, still believe that everyone at Gitmo is a dangerous terrorist captured by US forces, and still believe we're winning in Iraq. If you believe all this and face the mountains of evidence against you, you have to act ever more decisively and emphatically to refute any evidence that might undermine this worldview.
If you can't win the actual war, then you start looking for an easier target. TOM, your desperation is showing.
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 7, 2007 7:59:09 PM
and one for you:
As a veteran who also happens to have nearly two decades as a cop, many of those years in investigations, perhaps I can offer some useful background. What remains to be seen is how TNR handles these facts. My guess is they will not recant and admit that they were so anxous to have a story too good to check that they didn't check. More likely, they'll claim that Beauchamp, noble soul that he is, lied to the Army to selflessly protect other soldiers who did as much or more than he did, or to avoid more serious punishment, and as such, they'll say to the public, as Monty Python once did: 'I fart in your general direction." Here's why they shouldn't take that approach.
When the Army investigators spoke with Beauchamp, they almost certainly had already interviewed at least those troops close to Beauchamp most likely to have direct knowledge of what did or did not happen. They may have already interviewed everyone else to find out what they knew or had heard. Good investigators never go into an interview cold, with no real knowledge that they can use to trip up a suspect. Bluffing a suspect is deadly. If he calls your bluff on anything, your credibility is shot, and you're dead in the water. Oh yes, and they would have isolated Beauchamp from the rest of the troops, and the troops from each other, before they began talking to anyone.
Unlike civilian police work, the military investigator does have certain advantages because of the substantial degree of control the military has over each soldier, however, even under the UCMJ, soldiers have rights, including 5th amendment rights against self incrimination. No doubt, the investigators informed Beauchamp of the relevant portions of the UCMJ and the relavant punishments he would likely suffer for the various potential offenses up front. They would not have yelled, jumped up and down, or in any way abused him, just calmly laid things out. Then they would have asked specific questions ("Where, exactly is the mass grave? Who was driving the Bradley? Who was with you when you abused the disfigured woman?"), and if they sensed any hesitation or evasion, reminded him, perhaps a bit more forcefully, of what he had to lose if he failed to tell the truth.
Remember that even in the military, Beauchamp could exercise his right to an attorney and refuse to answer any questions. Obviously, he did not, and the investigators got the truth.
How do we know it's the truth and not just Beauchamp trying to avoid punishment, or limit its severity? As other bloggers have pointed out, the punishment for lying to the investigators would have been far more severe than admitting to the misconduct Beauchamp alleged in his stories. His self interest lay in telling the truth, not continuing to lie. Also, he gave just enough details in his fables to make central facts, places, times, etc. in the stories checkable.
If the mass grave story was true, Beauchamp would have been able to lead investigators to the grave. He would have been able to name the skull-wearing troop and all of the others who witnessed his antics over many hours. If it was true, it would be impossible for all of those involved to engage in a successful coverup, even if they were of a mind to do that, which seems unlikely in this case.
The disfigured woman story was likewise checkable. If Beauchamp continued to claim that it occurred in Kuwait, that narrows things down, and the Army would have all the time and resources necessary to narrow it down as to date, time, and the roster of personnel present on that date and time. But what about Franklin Foer and the several anonymous sources who told him that it did occur and that it occurred in Kuwait? No doubt the investigators spoke with them and they quickly admitted that they were just trying to help out a buddy, a buddy who gave them a story to tell Foer to help muddy the waters a bit, and Beauchamp then confirmed their story--Beauchamp's lapse of memory--when asked by Foer. Foer, of course, was only too glad to accept it as a minor lapse of memory, easily explained, easily forgiven. Army investigators would not have been so forgiving.
Keep in mind that the investigators would have assured Beauchamp that if the stories were true, he would give them every detail, down to the millisecond, and they would check each and every detail. Knowing that, and the investigators would have been very convincing, is it more likely that Beauchamp would continue to blow smoke, or come clean?
And the Bradley driving incidents were also checkable. Remember that in order for that kind of behavior to be credible, a Bradley vehicle commander, an NCO, not only would have allowed it, but participated in it, many times. Again, specific places and times that could have been checked to reveal the damage to Iraqi private property. Iraqis not at all afraid about speaking up and getting the compensation that America commonly pays in such situations surely would have assisted. Again, too many people would have had to have been involved for everyone to engage in a massive coverup, particularly to assist one sad sack private.
The investigators got to the truth, and quickly, but they did so professionally, using good techniques, and they confirmed their findings with every other troop who could possibly know anything. Beauchamp lied. He wasn't bright, he didn't think anything through, and TNR was so anxious to depict the Army in a bad light, they bought what were obvious fabrications. All that remains is to see to what degree Foer and TNR Rather themselves into the ground.
Any bets as to whether Foer decides to "spend more time with his family"?
Posted by: Tom | Aug 7, 2007 10:36:25 PM
TOM, the Army lied about Tillman (and continues to lie). They lied about torture (and blocked a full investigation). They lied about Jessica Lynch.
The Army's investigators can say whatever the fuck they want to say about Beauchamp. It really doesn't matter. They've lost any credibility. See Aesop, The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Posted by: Charles Wilson | Aug 8, 2007 6:26:45 AM