Brutal Coda

Remember the Scott Beauchamp story? He was the Army private who wrote a piece for the New Republic describing out of control US soldiers in Iraq. He got a few facts wrong -- though, at least to me, it was always pretty fuzzy whether there was any reason to believe there was any bad faith involved -- and on the basis of that the Pentagon and pretty much all the right-wing media crucified the guy. Now it turns out that one of the soldiers who The Weekly Standard relied on as a sort of anti-character witness against Beauchamp was just convicted of executing four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi men. Remember that great journalism by Michael Goldfarb? Brian Beutler has the details.