The Velveteen Soldier & The New Republic

With all the talk of phony soldiers, a major media/military scandal has been brewing for months involving a real-phony soldier. His name is Scott Beauchamp. He is a real soldier. But the stories he wrote for The New Republic and a "military journalist" were false, scurrilous and slanderous, meant to suggest that he and his fellow soldiers were calloused sickos who randomly killed dogs, laughed at mass grave sites, and mocked a woman who had been disfigured by an IED. This was all a lie, and the conclusive proof has now surfaced.

This is two scandals in one, and one has a happier ending than the other.

The phony-real soldier, like the velveteen rabbit in the children's story, has been given a second chance to become real, and has seized on it. He has refused to talk to the media since the investigation, and, though offered a chance to leave the army, voluntarily chose to stay in the line of fire to make good his error.

Michael Yon, the gutsy must-read freelance journalist in Iraq, has a touching story on his close encounter with one of the young man's officers, and the forgiving philosophy of the military that is now supporting and protecting him. Beauchamp is, according to Yon, now patrolling the streets of Baghdad. He deserves a second chance, and if the army is willing to grant it, we should as well.

The other scandal involves The New Republic, which for the second time has now been entangled in a fabricated story scandal. Not just any fabricated story, but one that was anxiously believed precisely because it told scandalous lies about the American soldier designed to attack morale on the home front. No such sympathy is due here. Their butts are not in the line of fire, they are not 19-year old kids under pressure, and they have made no effort to atone for their mistake. In fact, they have stonewalled. And stonewalled. And stonewalled. And lied to boot.

Here's what Michael Yon has to say about TNR:

As for The New Republic, some on the staff may feel like they've been hounded and treed, but it's hard to feel the same sympathy for a group of cowards who won't 'fess up and can't face the scorn of American combat soldiers who were injured by their collective lapse of judgment. It's up to their readers to decide the ultimate fate.

The New Republic treed like a bandit . . . personally, I think they would make a nice Daniel Boone hat.