Much gnashing of teeth in conservative circles over a TNR piece written by a soldier in Iraq that catalogues various episodes of unsavoury behaviour in Iraq. The Weekly Standard has been especially indignant, laughably accusing TNR of failing to support the troops and suggesting that Pvt Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s piece was entirely fabricated. Other conservatives went so far as to suggest that Beauchamp was not even a soldier.
Bill Kristol’s startlingly dishonest Weekly Standard editorial argued (to use the term loosely) that:
“…what is revealing about this mistake is that the editors must have wanted to suspend their disbelief in tales of gross misconduct by American troops. How else could they have published such a farrago of dubious tales? Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support. They sense that history is progressing away from them–that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, could still win the war, that they are proud of their service, and that they will be future leaders of this country.
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