Karol Sheinin points me to this piece from the Columbia Journalism Review which, y’know, just wants to make it clear that Newsweek (and by extension the entirety of the elite liberal media, one gets the feeling) has not actually retracted its anti-US Q’uran-flushing story, but rather has temporarily and conditionally qualified it until such time as its editorial staff can find others to re-level the charges against US interrogators:
What exactly has the magazine retracted? Most reporters, particularly on television, are reporting that Newsweek has retracted the allegation that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. But that’s wrong: The magazine has said only that it no longer stands by its claim that allegations of Koran desecration appear in a forthcoming report from U.S. Southern Command.
Consider another central issue: whether Newsweek’s premature report actually spurred the riots. Thanks to the White House spin, and the media’s lazy reporting, the conventional wisdom is now that it did. But the reality is that it probably did not, at least in any significant sense. According to a statement last Thursday by General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, after hearing from commanders on the scene in Afghanistan, the “rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.” As we’ve noted, that makes sense, based on the Taliban’s past patterns and the fact that previous reports about Koran desecration at Guantanamo spurred no such riots.
As others have pointed out, Newsweek‘s report of the Q’uran’s “desecration” by US interrogator at Guantanamo didn’t cause the riots, certainly; what caused them was latent anti-Americanism in the Muslim world looking for an excuse to show itself in the form of widescale rioting. But such a semantic distinction—and, if you listen to the Newsweek apologists on the political talk shows, such is invariably the distinction you’ll hear made, followed immediately by a strained analogy to Bushco’s “getting the story wrong about WMD, which lead to far more deaths than did Newsweek’s report, which suffered only from being improperly sourced”—is a rather lame, and patently obvious, attempt to deflect culpability, one that relies on legalistic efforts to position the actual “root cause” of the rioting elsewhere while hoping that such cleverly-crafted rhetorical sleight of hand takes our minds off the immediate and proximate cause: Newsweek‘s decision to run a badly sourced bit of innuendo in a time of war—one that our enemies gladly put to use for propoganda purposes, and as a way to stoke the distrust many in the Muslim world already harbor toward the U.S.
So yes, Newsweek wasn’t really ”responsible” for the rioting so much as their sloppy reporting led directly, through a third party, to this particular riot.
Still, though, with its latest efforts to minimize its own culpability in this affair, the liberal media elite in this country is showing just how far it is willing to go to rationalize its own sometimes dubious—and often quite unethical—behavior.
It’s getting to the point to where I put more credence in a wino telling me he needs the money for bus fare than anything I read in or hear from the “media”.
You could moonlight as an insurance adjuster.
See, this is what pisses me off about journalists. Both that article and the one linked to show it was noted before were written by this Brian Montopoli guy. The guy got a BA in English and Economics just six years ago. Georgetown’s a damn fine school, but there’s nothing relevant in either field of study. He’s no more qualified to tell me what the current patterns of terrorism are than my fucking insurance agent is.
OK, here’s what I don’t understand:
MSM runs a false story that is evidently specifically designed to undermine U.S. efforts, inflame passions, spark deadly riots, etc. This is blamed on careless sourcing. Does this mean that if the story had in fact been true, then it would have been perfectly OK to run a story specifically designed to etc. etc.?
This posturing by Newsweek and the rest of the media is frickin’ hilarious! They’re reporting a gotcha story about something that happened TWO years ago. Their “scoop” was to report an item from a military investigation before it was released to the public. Only the media gets a hard-on over such a “scoop”.
And the fact that the contents of the story–especially that it’s NOT news, as the allegation had been rumored for some time–works against US interests in the region tells you all you need to know as to whose side the media is on. And the media is not the American side, but is on the side of the Islamist terrorists.
Did Newsweek cause the rioters to kill? I don’t know. But next time maybe the media would use the same sensitivity as they claimed to be using when they wouldn’t show film of workers jumping to their deaths after the WTC was attacked–“because, you know, such a sight would be upsetting to Americans”.
And I don’t remember any Christians rioting when it was reported that the Palestinian terrorists that barricated themselves in the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem, several years ago, used pages of the Bible as toilet paper.
