TNR Gives in

It took thirteen pages of a fourteen page diatribe from Franklin Foer… most of which were him trying to save his job, but TNR has finally admitted that Beauchamp COULD have lied.

Bob Owens, of the Confederate Yankee, has the details posted at Pajamas Media.

As Owens suggests… it’s time to Foer to leave.

Now.

My personal congratulations to both Bob, and to Mike Goldfarb.

Congrats also go to Ace… of whom Michelle correctly notes this admission in Foer’s piece…

Fact-checking is a process used by most magazines (but not most newspapers) to independently verify what’s in their articles. Beauchamp’s anonymity complicated this process. Because we promised to protect his identity, we were reluctant to call Army public affairs to review his claims. What’s more, the fact-checking of first-person articles about personal experiences necessarily relies heavily on the author’s word and description of events.

But there was one avoidable problem with our Beauchamp fact-check. His wife, Reeve, was assigned a large role in checking his third piece. While we believe she acted with good faith and integrity-not just in this instance, but throughout this whole ordeal-there was a clear conflict of interest. At the time, our logic-in hindsight, obviously flawed-was that corresponding with a soldier in Iraq is logistically difficult and Reeve was already routinely speaking with him. It was a mistake-and we’ve imposed new rules to prevent future fact-checking conflicts of interest.

Says Michelle:

It was blogger Ace of Spades who first reported on this gobsmackingly obvious conflict of interest and pushed it persistently. He and others were derided as “ludicrous.”

Michelle has more , and is apparently updating this as she goes. As you may imagine, Memeorandum is getting crowded, too.

Final comment from me…

Patterico: “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the fallout. In fact, I think it may be just beginning.”

Yeah, well, here’s hoping.

Addendum: (Bit)

Swamp Stomper Gaius over at Blue Crab has a great drawing describing Foer’s attempt at escape….