Yesterday the Washington Post inexplicably published a piece about the Vogue profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad—a profile published in March 2011. It’s inexplicable because it’s old news: Vogue removed the story, titled “A Rose in the Desert,” from its website long ago—and the fact that the glossy magazine was embarrassed by the timing is well known. Only a few weeks later Mrs. Assad’s charming husband went on a bloody rampage that, with about 10,000 dead so far, shows no signs of abating.

The Post piece, by Paul Farhi, does contain one revelation, however: The author of the profile, Joan Juliet Buck, is suffering from a deep psychological wound in the aftermath. According to the Post, she told NPR last week that “the children who appeared in the Vogue photos probably weren’t the Assads’ real children, but decoys planted for security purposes.”