Question

Is it the policy of the New York Times to print articles based on confidential Army reports that they've only released to partisan outfits, that are contradicted by concurrent reports? I don't think that we're any closer to the truth on the Scott Beauchamp issue, and yet the NYT gives the imprimatur of closure. Their article is a he said/she said article without any on-the-record statements about the veracity of his reports. This sounds right to me:

Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, called the Army’s refusal to release its report “suspect,” adding: “There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there’s one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests.”

Yet the New York Times comes down squarely on the side of one vested interest. The one that has been shown to lie about Pat Tillman, EFPs in Iraq, etc., etc.

Not only do we not know what the truth is, it doesn't matter at all relative to the Iraq war (yes I approvingly cited Rick Moran). The guy who got 110 years in jail for raping and murdering an Iraqi civilian and her family isn't a figment of anyone's imagination. Other soldiers tell stories the right wing apologists don't like, too many and too similiarly for all of them to be false. This quote, for example...

Some say that Iraq cannot be in a civil war because the country's major institutions are not fighting each other with conventional military forces. But this is too formulaic and restrictive for what I saw and heard. On the streets of west Baghdad, almost every person I spoke to told me of a close relative or friend who was killed by Sunni insurgents or Shiite militia members.

...is something that I'm sure will be criticized ("how do we know EVERYONE he spoke to had a friend killed?"), but at some point the preponderance of evidence resists this stupid game. Going after the low-hanging fruit of particular anecdotes doesn't nullify the totality of the failure in Iraq. Rather than pounding away on their laptop, these keyboard warriors need to face reality.