UPDATE:  Michael Yon has an excellent post about the Beauchamp saga that I recommend everyone check out.  He seems to agree with many of the points I think is relevant in regards to Beauchamp.  Anyway, its a good read, go check it out.

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I sure hope this is the end of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga with the leak of official Army documents of a conversation between Pvt. Beauchamp and The New Republic editors along with 15-6 Army investigation documents of the incident. The documents were first uploaded on the Drudge Report and have now spread around the blogosphere.

You can read the complete documents below:
Phone Conversation Transcript 1
Phone Conversation Transcript 2 & Battalion Commander Counseling Statement
Official US Army 15-6 Investigation Results

It is very clear reading the phone conversation documents that The New Republic editors especially Franklin Foer are really dishonest people because for the past two months the magazine has been claiming that the Army has been preventing Beauchamp from contacting the media, but in the transcript of the phone call, the editors themselves are trying to silence Beauchamp from talking to the media:

If that wasn’t bad enough Foer even stooped to trying to use Beauchamp’s wife who works at the magazine against him in order to shut him up:

From reading the phone transcript it is clear that the story about the whole Beauchamp affair has totally stopped being about Beauchamp and it is all about how The New Republic so easily published without question the stories Beauchamp wrote along with the subsequent cover up by the TNR afterwards.

People shouldn’t gloat and wish Beauchamp ill because the fact is that he did something dumb which I have seen plenty of soldiers do stupid crap before. Beauchamp probably thought no one would find out about his fictions and it would help him pursue a career writing in the future. He probably never expected things to become what they are now I’m sure he regrets everything that happened. He was young and dumb and is being held accountable for his actions. I thought the battalion commander’s counseling statement was very fair rebuke of Beauchamp and a far cry from the beatings and even fragging that the leftist blogs were saying were going to happen to him. Additionally no word yet from Josh Marshall about TNR’s “indepth re-fact check“.

I also found interesting in the 15-6 investigation that the investigator took my prior recommendation of having him see a mental health professional to see if he qualifies for a personality disorder. A personality disorder chapter is a quick way to get someone out of the Army if they are found to have this problem. I initially recommended to quickly chapter Beauchamp and this was a quick way to do it, but judging by the documents it seems Beauchamp is just a dumbass and not a true leftist plant like these two examples here and here. He seems legitimately sorry for the trouble he caused and wants to finish his service. If that is the case he should be allowed to finish his service if he doesn’t have any mental problems. If he is allowed to continue his service hopefully he serves honorably and learned something from this chapter in his life. Soldiers do stupid things but his just happened to be all over the media.

Keep in mind that probably no punishment for Beauchamp will be more painful than the fact that he has been disgraced in front of everyone in his unit. Imagine how hard it must be for him to go to the chow hall at Camp Falcon now and look other soldiers in the eye after everyone knows what he did. When you are deployed you get very close to people and letting those people down has got to hurt. I’m sure Beauchamp realizes this now.

Make sure to read all the great posts at the links below that have covered this topic in far greater detail than I have:
Michelle Malkin
Jawa Report
Hot Air
Captain’s Quarters
Instapundit
Slate
Blackfive
The Weekly Standard
Ace of Spades
Confederate Yankee
National Review

By the way it is amazing how quickly Wikipedia gets updated.

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