New Republic disavows stories

After nearly five months of mounting criticism, the New Republic has disavowed reports about petty wartime cruelty in Iraq, saying the magazine had lost faith in the Army private who wrote them.

“We cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them,” Editor Franklin Foer wrote this week of the dispatches by Scott Thomas Beauchamp. “Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.”

Foer said in an interview that he kept waiting for Army investigative documents -- some promised by Beauchamp -- that never arrived. “I hope our investigation and honest admissions of failure will reassure our readers that we’re committed to the highest standards,” he said.