You would think the New Republic might have learned something from the humiliating Stephen Glass affair.

You may recall that that Glass was the TNR editor who was fired several years back when it came out that most of the “facts” in his stories were fiction. See here.

Now TNR is publishing fishy-smelling, uncorroboratable reports of bizarre soldier misconduct in Iraq by someone claiming to be a soldier writing under a pseudonym. The thing is, these tales simply don’t ring true (as Michael Goldfarb over at the Weekly Standard points out here.) In fact, they sound like the combat soldier version of urban legends.

But let’s assume for a moment that there’s a kernel of truth in these accounts. The fact remains that for every one of them there are ten thousand acts of heroism, compassion, humanitarianism, valor and goodness by our service men and women that the MSM and publications like TNR will not report because they don’t fit their preferred narrative.

Just as in the final years of the Vietnam War, one the key components of the media pacifists and leftists campaign to undermine public support for the war is to deliver constant reports of atrocities and outrages. It worked back then.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, “It’s 1972 all over again.”