The American Spectator

I will leave to others here and to the invaluable Michael Goldfarb at Weekly Standard to review the latest in the Baghdad Diarist saga. I just note that in today's Howard Kurtz column for the Washington Post he ends with a quote from Mark, Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, who opines: " 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." Excuse me but did I miss the evidence for the "cloud" over the Army. Was there something about the investigation which was improper? Was there new evidence uncovered that Beauchamp's account had been corroborated and the Army had covered it up? Notice the equivalence he places between the Army investigation-- which appears to have included face to face interviews with Beauchamp, those in the platoon and other witnesses(or non-witnesses) -- and the "investigation" by the New Republic which you will recall resulted in Beauchamp's reversal of a key part of his story. As for a vested interest in the outcome, the Army investigation --like any investigative or prosecutorial endeavor -- is aimed at finding out if the suspect "did it." Only a college professor could imagine the Army would be motivated to cover this up with the world's media looking on. The only cloud on the horizon is the one over Beauchamp and the New Republic. It's not very sunny in the journalism department at GW either.