Attention Getter

This is what happens when you write stuff and it raises questions. People start looking at everything you've written. Everything.

Look at what happened with Ward Churchill. He said some truly stupid and reprehensible stuff about 9/11, but that got people looking at what else he wrote and said. It turned out that he invented a bunch of stuff, engaged in plagiarism and other academic misconduct.

He was fired for his troubles, though he and his supporters think the firing was political. No. He was hired for political reasons, and fired because of academic misconduct.

Then, we come to the latest case of journalistic liberties in facts and logic. That would be Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Not only are his diary entries at The New Republic under scrutiny from bloggers and the US military, but it would now appear that he may have violated operational security (opsec) on troop movements by publishing details of his unit's deployment to Iraq. That's a big problem for him regardless of how the other facts pan out.

Violating opsec is a punishable offense under the UCMJ.

And the ongoing investigation by the US military is sure to turn up interesting nuggets on Beauchamp and his stories as the veracity of his stories remains the central issue.