Media retracts, all hell breaks lose

My take on the Newsweek story? A lot like this guy's here (without the "bias" idea):

Three factors interacted here: media error/bias, Islamist paranoia, and a past and possibly current policy of religiously-intolerant torture. No one comes out looking good. But it seems to me unquestionable that the documented abuse of religion in interrogation practices is by far the biggest scandal. Too bad the blogosphere is too media-obsessed and self-congratulatory to notice.

From the right, there is a constant stream of "It's Newsweek's fault." Even when reports of these happenings with the Koran have been out there for months. I'm not sure why this particular report would be so suspect in light of other, similar stories. And it's not exactly Newsweek's fault that one of their sources has backed down without denying the initial story altogether, is it?

It's pathetic, but these are the kind of stories that make the right wing blogs feel so proud. They jump on and distort stories to make themselves feel big and important, when they, in this instance, had nothing to do with any of it. Now they all feel the need to pile only after Newsweek apologizes for what has occurred. It's not like the President has given us the same respect.

It's a bad deal all around for everyone involved, but I didn't see anyone on the right ashamed or outraged that anything had occurred to the Koran in the first place. Maybe I just missed all those posts about respect for religion and tolerance for believers. Maybe I was too busy reading about American churches casting out Democrats. But I missed that outcry of religious persecution, too.

Oh, and it's not like the boys at Powerline (blog of the year!) have never gotten anything wrong, either. I don't think your high horse has the legs you think it does, fellas.

Here's the Newsweek "retraction." Here's the key part:

Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we.

Get that? The Pentagon spokesman said the review Newsweek cited wasn't supposed to look into the Koran desecration, not that it hadn't occurred. The source that Newsweek used doesn't deny reading the report of Koran desecration, but now says he must have read it in a different report. And at the end, they state clearly that these charges are still under investigation, so there's no end as of now.

*UPDATE* Newsweek caused the riots?

General Myers said it was General Eikenberry's view that "the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said General Eikenberry believed the violence stemmed from the country's reconciliation process.

"He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," General Myers added.

It does seem a little far fetched to think that a small article in Newsweek would stir up that much violence, where again many other reports of the same action caused nothing.

*UPDATE* Never happened before:

One such incident—during which the Koran allegedly was thrown in a pile and stepped on—prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in Mar. 2002, which led to an apology. The New York Times interviewed former detainee Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi May 1, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp.

"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," Times reporters Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt wrote in "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay."

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