Until recently, I didn’t realize that The New Republic’s statement on the Scott Beauchamp controversy included the admission that the scene in which he and others mocked a disfigured woman took place in Kuwait before he got to Iraq. Guess that line about how war “degrades every part of you” is no longer operative.

On the other hand, as Ross Douthat notes, the conspiracy-theorizing around this story — and the general level of attention it has received — are completely absurd, so I won’t say any more.

Update 8/8 7:03 AM: Two more things. First, the military is saying that the story is false but not providing enough details to evaluate the claim. Meanwhile, Josh Marshall downplays the significance of TNR’s admission by writing today that “TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out.” But the error is far more consequential than Marshall suggests. The mocking of the disfigured woman is the lead anecdote of the Beauchamp piece in question. It’s more than 300 words of an 1100 word piece. And it took place before he got to Iraq. There’s no getting around that.