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White House Criticizes Newsweek
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051600443.html
Spokesman Challenges Magazine to Retract Report on Koran

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 16, 2005; 2:06 PM

The White House today appeared to challenge Newsweek to retract the admittedly flawed report that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the story has "done a lot of harm" to U.S. efforts to reach out to the Muslim world.

The comments, following even blunter criticism by Pentagon officials, came after Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker apologized for the May 1 report that said U.S. military investigators had confirmed that an American interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. At least 16 people were killed last week when riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia and other countries turned violent.

"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not."

"The report has had serious consequences," he said. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."

Rice, speaking to journalists on the way back from her surprise visit to Iraq, said that "it's appalling that this story got out there." She said that "the sad thing was that there was a lot of anger that got stirred by a story that was not very well founded."

Rice said she hopes "that everybody will step back and take a look at how they handled this -- everybody."

Newsweek said Sunday that the report was based on an unnamed senior U.S. official, who said the alleged Koran incident would be cited in a forthcoming investigative report by the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command. That official now says he "could no longer be sure" of the information provided to reporter Michael Isikoff, the magazine said.

McClellan seized on the sourcing issue, telling reporters that the brief story was "based on a single anonymous source who could not personally substantiate the allegation that was made." Isikoff said Sunday that "there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards," noting that the Pentagon declined an opportunity to challenge the story before it was published.

Kurtz is an idiot. The White House is playing him like a fiddle.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantan ... e-and.html

This is exactly the same deal as the CBS Memogate shuck-and-jive. The administration can't attack the assertion (Bush was AWOL, they desecrate the Koran at Gitmo) because the assertion is true and verified through multiple sources. So instead they attack a single instance of the assertion on a technicality (a portion of the CBS reports used possibly forged memos [that the alleged author didn't challenge the content of, only the form], the source for the Newsweek story doesn't retract the assertion but changes his recollection of where he read it).

And the corporate media obediently then say, "Oh, that story must be false, then. Glad the administration set us straight."

Ryan

I was hoping they were right this time, and that the story was a misfire....oh well. Maybe they'll learn that
if you're gonna do 'psyops' that are this incendiary, you had damn well better keep it secret....and if you can't, then just don't do it.

I'm not morally opposed to 'desecrating' a 'holy book', btw. Personally I could care less whether someone wipes their ass with the Koran -- or with the Bible or with 'Origin of Species' for that matter. I'd be a hypocrite if I said any of that offended my 'faith' or that I believed in concepts like 'desecration' of a book. Yes, I realize a 'believer' feels very differently. I also realize that some of the gitmo assholes who pulled this stunt-- and their commanding officers -- are probably 'believers' too, of the Christian species, and would likely go apeshit if someone pissed on a Bible. Yet I wonder why the mullahs aren't so incensed when someone uses a Koran to disguise a *bomb*. It's all God's work, I guess.

"So, have a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, kwazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and
a solemn, dignified Ramadan."

But Krab, what if someone wiped their ass with a mint mono UK Y/B Pepper?

Ryan

It would make Baby Nino Herpes cry.


But about this Newsweek thing again: I don't think Juan Cole has it quite right. Because this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7857407/sit ... ek/page/2/

On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.

does NOT mean *this*:

Newsweek has, in other words, confirmed that the source did read a US government account of the desecration of the Koran.

No , Juan, Newsweek has, in plain English, confirmed that the source *still says* he read a US government account...whose identity he can no longer remember clearly.
Whether he actually did so has of course NOT been confirmed.

It also appears that perhaps Koran-defiling was not practiced only by our boys and girls in uniform:

Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell.

The Newseek reporter (Michael Isikoff -- (in)famous for his role in the Monica Lewinsky /Bill Clinton scandal) on the other hand is marshalling more damning testimony in support of the defiler scenario:

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

It's touching how Col. Blackner feels that it couldn't have happened *BECAUSE IT'S NOT IN THE MANUAL".

Free Korans for the American People
[url]http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200505\NAT20050517a.html[/url]
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
May 17, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - An Islamic civil rights group is launching a Koran giveaway -- a campaign intended to turn a "negative incident into something more positive," it said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations planned to hold a Tuesday morning news conference to discuss details of its campaign to offer free Korans to the American public.

CAIR said its campaign is a direct response to the controversy generated by Newsweek magazine's May 9 article claiming that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet in an effort to "rattle" detainees.

Newsweek retracted the anonymously sourced story on Monday, after first admitting that parts of it were wrong.

CAIR said its campaign, called "Explore the Koran," involves the community-sponsored distribution of Islam's revealed text to Americans nationwide.

