Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong - Yahoo! News
I don't know what's worse- Newsweek backing down in the face of pressure, or perpetuating this story so it pisses off even more Muslims. Now we will be forced into proving that, yes, we really did desecrate the Koran, apparently on numerous occasions. Oh boy.
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.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
"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.
Alright then. But what of the reports of desecration of the Koran that stretch back as far as last year? The mighty reporters at Kos can site examples that reach as far back as August 2004, one from the Philadelphia Inquirer and others from the Center for Constitutional Rights in NYC.
This has been going on for quite some time. This is nothing new. You can't tell me that one little paragraph in Newsweek sparked all of this. It's simply part of the ongoing deflection of this administration to shift the blame for it's torture tactics onto the media for even reporting it. Shoot the messenger. It's OK if no one knows about it, right?
What will this do to the already chikenshit US media? Will we ever hear the truth, or will they be too afraid of retaliation?
We are so screwed.