Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy

In 2007, Scott Thomas Beauchamp (born 1983 in St. Louis, Missouri), a United States Army private, filed three entries in The New Republic (TNR) using the pen name "Scott Thomas" about serving at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Baghdad. These entries concerned alleged misconduct by soldiers, including Beauchamp, in post-invasion Iraq.

Several publications and bloggers questioned Beauchamp's statements, specifically episodes in which soldiers were described running over feral dogs, playing with an Iraqi child's skull, and making cruel comments toward an injured Iraqi civilian woman. A U.S. Army investigation had concluded some statements in the material were false. The New Republic investigated the statements, first standing by the content of Beauchamp's articles for several months, then concluding that they could no longer stand by this material.

Beauchamp's first sergeant, John E. Hatley, was later prosecuted by the U.S. Army and sentenced to life in prison for murdering four Iraqi civilians. The editor of The New Republic who oversaw the publication of Beauchamp's essays, Franklin Foer, commented in 2010 that "I think the coverage of Scott Beauchamp was an object lesson in media stupidity. Every single major American news organization made a huge deal about possible embellishments in his description of plausible incidents-and ignored the actual war crimes committed in his unit."

Beauchamp went on to serve a second Infantry tour in Iraq, and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 2010.