TNR makes a statement on Scott Beauchamp

The New Republic surprised me by updating their examination of Scott Thomas' Beauchamp's "Shock Troops" story.

Beauchamp's essay consisted of three discrete anecdotes. In the first, Beauchamp recounted how he and a fellow soldier mocked a disfigured woman seated near them in a dining hall. Three soldiers with whom TNR has spoken have said they repeatedly saw the same facially disfigured woman. One was the soldier specifically mentioned in the Diarist. He told us: "We were really poking fun at her; it was just me and Scott, the day that I made that comment. We were pretty loud. She was sitting at the table behind me. We were at the end of the table. I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right."

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.
(The New Republic)

I am slightly surprised that TNR calls it an "important discrepancy." It's true that it's an important discrepancy, because of how it works into the time line of events. As Spree at Wake up America noted, the Kuwait location puts the incident prior to Beauchamp's participation in hostilities, and just a short period of weeks (or even days) after leaving Germany. The digression of character, at least in the case of Beauchamp, preceded his involvement in armed hostilities. Perhaps his friend had previous service in a war zone.
The friend's report contains an additional and more subtle discrepancy. Where Beauchamp describes an "unusually crowded" dining area, the anonymous supporting witness says "I believe that there were a few people a few feet to the right." That seems like an unusual detail if the hall were unusually crowded.

TNR claimed a degree of corroboration for the graveyard tale:

More important, two witnesses have corroborated Beauchamp's account. One wrote in an e-mail: "I can wholeheartedly verify the finding of the bones; U.S. troops (in my unit) discovered human remains in the manner described in 'Shock Troopers.' [sic] ... [We] did not report it; there was no need to. The bodies weren't freshly killed and thus the crime hadn't been committed while we were in control of the sector of operations." On the phone, this soldier later told us that he had witnessed another soldier wearing the skull fragment just as Beauchamp recounted: "It fit like a yarmulke," he said.

I wonder how the second witness contributed to the corroboration?

My problem with this story has always been the problem of having a child's skull fragment fit an adult's skull "like a yarmulke." The skulls of children, at least in my experience, tend to be smaller than those of adults. I need more than anonymous verification to accept that detail. I don't rule out the possibility that it could happen, but I'm certainly skeptical. Maybe the adult had a tiny head, and the fragment came from a child with a great big skull. Not likely, but conceivable.

Spree also rightly noted that it was a stretch at best for TNR to claim that the Beauchamp account was consistent with a report of a "children's cemetary" appearing in The Weekly Standard. The anonymous witness improved on the Beauchamp account by refraining from placing the origin of the burial in the Hussein era. TNR, nonetheless, double-checked with a forensic pathologist the possibility of tufts of hair clinging to a "long-buried" skull. It seems to me that the "rotting flesh" was a bigger problem than the tufts of hair. I wonder what the forensic pathologist had to say about that?

He observed that he was grateful his hair had just been cut--since it would make it easier to pick out the pieces of rotting flesh that were digging into his head.
(TNR, "Shock Troops" by Scott Thomas)

It's possible that the "joker and troublemaker" made the statement attributed to him by Beauchamp even if there were no bits of rotting flesh left on the skull. Or Beauchamp could have embellished his account.

TNR did a nice job clarifying the maneuverability of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle--but I still have a problem with that account, also.

The Bradley has tracks, like a tank.

If I'm an editor for this story, I'm wondering how an animal can be "dragged" by a track vehicle by having its extremity caught in the tracks.

He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road.
(TNR, "Shock Troops" by Scott Thomas)

Run the video and try to imagine it.

If the dog is caught in the tracks, the only dragging that will happen is when the body is pulled from the rear of the vehicle to the front of the vehicle with the top portion of the track. That type of dragging would be worthy of some description in an account with the type of theme that Beauchamp apparently intended.
Could the dog be caught other than in the tracks? I don't see how (and Beauchamp doesn't describe it other than being caught in the tracks), but perhaps a veteran with Bradley experience can shed some light on that point.

This one reads to me like the type of embellishment a mechanically disinclined person might imagine (when he's not thinking that people commit suicide by sticking their heads in the oven via the heat of the oven).

The doubts about this story are too substantial to be treated with anonymous and incomplete corroboration.