Here’s an interesting post by a “semiotics” expert on the New Republic “Shock Troops” article: John Barnes’ Amazon Blog.

With years of experience at coaching writers and analyzing problems in their work, Barnes (who self-identifies as a leftist/radical) concludes that “Scott Thomas” is an MFA writing student, probably with some military experience, who took bits and pieces of real events and mixed them with outright, poorly written fiction. He makes a good case and it’s worth reading, but this has to go under the heading of speculation.

Meanwhile, New Republic editor Franklin Foer has made another statement on the matter to ABC News: Who Is the ‘Baghdad Diarist’?

He say he has “many, many data points” to back up the lurid stories in “Shock Troops,” but doesn’t actually say what those data points are. Apparently, a military email address is not one of them.

Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic, said that he has met Thomas here in the States and that he is “absolutely certain” that he is a soldier in Iraq. “Not an ounce of doubt,” he told ABCNEWs.com. Asked about how he attempted to verify Thomas’ military credentials, Foer said, “I’ve got many, many data points to back that up” although one of those proofs didn’t include a military e-mail account.

As for the specific accounts in the stories, Foer said that the articles were rigorously fact-checked before they were published. “We showed the stories to people who’d been embedded in Iraq to make sure that it all smelled good. We talked to one of the members of his unit to confirm the woman, a female contractor. We talked to a medic who’d served in Iraq to make sure that a woman could be in an FOB. We spent a lot of time with him on the phone asking hard questions.”

If the stories were “rigorously fact-checked” as Foer claims, it should be a simple matter to prove; just publish the fact-checkers’ observations and results.

Allahpundit makes an excellent point: it’s a mistake to focus on whether “Scott Thomas” is a “real soldier.” This is how the leftists who desperately want to believe the worst about the US military will counter-attack; if he does turn out to be a real serviceman, they’ll do their best to make it the entire issue, and thereby discredit any blogger or writer who questioned his existence. (Jamil Hussein, anyone?) The focus should instead be on the veracity of the anti-military stories.

Also see Greyhawk’s post at Mudville Gazette, for more thoughts on the necessity to avoid being trapped in this controversy.