"It is our belief that greater access to Islam's holy book will help foster a better appreciation and understanding of Islam by ordinary Americans," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

Last week, CAIR called on the Bush administration to launch a public probe of the Koran-flushing allegations.

Over the weekend, CAIR held a conference in the Washington area on the causes and remedies of "Islamophobia and anti-Americanism."

CAIR described the conference as a success, with more than 300 people attending.

Speakers included former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim; Amnesty International USA Board Chair Chip Pitts; Gerald Michael Feierstein, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Regional Affairs, Bureau of Near East Affairs; and Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at DePaul University.

"It was gratifying to see such genuine interest by participants from across the U.S. in a conference aimed at tackling the complex issues of Islamophobia and anti-Americanism," said Fouad Khatib, CAIR board member.

"We are confident this will enable CAIR to play an active role in formulating positive solutions to check these destructive trends."

Newsweek: A Dan Rather Rerun
http://www.cnsnews.com/bozellcolumn/bozell.asp
by L. Brent Bozell III
May 18, 2005

Just months after Dan Rather and CBS brought shame and disgrace to the entire American journalism profession with their phony National Guard expose of George W. Bush, Newsweek magazine has been exposed for declaring – with nothing more than one anonymous source’s gum-flapping – that U.S. interrogators were flushing the Koran down the toilet to inflame detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

How many eerie parallels are there between the CBS scandal and the Newsweek scandal? Let us count the ways:

1. Both stories caused liberal media types to hunt for years to prove the urban legends dear to the hearts of the Bush bashers. In the CBS case, reporters spent years pecking through George W. Bush’s National Guard records, searching desperately for, and occasionally suggest the existence of, smoking guns. They just knew he had somehow shirked his duties. In the Newsweek case, reporters had spent years chasing down the most shocking Guantanamo-interrogation stories they could find. Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer assembled a pile of poorly sourced Koran-in-the-john stories dating back to 1983, a regular urban legend of Islam coverage. The media just knew the U.S. military at Guantanamo were guilty of serious abuses.

2. Both stories relied on a single anonymous source. In CBS’s case, he was "unimpeachable"; in Newsweek’s, "reliable." In the case of CBS, that source was revealed to be Bill Burkett, a Texas-based Bush-hater with a lot more poison than evidence against Bush. In Newsweek’s case, the magazine misled readers in their original story by saying "sources" claimed Koran-flushing would be in an official government report. Then they claimed it was simply a "senior government official." Later, that "reliable" source couldn’t vouch for the accuracy of his own statement.

3. Both outlets made comical claims about their professionalism in a time of crisis. Dan Rather claimed he would be the first to report the story of his own incompetence, and also claimed "Those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the heart of it." Wrong. Newsweek called their reporting process "careful" and their laying out of the retracted story "transparent," which is a strange word to use when the unreliable source is still anonymous.

4. Both stories were incorrectly declared to be "confirmed" by outside sources. CBS claimed it had multiple typography "experts" who had authenticated the National Guard memos; it was subsequently revealed they could not get an expert to authenticate the memos before they aired it, and then the lone "expert" they cited as an authenticator said he had not done any such thing. Newsweek claimed it had presented its story to a couple of top Pentagon brass, and had received no denial; it was subsequently revealed that neither had done so because it is impossible to prove a negative.

5. In both cases, the story, left unchallenged, would prove highly damaging to the Bush administration. If Bush had truly defied National Guard superiors in a grave manner, it could have sunk his re-election campaign. If U.S. military interrogators were really stupid enough to think it’s a neat idea to get information from Islamic radicals by flushing their sacred texts in the rest room, the White House would be confirmed as reckless zealots declaring war on every Islam-dominated nation. At this writing, the death toll caused by the Newsweek story stands at 17, with over 100 others injured in the ensuing riots. There is no telling how many more may die.

6. When both stories crumbled, the media outlets were initially reluctant to retract anything. Instead, they went about arrogantly maintaining it was up to their critics to prove them wrong, not their responsibility to get it right. For 12 days, Dan Rather stalled and stonewalled at CBS, declaring no one could prove his story false. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker’s first line with the New York Times was that "We’re not retracting anything. We don’t know for certain what we got wrong." Luckily for Newsweek, they saw the light on this faster than Rather did – but only, as with CBS, after an outpouring of public outrage.

7. But even after the official retraction, the spin control continued. Dan Rather continued to insist, and other reporters followed suit, that while the documents may have been fabricated, the National Guard story was true. Newsweek’s liberal media friends united around the theme that Newsweek will be proven right, that Koran-flushing was not "beyond the realm of possibility," as CNN’s Anderson Cooper put it. On "Nightline," ABC’s John Donvan intoned, "What really goes on at Guantanamo Bay, no one really knows."

