Liberal, Press, Smears, AntiAmerican, Bias

Well, well, well. Ready for your weekend schadenfreude? At long last, TNR ‘fesses up to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle. In an act of grace and professionalism, the magazine has thanked its critics and apologized to the military. No, just kidding about the thanking and apologizing part.

Liberal, Oops, Press, Smears, AntiAmerican, Lie, Hoax

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.

Liberal, Press, Smears, AntiAmerican, Lie, Bias

As an editor whose backside once sizzled on the your-writer-is-a-big-fat-liar griddle, I'm as qualified as anybody to join the discussion about New Republic's now-repudiated Baghdad diarist, soldier Scott Thomas Beauchamp. TNR Editor Franklin Foer's 7,000-word response this week essentially pleads guilty to the five-month-old charges that Beauchamp fabricated Iraq war scenes in his pseudonymous dispatches for the magazine.

Liberal, Press, Smears, AntiAmerican, Lie

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth. The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.

Liberal, Oops, Press, Smears, AntiAmerican, Lie, Bias

On Monday, one of the magazine's senior editors, Jonathan Chait, scoffed at claims about Beauchamp's credibility during an online video interview with the Atlantic's Ross Douthat.