To reiterate: I cannot know if everything in the various Baghdad Diarists checks out. But I cannot know that about any number of pieces I read every day. I'm also a proud alumn of TNR. But it seems to me people should make actual allegations of factual inaccuracy or refrain from smears. Call me crazy.
Oh, and, by the way, the attorney-general has clearly been fingered for perjury by the evidence of the FBI director. Here appears to be a proven untruth under oath by the attorney-general. Now do you have an idea why the entire right-wing blogosphere is frothing at the mouth about a story whose primary controversial fact has actually checked out?
The frothing right wingers who are in a screaming fury over a backpage, first-person, diarist article have no problem with untruth, or even massive government malfeasance. They have a problem with being wrong, or seeing the tenets of their faith -- in this case, a near deification of the military which is a necessary component in their continuing faith in its ability to complete an impossible mission Iraq -- challenged. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who's actually in Iraq fighting the war, committed the cardinal sin of relating an experience that was unhelpful for the right's narrative. So they attacked. But that doesn't make the malfeasance and occasional cruelty of American soldiers in Iraq any less true, or any less of a factor in the war's trajectory:
