Dan Riehl notes that while the facts of this story are coming apart, Franklin Foer, the editor of TNR is holding to that statement posted on Friday. While the stories get debunked, Foer claims that those attacking the story have an ideological agenda…..

The Standard raises some important questions about the piece, and we’re investigating them,” New Republic Editor Franklin Foer said yesterday.

So important, in fact, that Foer had no answer for them, even though he claimed in the Plank that he was getting corroborating info.

The mass grave is going to be TNR’s undoing here. FOB flatly denies the existence of said mass grave. Mass graves in Iraq are amply and independently documented, so the PAO at FOB Falcon is not going to flatly deny its existence unless it does not exist.

TNR is also going to have to produce experts other than anonymous people presumably e-mailing from Iraq that will explain how someone could hit a dog with the BFV in the manner described. I’m skeptical that TNR will be able to do so.

And if either of those two major holes is left open in these “diaries,” all of the other wrong details (the square casing, Glocks = Iraqi police, not knowing Army lingo uniforms, etc. will be unable to be explained away as a soldier not writing to a professional level.

Serious allegations also deserve serious investigations and that is where we find ourselves with this mysterious anonymous “Scott Thomas” and his claims.I first ran across this when…

“A lot of the questions raised by the conservative blogosphere boil down to, would American soldiers be capable of doing things like the things described in the diarist…”

If by “be capable of doing” he means “be willing to do,” and if by “a lot” he means “relatively few,” he’s dead on.

Alternately, if by “be capable of doing” he means “actually find it possible to do,” then he’s also right.

Unfortunately, in the end Bryan is right. Once it gets disseminated by the Ministry of Truth, the job is already done. The actual truth is irrelevant.

Major Kirk Luedeke’s response was calm and considered. It appears less likely that any of the assertions made by “Scott Thomas” have any basis in truth.

The time is going to come, ladies and gentlemen, when propaganda sheets like TNR (and the NY Times) are going to be reduced to “hobby” publications with circulation number in the low 1000’s.

Even the leftist editor of Editor and Publisher notes that the PEW center is consistently reporting that American’s trust of the media is rapidly deteriorating.

Foer apparently thinks he can ride this out. He’s mistaken.

I didn’t think to ask permission to post her whole reply, so I won’t; but here is her ’summation’:

Thanks for bringing this to my attention and my short response is: I call BS.

The rest of her analysis of the specifics in the different stories is pretty much the same as most of ours.

God help ‘Scott Thomas’ if she ever runs across him. ;-)

The new liberal media mantra “Fake but accurate”

William Amos on July 21, 2007 at 2:04 PM

double ditto.

From Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes, TNR editor Frank Foer has no further reports about the accuracy of “Steve Thomas’s” accounts, but has this to say:”A lot of the questions raised by the conservative blogosphere boil down to, would American soldiers…

It’s also not true that the criticism boils down to “would American soldiers nutroot activists be capable of doing writing things like the things described in the diarist”? We all know that humans are capable of great monstrosity and Americans aren’t exempt from that.

Hmmmmm? That sentence works both ways.

In my experience, the left just doesn’t learn from experience. I mean, how dense do you have to be to take socialism seriously?

And now they’re actually going so far as to pin FAKE NAMES on their sock puppets? Of course we need to keep making fun of the idiots, but we must also keep in mind that each step the liberal media takes in making itself more obviously crazy is another victory for our cause.

We have Blackfive, Mudville Gazette, NRO THE TANK, Dadmanly, Michael Yon and then all the comments from military members and veterans on those sites all calling BS.

As someone rightly pointed out on a Military Blog I read, the Right links to people such as Michael Yon, while the Left links to these smears of the military.

It is pretty clear which side of the ideological aisle actually supports the military.

You’ve been on quite a roll lately.

Think Dan Rather about now.