"A Smidgen of Truth"

I haven't been following the case of the mysterious soldier who wrote articles for The New Republic except from afar (others like The Weekly Standard and Gateway Pundit have been all over it), but after all the smoke and mirrors, it has turned out that tales told by the soldier were, as expected by most of those following the story, to be a bunch of bunk:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:


An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.


According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

As often happens in the lefty media, if someone comes along with a story that demeans the troops and makes them out to be little more than animals, they're all too willing to report it without the meticulous fact-checking that would accompany any article with a positive message about the war. As it turns out, the soldier in question is married to an employee of The New Republic, and therefore had a degree of credibility with the magazine that he clearly didn't deserve.

This is not TNR's first rodeo - they've had problems like this in the past. The question is, will they finally learn something from it?