The Weekly Standard's Reliable Sources: Male Prostitute Matt Sanchez and Web Weirdo "Throbert McGee"

This post, by Max Blumenthal, originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

The war in Iraq has sparked a parallel war between two of Washington's most prominent partisan political publications. The war began on July 13, when The New Republic published a "Baghdad Diary" by "Scott Thomas," an Army private writing under a pseudonym about US atrocities in Iraq. Thomas described his participation in the mockery of a female soldier disfigured by an IED, claimed he witnessed troops intentionally running over dogs in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and alleged that another soldier played with the skulls of dead Iraqi children.

In attempt to challenge the wild notion that atrocities could occur amidst a violent occupation, the neoconservative Weekly Standard's Matthew Goldfarb published an article declaring that TNR's Baghdad Diary was "looking more like fiction." Goldfarb's piece relied on a series of letters supposedly sent to him by active-duty soldiers that raised questions about the veracity of TNR's story.