Even the Grey Lady has waddled into The New Republic scandal. Again, I will try not to feel snubbed that Franklin Foer spoke to a New York Times reporter and still hasn’t gotten around to returning my call from last Thursday. The Times’ story contains this little nugget:

The magazine granted anonymity to the writer to keep him from being punished by his military superiors and to allow him to write candidly, Mr. Foer said. He said that he had met the writer and that he knows with “near certainty” that he is, in fact, a soldier.

“Near certainty”? “Near certainty”? Are you kidding me? And note it’s just a “near certainty” that he’s a soldier, not a “near certainty” that he’s in Iraq, or, you know, actually witnessed any of the things he claimed to have witnessed. I must admit that I am less than impressed by The New Republic’s standard for accuracy when it comes to verifying a story that grossly slanders our troops.

Whoops! I forgot – the tales told by the guy that Foer knows with a “near certainty” is a soldier are mere “mild practical jokes.” Once again, at the risk of being repetitive, the soldiers in the story humiliate a woman in a military dining hall who has been disfigured in an IED explosion; they discover human remains and one private spends a day and night playing around with a child's skull ("which even had chunks of hair"), amusing his fellow soldiers; and one private routinely drives a Bradley Fighting Vehicle recklessly and uses the vehicle to kill stray dogs. Unlike Foer, I (and every military person I’ve spoken with) find these stories to be disgusting displays of un-military conduct and worthy of punishment.

Which once again returns us to the heart of the matter – the real nut of the story here isn’t whether TNR got the story right or wrong. The nut of the story is how TNR slandered (and continues to slander) our troops by insinuating that the “mild jokes” exposed in the story are indicative of how 160,000 American soldiers are conducting themselves in Iraq.

I’ve spoken to enough soldiers over there to know the pride they take in carrying out their duties honorably. Franklin Foer and The New Republic’s suggestion that the general conduct over there is less than honorable is unconscionable.

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