Dean Barnett writes, "As you’ve probably heard, [Bob] Owens wrote a blog post yesterday that shredded the last remnants of The New Republic’s reputation", a post in which Owens wrote:

What is most interesting about the The New Republic's statement is that while they state they spoke to "dozens of people" in fact-checking their stories, they refused to cite the names of their experts, or explain their qualifications—those qualities that make them experts.

The reasoning behind that purposeful obfuscation is becoming ever more clear with each passing day.

Jim Geraghty, who says he'll be appearing on Howard Kurtz's show this weekend, where he'll probably be discussing TNR's meltdown, adds:

I've enjoyed The New Republic in the past, and part of me felt a bit of pity for the magazine stepping right into a perfect sequel to Stephen Glass's story (Hayden Christensen, call your agent) but this is bad. This suggests that TNR really didn't want to find evidence to contradict their man's account, and organized their "fact checking" in a way to ensure that they found the result they wanted to find: "Oh, everything's fine, it all checks out." This is as close to a smoking gun of malfeasance on the part of TNR as we've seen in this story.

This, by the way, was exactly what Dan Rather and CBS did to their "experts" in the whole memo mess back in 2004.

Update: Great moments in headlines: "Don't Beauchamp That Joint".

More: "The whole point of 'Shock Troops' was to demonize the U.S. military, right? And now that their little story has proven to be credibility-deficient, how do the editors of TNR defend themselves? By demonizing the military!"