It’s just tragic that the liberal media are willing to believe the most exotic rumors about the depredations of President Bush and the U.S. military, long before they’ve been verified and long after they’ve been retracted.

God, Bozell is a clown. What a load of bull.

Ryan

Rspaight wrote:God, Bozell is a clown. What a load of bull.

Ryan

especially as, regarding his first point, the circumstances of GWB's service ...or absence from same...*still* haven't been clarified or documented properly. Of course, the CBS thing has made that story radioactive.

Matt wrote:5. In both cases, the story, left unchallenged, would prove highly damaging to the Bush administration. If Bush had truly defied National Guard superiors in a grave manner, it could have sunk his re-election campaign. If U.S. military interrogators were really stupid enough to think it’s a neat idea to get information from Islamic radicals by flushing their sacred texts in the rest room, the White House would be confirmed as reckless zealots declaring war on every Islam-dominated nation.

Weren't both of these stories more or less icing on the cake anyway? That is to say, both of the main stories (Bush avoided duty, terrible interrogation tactics) are/were fairly solid without either of these side stories in question. Was it confirmed that the Koran was flushed down the toilet? Does it matter?

The whole White House strategy seems to be to pick apart one small piece that *might* be incorrect in an effort to avoid the entire issue. <insert various strips of This Modern World here>

Well, yes, that's it exactly. Because Newsweek's source burned them, that means we never flushed a Koran. Because CBS fell for the fake memos, that means Bush wasn't AWOL. Because Bush won re-election, that means the lack of WMDs doesn't matter. It's rope-a-dope. Watch me perfom card tricks over here while they wheel an elephant onstage behind me.

And that's not even taking into account how Gen. Myers came out and flatly said that the Newsweek story had nothing to do with the Afghan/Pakistani violence. Yet the White House is still blathering about how the story "cost lives."

And *that's* not even taking into account the question of why it's Newsweek's fault that their trusted Administration source suddenly backed off his previous statement. Sounds like a classic Rovian tactic to me -- plant the story, then discredit it and blame the media.

The whole thing is a just a huge joke -- a card trick designed to divert attention away from the elephant on the stage.

Ryan

Rspaight wrote:Well, yes, that's it exactly. Because Newsweek's source burned them, that means we never flushed a Koran.

Even then, does it even matter? It's just one small piece of the larger picture.

How about this...:

Newsweek: A report will be coming out saying that Bill Clinton's semen was found on a yellow skirt owned by Monica Lewinsky.

[report comes out, makes no mention of yellow skirt]

White House: Look at this terrible reporting from Newsweek! The report contradicts their reporting! The media is out to tarnish Mr. Clinton's image with this terrible reporting!

Newsweek: Umm, well, our sources told us there was a yellow skirt. But we retract our story.

Public: DAMN NEWSWEEK! DAMN THEM TO HELL!

Ok, so Tom Tomorrow does it better, but...

Don't Blame Newsweek

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted May 17, 2005.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/22026/

The story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time.

As Riley used to say on an ancient television sitcom, "This is a revoltin' development." There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time. The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen released from Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner said he had been physically beaten but did not consider that as bad as the psychological torture, which he described extensively. Jamal al-Harith, a computer programmer from Manchester, said 70 percent of the inmates had gone on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. The strike was ended by force-feeding.

Then came the report, widely covered in American media last December, by the International Red Cross concerning torture at Gitmo. I wrote at the time: "In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, why are people representing our government, paid by us, writing filth on the Korans of helpless prisoners? Is this American? Is this Christian? What are our moral values? Where are the clergymen on this? Speak up, speak out."

The reports kept coming: Dec. 30, 2004, "Released Moroccan Guantanamo Detainee Tells Islamist Paper of His Ordeal," reported the Financial Times. "They watched you each time you went to the toilet; the American soldiers used to tear up copies of Koran and throw them in the toilet. ... " said the released prisoner.

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

So where does all this leave us? With a story that is not only true, but previously reported numerous times. So let's drop the "Lynch Newsweek" bull. Seventeen people have died in these riots. They didn't die because of anything Newsweek did -- the riots were caused by what our government has done.

Get your minds around it. Our country is guilty of torture. To quote myself once more: "What are you going to do about this? It's your country, your money, your government. You own this country, you run it, you are the board of directors. They are doing this in your name. The people we elected to public office do what you want them to. Perhaps you should get in touch with them."

Molly Ivins is a best-selling author and columnist who writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

lukpac wrote:Ok, so Tom Tomorrow does it better, but...