Last week, Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a U.S. soldier in Iraq, was all the rage among conservatives. Beauchamp had used a pseudonym, “Scott Thomas,” to write a few pieces about the war and his experiences for The New Republic.
His columns weren’t controversial until he published an item that noted some inappropriate behavior on the part of some of his fellow troops. Beauchamp quickly became Public Enemy #1 at the Weekly Standard and several major far-right blogs. After he explained his real identity, the right went after the solider with renewed vigor. Malkin went so far as to post personal information about Beauchamp, while the National Review seemed to hold an informal contest to see who can hate this soldier the most.
John Cole asked today why Beauchamp was a national threat last week, but a non-entity among his critics this week.
At any rate, since it has been only a week, I am curious why there is little conversation about Beauchamp. Last week he was single-handedly destroying morale, fueling terrorist hate, and smearing the country. He was such a threat that every milblogger and every Bush blogger immediately set phasers on smear, and hysteria reached a fevered pitch in no time. But now, nothing.
Is it possible that he was just a convenient distraction for the internuts that control discourse in the right-wing blogosphere, and now that the chest-thumping and bellowing and feigned outrage at these terrible smears against God and Country have been publicly displayed, they can move on to some other distraction? Like little dogs, they can go bite someone else’s ankle for whatever the perceived grievance du jour might be?
Why, yes it is possible. In fact, it’s quite likely.
Indeed, as it turns out, the smear machine seemed to lose its nerve right around the time the lynch mob realized that they couldn’t debunk Beauchamp’s anecdotes.
The key to the anti-Beauchamp push-back was Matthew Goldfarb’s work in the Weekly Standard, which attempted to poke holes in the TNR pieces by relying on observations from Marine Cpl. Matt Sanchez. Media Matters explained today that Goldfarb’s work neglected to mention why Sanchez’s veracity is in doubt.
Goldfarb did not disclose several facts that might undermine Sanchez’s credibility. Sanchez is reportedly under investigation by the military for fraud. According to an April 1 Marine Corps Times article, Sanchez was informed in a March 22 email from Reserve Col. Charles Jones, a staff judge advocate, that he was under investigation for lying “‘to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council [UWVC] and U-Haul Corporation’ about deploying to Iraq at the commandant’s request.” According to the article, the email added: “‘Specifically, you wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq’ by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul.” The article stated, “In an interview Thursday with Marine Corps Times, Sanchez said the fund-raising allegations are ‘demonstrably false’ and that he never collected money from either organization.” The article stated that “[t]he Corps on Friday [March 29] was slated to wrap up” the Sanchez investigation, but Media Matters has been unable to locate any articles reporting whether the investigation did indeed wrap up, and if so, what the results of the investigation were.
In a March 8 article for Salon.com, Sanchez wrote: “Others [bloggers] were comparing me to Jeff Gannon and claiming that I too had advertised my services as a male escort. I won’t deny it, or that I acted in several adult movies 15 years ago under names like Pierre LaBranche and Rod Majors.”
After leaving his work as a male escort and in the adult film industry behind, Sanchez enlisted as a Marine Corps reservist and enrolled at Columbia University. In October 2005, Sanchez filed a harassment complaint against three Columbia students, members of the International Socialist Organization, who he claims verbally attacked him during a student fair. Three months later, Columbia decided to take no disciplinary action against the students named in Sanchez’s complaint. He subsequently took his case to the conservative media, penning an op-ed for the New York Post and appearing on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes and The O’Reilly Factor.
On March 2, Sanchez was rewarded for his campaign against campus anti-war activists with the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Sanchez was photographed posing at the conference with right-wing pundit Ann Coulter moments after she called former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) a “faggot” during an address to the conference.
And it was Sanchez’s word alone that was supposed to undermine Beauchamp’s version of events.
As for the Beauchamp’s many, many right-wing attackers, Cole thanks him for being such a popular target: “You gave certain segments of the nutters a chance to really feel patriotic and really pitch in on the war on terror from their laptop in Santa Monica when they investigated you and your girlfriend. You gave certain others a testosterone rush they have not felt since High School football when you gave them an opportunity to opine about giving you a blanket party. And most of all, thank you for providing a week-long distraction as to how f**ked up things really are in Iraq.”