Newsweek Blinks: Afghan Mullahs Call For Holy War On Koran Desecration

[The Ressurrected One]

I'm never in favor of a news organization having to reveal its source but, if there was ever a time for that to happen, that moment is now.

Newsweek should reveal its source, this so-called "high level Bush adminstration" person responsible for feeding Newsweek bad information. Just who is it at the White House that's responsible for this mess? Someone should be held accountable.

Next, George Bush needs to get his ass on camera like, THREE DAYS AGO and address the Muslim community.

I particularly think it's imperative they release their source now that it's being floated the Bush administration set Newsweek up...

Get this from Norman Mailer at The Huffington Post:

Intelligence 101A

I'm beginning to see why one would want to write a blog. At present, I have a few thoughts I can certainly not prove, but the gaffe over the Michael Isikoff story in Newsweek concerning the Koran and the toilet is redolent with bad odor. Who, indeed, was Isikoff's supposedly reliable Pentagon source? One's counter-espionage hackles rise. If you want to discredit a Dan Rather or a Newsweek crew, just feed them false information from a hitherto reliable source. You learn that in Intelligence 101A.

Counter-espionage often depends on building "reliable sources." You construct such reliability item by secret item, all accurate. That is seen by the intelligence artists as a necessary expenditure. It gains the source his credibility. Then, you spring the trap.

As for the riots at the other end, on this occasion, they, too, could have been orchestrated. We do have agents in Pakistan, after all, not to mention Afghanistan.

Obviously, I can offer no proof of any of the above.[But, of course, that's never stopped a Liberal from opening their pie hole, has it?] There still resides, however, under my aging novelist's pate a volunteer intelligence agent, sadly manque. He does suggest that the outcome was too neat. It came out too effectively for one side, one special side. At the age of eighty-two I do not wish to revive old paranoia, but Lenin did leave us one valuable notion, one, at any rate. It was "Whom?" When you cannot understand a curious matter, ask yourself, "Whom? Whom does this benefit?" Dare I suggest that our Right has just gained a good deal by way of this matter? In every covert Department of Dirty Tricks, whether official, semi-official, or off-the-wall, great pride is best obtained by going real deep into down-and-dirty-land—Yeah! Expedite the consequences.

[Nbadan]

I'm never in favor of a news organization having to reveal its source but, if there was ever a time for that to happen, that moment is now.

Umm...but yet, protecting the source of a intelligence leak and getting innocent people killed in the process isn't the time for the corporate media to be forced to reveal it's source?

[Nbadan]

Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post, writes what many of us are feeling about the Republican echo-chamber's non-stop attack against Newsweak...

Debate Over Newsweek Retraction of Report Widens
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page A12

The debate over a retracted Newsweek report broadened yesterday into an argument about media and government ethics, with the White House urging the magazine to help undo the harm to American interests and critics accusing the administration of trying to deflect attention from its own deceptions.

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he welcomed Newsweek's formal retraction of a news item saying military investigators had confirmed that a U.S. interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet. Although that was "a good first step," McClellan said, the White House wants Newsweek "to help repair the damage" by explaining "what happened and why they got it wrong, particularly to people in the region."

-snip-

Lawmakers of both parties entered the fray on Capitol Hill. Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.) charged the White House with hypocrisy, saying: "The administration is chastising Newsweek for a story that contained a fact that turned out to be false. This is the same administration that lied to the Congress, the United Nations and the American people by fabricating reasons to send us to war."

Stark added in an interview: "For the administration to be holier-than-thou about this is somewhere between obscene and funny. There are publications that often expose weaknesses in administration positions and they don't like that. They play tough."

Washington Post

[Nbadan]

McClellan says the often-cited "Koran in the toilet" news that Newsday also cited caused the deaths of people in Afghanistan.

MSNBC

Funny.

That's not what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers said:

Last Thursday, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donald Rumsfeld’s go-to guy whenever the situation calls for the kind of gravitas the Secretary himself can’t supply, told reporters at the Pentagon that rioting in Afghanistan was related more to the on-going political reconciliation process there, than it was to a controversial note buried in the pages of Newsweek claiming that the government was investigating whether or not some nitwit interrogator at Gitmo really had desecrated a Muslim holy book.

Defenselink.mil

So Scotty...who were ya trying to FOOL DUPE CON LIE TO this time? Oh that's RIGHT, the same group as always...rightwingnut fools who so love being conned, duped, lied to and made total rubes of.

[SPARKY]

So Newsweak ran a story with some details which proved to be false but your favorite political sports team's opponent "lied".

It all makes sense now...

[Nbadan]

So Newsweak ran a story with some details which proved to be false

The details are probably accurate, check for yourself:

1st article
http://www.kuwaitifreedom.org/media/pdf/Nightmare%20of%...

2nd article
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Iraq/Detainee-alleges-US-...

3rd article
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/uk/3959635.stm

4th article
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-17-halabi_x...

5th article
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/guantanamo.abuse.accu... /

6th article
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?...

7th article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronic...

8th article
http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-rose170504.htm

9th article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1216645,00....

10th article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1169...

11th article
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=6513&PHPSE...


What should really be under dispute is why Newsweak decided to retract this claim in the first place? Did Isacoff bend to political pressure in order to help avoid more possible death and violence in Afghanistan and fermenting Anti-Americanism in the region? If the U.S. had to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, that sure would have put a serious crimp in the adminstrations plans to be in Iran by June.

[The Ressurrected One]