Knee-slapping material at "the Smirking Chimp"

Max Blumenthal offered a take on the Scott Beauchamp saga on August 3.

As might be expected merely from the name of the site, he produced a slanted version of events along with the apparently obligatory character attacks.

In attempt to challenge the wild notion that atrocities could occur amidst a violent occupation, the neoconservative Weekly Standard's Matthew Goldfarb published an article declaring that TNR's Baghdad Diary was "looking more like fiction."
(the Smirking Chimp)

Follow the link that Blumenthal helpfully stuck right in his commentary, and you can see that Goldfarb (nor the contributing writers) said nothing about the impossibility of atrocities committed by American troops. All we need is the memory of Abu Ghraib for that. Look at the content of Goldfarb's piece (and the bulk of the work criticizing Thomas' account, for that matter), and it is apparent that the details provided by the author causes the questioning of his account. To wit: A woman with severe burns on her face that soldiers in that location could not recall, a Bradley vehicle that performs like it came out of a James Bond movie (except that no animals were harmed during the filming of this motion picture ...), and a report of a mass grave site that was news to the troops in the area.

The fact that atrocities might occur in real life does not make it OK to make up stories of atrocities and then claim that they happened in real life, Mr. Blumenthal.

I've yet to comprehend the tendency of the left to critize gay Republicans. Blumenthal was among many to lambaste Goldfarb for relying on Matt Sanchez reports. Thus far, Sanchez is vindicated in his reporting. Official announcements on the Beauchamp investigation have conformed to Sanchez's reporting, regardless of Blumenthal's emphasis on Sanchez's history in gay porn and prostitution. Blumenthal found it outrageous that Goldfarb hadn't mentioned either the scandalous gay stuff or a fraud investigation ("'[Sanchez] wrongfully solicited funds to support [his] purported deployment to Iraq' by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul.").

Get serious, Blumenthal. If any of that is supposed to be relevant then by the same token we should expect to be informed up front that the "Baghdad Diarist" was married to a TNR staffer.

Blumenthal's post, instead of exposing character assassination by conservatives, amounts to "Stand aside and let me show you how it's done."

Scott Beauchamp ridicules the thick ankles of a female sculpture prior to his deployment to Iraq. Later, he would report having ridiculed a living woman with a disfigured face.