The Sources of Scott Horton

Scott Horton, crusader for terrorist rights and wanna-be national security reporter, has been caught with his pants downagain. Last week, Horton wrote in response to “revelations” in the British press that the photographs President Obama had suppressed contained images of rape and sexual abuse. Horton claimed to confirm this allegation:

The Daily Beast has confirmed that the photographs of abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which President Obama, in a reversal, decided not to release, depict sexually explicit acts, including a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation, forced exhibition, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms…. The Daily Beast has obtained specific corroboration of the British account, which appeared in the London Daily Telegraph, from several reliable sources, including a highly credible senior military officer with firsthand knowledge, who provided even more detail about the graphic photographs that have been withheld from the public by the Obama administration.

The question I asked last Friday: “Does anyone really believe that Scott Horton has military or GOP sources?” And the answer comes today in the form of a full retraction of the story. Scott Horton makes a fine hysterical liberal polemicist (and there’s such a shortage of those), but he has been relying on what are obviously delusional sources inside the GOP and the military (if they even exist) for some time now. Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, where Horton frequently publishes his work including this latest bit of creative writing, ought to spare itself further embarrassment and send Horton back to Harper’s, which has a long history of publishing great works of fiction.

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