16 May 2005

Newsweek Got Gitmo Right

The CNN headline says Newsweek is backing away from a previously reported Michael Isikoff story that told of Koran desecration, after pressure from a Pentagon spokesman who blamed the the report for recent unrest in Muslim countries. However, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States.
Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology.

One such incident (during which the Koran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "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." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.)

Juan Cole notes that Newsweek has, in other words, confirmed that the source did read a US government account of the desecration of the Koran. Even the CNN article notes at the bottom that Isikoff "uncovered more allegations of Quran desecration".

Sounds like "we don't like the news", so let's rewrite the news in a most Orwellian fashion.

posted by Naum at 8:51 | Media

Comments

JUST LIKE THE STORY ABOUT BUSH'S GUARD RECORD....
THE TRUTH COMES OUT ABOUT THE A FALSE STORY, AND STILL LIBERALS SAY THE TRUTH IS A LIE BECAUSE IT DONT FIT IN WITH THEIR "HOPES" THAT AMERICA IS A "EVIL" EMPIRE FULL OF VILE EVIL STORMTROOPERS.

http://reuters.myway.com/ar...
"Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong"

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article."

"Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet."

""We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.

But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts."

"The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees."
"We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item," Whitaker said.

"Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited," he wrote.
"
http://www.japantoday.com/e...

http://www.kfvs12.com/Globa...

AND FROM NEAL BOORTZ
"SOOOOO ANXIOUS TO MAKE THE U.S. LOOK BAD ....

... and people die.

Here is a sad tale of what happens when certain elements of our national news media succumb to their eagerness to make the United States look bad. Last week Newsweek magazine ran with a story that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo in Cuba had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet in an effort to make detainees talk. Evidently Muslims become more than a little upset when they hear that someone is flushing their holy book down the commode ... so they did what they do best, they became violent. Big surprise, right?

Sixteen people died and over 100 were injured in the riots in Afghanistan. The actions of the American interrogators were condemned across the Middle East. A group of Afghan Muslim peace-loving clerics called for a holy war against the United States.

Uh oh. Big oops. In the issue of Newsweek coming out today we learn that Newsweek's source for the story is recanting. Now he can't be sure that he saw what he told Newsweek that he saw. At least 16 people are dead ... and the U.S. takes a PR hit, all because Newsweek ran with a story from a single source that they had not verified.

Is it possible that there are some at Newsweek who ran with the story not so much because they believed it to be true, but because they so earnestly wanted it to be true? To believe that is to believe that there are elements of the media who will go out of their way ... stretch the line just a bit ... if it means that they can get a story into print that embarrasses the Bush Administration and sets our efforts back in Iraq. Sadly .. it doesn't take that much of a stretch to believe just that.

People are now dead because of the sloppy reporting of Newsweek and its reporters. The story and its questionable origins once again prove the blame-America-first agenda of the left. In their lust for anti-American, pro-Islam propaganda, the mainstream media has taken to just making up facts.
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