Mea Culpa

(Fox News) - After standing by stories of alleged American troop misbehavior in Iraq for more than four months — despite strong evidence they were not true — The New Republic magazine now says it should not have published the stories. Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote that soldiers used Bradley fighting vehicles to run down dogs — wore skull fragments as hats — and mocked a disfigured woman. The accuracy of the allegations was immediately challenged by other media and disputed by the Pentagon. Beauchamp admitted they were false, then recanted.

New Republic editor Franklin Foer now writes that having Beauchamp's wife serve as a fact checker was "a clear conflict of interest." He reveals Beauchamp now contends the events took place in Kuwait, not Iraq. Foer says editors eventually found what he calls "some reason to doubt Beauchamp's reliability."

He writes — "In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation ... We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity—which, in the wrong hands, can become license to exaggerate, if not fabricate. When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories."