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Dec 3 2007 3:36PM EST

'NRO' Editor: Lying Arabs Tricked Our Blogger

The liberal wing of the blogosphere is delirious with joy over an admission by the National Review Online that W. Thomas Smith Jr., a military blogger who reports from the Middle East, has written several dispatches that fell apart upon further inspection.

But with critics now comparing Smith to Scott Thomas Beauchamp, The New Republic's discredited "Baghdad Diarist," NRO is swatting back -- and in a way that could merely ratchet up the controversy.

NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez insists Smith is no fabulist: "Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and...he filled in the gaps by talking to sources" whose claims he treated with insufficient skepticism, she says.

So far, so good. But then she adds: "As one of our sources put it: 'The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas.'"

So that's what happened! Here's Smith, doing his job like a good reporter, when along come those Arabs with their "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate" and trip him up. Gotcha. If only he'd remembered this, NRO-approved simple rule of thumb: Unlike everybody else, Arabs lie!

Oh, and as for that "doing his job" part, that's only true if you define his job as "sneaking into Hezbollah bases and stealing their property, thereby endangering all Western reporters in the region."

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