The Boston Globe clearly needs to bookmark ObWi…

…because its editorial staff looks fairly stupid right now.

The short version: the Globe covered a presentation by Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner that purported to show American soldiers raping Iraqi women (Councilor takes up Iraq issue Turner releasespurported images of rape by soldiers). Now, the article itself is reasonably objective, as far as it goes: indeed, the author seems quite skeptical of the claims.

She apparently wasn’t skeptical enough for her editors, however, because World Net Daily called up and pretty much gleefully pointed out that they had scooped the pictures’ origins in bad porn sites a week ago (you may remember our story on the subject, which was apparently slightly relevant after all). WND, equally cheerfully, is careful to apportion blame:

The Globe published the photos despite the fact a skeptical Slack had raised serious doubts about them and was not able to verify their authenticity. Slack was assigned to report on the press conference and did not approve of the photos being published. The photos were approved for publication by three Boston Globe editors.

In the article the Boston Globe ran with the photos, Slack underscored her skepticism: “The images, depicting men in camouflage uniforms having sex with unidentified women, bear no characteristics that would prove the men are U.S. soldiers or that the women are Iraqis. And there is nothing apparent in the images showing they were taken in Iraq. Unlike the photographs widely publicized last week, the images appear to have been taken outdoors in a sandy area with hills in the background.”

What really sets this story off from the usual run was the accompanying photo. Drudge managed to find a screen shot of the picture that ran with the print article (NOT WORK SAFE!), which caused Dan Kennedy to gracefully backtrack a bit from an earlier position. Mind you, obviously nobody intended to publish graphic porn images in a major American paper: Kennedy’s quite right about that. Still, Slack should have checked the story better and the editors who caused grainy pictures of several men’s units achieve mass distribution across Boston are probably shotgunning Maalox right about now. I can’t wait to see how the Globe apologizes for this one.

(Via Instapundit)