The first “Scott Thomas” piece for the New Republic, “War Bonds” (February 5, 2007), tells the story of an Iraqi boy whose tongue is cut out for speaking with “Thomas”‘s unit. The piece opens with this:
WWS pal Stuart Koehl, who is regularly quoted here as an expert on all things technology-related and who first chimed in on this story to explain that there was no way a Bradley driver could see a dog to the right of the vehicle as “Thomas” describes in “Shock Troops,” now writes in to cast doubt on this story as well. Koehl says,
He attaches this brochure as evidence, as well as this excerpt from 3-year-old article in National Defense magazine:
Okay, so maybe the thing had a spare tire, maybe not…we can’t say for sure though we doubt that it did. But what we do know, and what has been confirmed to us by two experts, is that Humvees have run flat tires which can go miles without being changed. And no soldier in the United States Army would stop in a river of sh%* to change a tire. Either he would a) hook up a tow line to another Humvee or b) drive until he was on a sh%*-free surface where he could make the change. Our source, and we believe him, says a soldier would sooner drive on the rim, damn the consequences, then change a tire under such conditions. And we suspect “Thomas” and his buddies, lousy soldiers that they are if they exist at all, would sooner abandon the vehicle than get their hands dirty.
