Scott Beauchamp's 'Shock Troops' Statements

Cross-posted at Confederate Yankee.

After the article "Shock Troops" in The New Republic had been challenged by critics , a documentary filmmaker/blogger by the name of JD Johannes narrowed down the search of the author to Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division on July21.

Three days after that on July 24, the military began a formal investigation, which included taking statements from soldiers in Alpha/1-18IN.

Scott Beauchamp gave his initial statement on July 26, published here for the first time.

Later, Beauchamp returned and filed another statement. For reasons as yet unexplained, he backdated the time of the second statement to 1700, an hour an 40 minutes before his original statement at 1840, and yet he directly refers to his statement made at 1840. [Update: perhaps the original statement was made at 15:40 and his penmanship is just bad? That would make a lot more sense...]

At no point during these two statements does Beauchamp directly recant.

He does not provide any support to the claims made in his article, "Shock Troops." There does not appear to ever have been any documentary evidence to support this story, nor the author's two previous stories.

Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, penned a retraction of these stories five months later. Foer has yet to issue an apology to his critics or the military he maligned during the course of this story.

Update: Thanks to Jon Ham at The John Locke Foundation for enhancing the contrast of these images.