So, just maybe the media should report what they actually know, and not what someone tells them they think might be the case. And maybe the media ought to stop reporting such alleged cases of government stupidity as if it’s Watergate. When the media believes that an Islamist terrorist enemy, captured on the battlefield, is due respectful deference, it confirms that the media is not neutral, but that they’re actively working for the other side.
We all know if it was alleged that a Bible was flushed down the toilet, it wouldn’t be newsworthy.
The intellectual community has been discussing the subject of desecration virtually non-stop since a sentence in a Newsweek Periscope column, designed primarily to put the Bush Administration and the US Military in a bad light, led to widespread riots and the deaths of (reportedly) 17 people.
The story was designed to reinforce the stereotype popular in the MSM that the US habitually mistreats and tortures its prisoners in the War on Terror. The basic meme is that the US military in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo gives its personnel free reign to torture, humiliate and abuse prisoners. Any hints, accusations and emanations of penumbras of suggestions that something other than subservience of the US military to the sensitivities of Moslems deserves mention in the MSM, proving that Bush is Hitler, the US military is essentially evil, and – like the evil Emperor in Star Wars – the US is heading into the dark ages of Christian Fundamentalist Repression, led by jingoists who are using terrorism as a handy excuse to enforce a dictatorship on America.
I’m not making this up. If you want to read about the evil plot, just link to Kos and learn the truth.
In the excitement about the Newsweek accusation – now retracted, but defended by the MSM as the shining example of impeccable reporting – I noticed something that aroused my interest. The base of the alleged Moslem outrage against the US was our reported sacrilegious treatment of the “Holy Koran.†That is, the US military was accused of flushing one down the toilet in order to “unsettle†a prisoner during interrogation. Leaving aside the practical impossibility of flushing a Koran down a toilet, just assume there is some validity to the accusation.
Ignore for the moment the adjective “Holy†now commonly used by CNN and others in the Western Media when referring to the Koran. When was the last time you heard anyone in the MS refer to the Christian Bible or the Jewish Torah as “holy?†I confidently predict that we will soon hear references to Mohammed followed the phrase “Peace be unto him†by reporters who have never – and will never – refer to Christians as other than Neanderthal Knuckle Draggers and a threat to the Republic..
No, the item that drew my interest was the mention by a Pentagon spokesman that a prisoner at Guantanamo used pages of the Koran to stop up toilets. If it is sacrilege to put a Koran in a toilet, what are we to make of a Moslem tearing up a Koran and putting the torn pages in a toilet to stop it up?
Several learned sages (as well as Anne Applebaum) have opined on the hair-trigger sensitivities of Moslems regarding religion and religious customs. These appear to include not just issues dealing with the Koran, but nudity, menstrual blood, dogs, and speaking in a sexually suggestive manner. I, myself have excerpted writers who have gone to great lengths to explain to non-Moslems the difference between Western views of sacred books and the Moslem view.
In the past we have been warned that the Arab street would rise up if we conducted military activities during Ramadan (it did not such thing). Conveniently forgotten are the major Moslem vs. Moslem conflicts that occurred during Ramadan.
We have to ask ourselves the question: are people on the Moslem side taking incredibly gullible and ignorant Westerners for fools? Or, is it perfectly permissible for a Moslem to tear up a Koran and use the torn up pages to stop up a flush toilet, but for non-Moslems it is grounds for a holy war?
There are, apparently, a lot of things we do not understand about Moslem customs and religious practices. We should not wish to cause anyone unnecessary pain. But the evidence is out about what those sensitivities are and how there are exploited. Stay tuned, because the answer to this question may be found before this war ends.
Flushing books down the toilet is really not a big deal, unless it backs up your toilets.
Flush the Koran, Flush the Bible, Flush whatever you want, they are only books. It does not matter what your view of them is, if I don’t share that view I am not required to follow it.
Example.
If a religion deems cows are sacred and to be worshipped, does that mean we must stop eating meat?
If a religion deems it immoral and in the face of god to allow women to be uncovered, must we cover all women in burkas?
You’ll see that the answer is no. So if a religion deems a certain book to be most holy, does that mean we have to reveer it? No. Flushing it shows that we are not bound by their beliefs, that’s the expression of our freedom.
Try flushing holy books at Flush a Holy Book.com