{"id":1483,"date":"2007-08-02T22:17:13","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T22:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2007-08-07T16:53:47","modified_gmt":"2007-08-07T16:53:47","slug":"the_implausible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1483","title":{"rendered":"The Implausible Becomes Plausible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update II:<\/b> OK, it’s a lot less plausible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\/Update II<\/b><\/p>\n

Confederate Yankee has the official release<\/a> from the Army concerning Scott Beauchamp’s tales.<\/p>\n

They appear to be tall.<\/p>\n

To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?<\/p>\n

Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the
\ncommand and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas’ platoon and
\ncompany were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.<\/p>\n

As to what will happen to him?<\/p>\n

Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to
\nAdministrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under
\nthe various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not
\nreleasable to the public by the military on what does or does not
\nhappen.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So someone is fibbing here; I think TNR either got snookered or the Army is covering up. My money? Snooker. The consequences to the Army of falsifying this are too high.<\/p>\n

“Plausible” certainly doesn’t mean “true”.<\/p>\n

\/Update:<\/b><\/p>\n

TNR has published a commentary on Scott Beauchamp<\/a> which suggests that there is at least some third-party validation of Beauchamp’s core claims.<\/p>\n

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. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp’s company, and all corroborated Beauchamp’s anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously.<\/b> (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)<\/p>\n

\n– emphasis added<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I said that I felt Beauchamp’s stuff sounded “implausible”…I’ve got to say, as much as it stings, that it sounds a lot less implausible now.<\/p>\n

And while Beauchamp may be a low-performing soldier in a low-performing unit, if these claims are plausible there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to be looked into.<\/p>\n

I’ll try and have a longer comment tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TNR reinforces Scott Beauchamp’s claims. The Army slaps them down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}