Monday, August 06, 2007

Update on The New Republic and Scott Beauchamp   [John Podhoretz]

This morning, I ran an item in which I said The New Republic's Jason Zengerle had been told there was no evidence of a horribly burned woman at a Kuwait base camp before the magazine published a Editor's Note on the matter. The New Republic's note said its controversial diarist, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, had simply misplaced his anecdote about making fun of said burned woman when Beauchamp said the incident had occurred in Iraq rather than in Kuwait.

Zengerle has emailed me to say he actually received an communique about this from Maj. Renee Russo (yes, that's her real name), an Army public-affairs officer, the day after the Note was published rather than before. He also points out that Russo's email to him differs from other statements by Russo in that she told him "a couple of soldiers did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident, but nothing based on fact. More like an urban legand [sic]."

The public-affairs officer told Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee that "we have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth." She did not mention the "couple of soldiers" who "did say that [they] heard rumors about the incident," but the repetition of the "urban legend" term kind of implies that.

08/06 07:39 PMShare