Well, I’m back in my top-secret chamber beneath Denver International Airport, and tonight it looks as if The New Republic plans to drive their flaming jalopy right off the cliff. They’re disputing the Weekly Standard’s report that Scott Beauchamp recanted his stories, and editor Franklin Foer is demanding apologies from bloggers and the Weekly Standard.

Meanwhile, the Weekly Standard and Michael Goldfarb are standing by their report that Beauchamp admitted under oath the stories were fiction.

I haven’t been consulting any anonymous sources, but my opinion is that Beauchamp’s tales are ludicrously, obviously false, to anyone whose brain hasn’t been rotted out by the equivalence virus. Can I prove it? No. But in this little battle royale, I’m much more inclined to trust the sources of Michael Goldfarb than the bizarre rationalizations and evasions offered to date by Foer. And I’ll be very surprised (but I won’t apologize for questioning the article) if the incidents in “Shock Troops” are proven to have happened in an objective reality, and not in Scott Beauchamp’s odd imagination.

Hot Air has a good rundown of the latest developments.

UPDATE at 8/7/07 11:19:05 pm:

The New York Times: Army Says Soldier’s Articles for Magazine Were False.

An Army investigation into the Baghdad Diarist, a soldier in Iraq who wrote anonymous columns for The New Republic, has concluded that the sometimes shockingly cruel reports were false.

“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”

The Washington Post: Army Concludes Baghdad Diarist Accounts Untrue.

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.

“An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false,” an Army statement said. “His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.”

But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. “We’ve talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account,” Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.