The New Republic adrift

Although the — I believe the correct word is “venerable” — Martin Peretz is nominally the editor-in-chief of the New Republic, the lack of adult supervision at the magazine has become painfully apparent in the course of the magazine’s continuing Beauchamp disgrace. When are “the editors” going to render their verdict on their Baghdad Fabulist, anyway?
The lack of adult supervision at the magazine is apparent beyond the Beauchamp disgrace. Here the juvenile TNR staffer Joshua Patashnik does little more than direct sarcasm at the New York Times’s relatively favorable review (by Carl Cannon) of Stephen Hayes’s book on Vice President Cheney. Unlike Patashnik, Cannon actually shows evidence of having read Hayes’s book. At the end of the post, Patashnik disparages Hayes by linking to Jason Zengerle’s column (subscribers only) on Hayes’s reporting about the relationship of the former Iraqi regime with al Qaeda.
Zengerle’s column is not worth a detailed rebuttal. But Zengerle’s (and by implication Patashnik’s) point is that Hayes is a lone voice investigating Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda. TNR, however, has itself in recent months published Paul Berman’s article (subscribers only, but excerpted by Thomas Joscelyn) that in part evidences the prewar relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.
Zengerle’s column derives from 2005 and Berman’s article from June of this year. Yet Patashnik cites and links to Zengerle’s column. We already know that the TNR’s editors don’t edit, but some of their writers apparently don’t even keep up with their own magazine.