Qu'ran story wrong!

[smilingassassin]

Seems Newsweek got the story wrong, now hundreds have been affected by their neglegable reporting.

Newsweek may have erred in Qur'an article: report
CTV.ca News Staff

Newsweek magazine said it may have been mistaken in an article that alleged U.S. interrogators flushed the Qur'an down the toilet.

Protests erupted Tuesday after the magazine reported in a recent edition that investigators at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed the Muslim holy book in washrooms to prompt detainees to talk.

The May 9 report quoted unnamed sources as saying that the interrogators had "in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker apologized to victims of the violence triggered by the allegations of desecration.

"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, set to appear on U.S. newsstands Monday, Reuters reported Sunday.

The article sparked demonstrations across the Muslim world.

In Afghanistan, 15 were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-U.S. protests that erupted across the country.

The Arab League, based in Cairo, Egypt, also issued a statement saying Washington should apologize to Muslims if the allegations were correct.

Meanwhile, U.S. ally andýPakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf called for an investigation on the report.

In Yemen on Saturday, thousands of university students hit the streets in a demonstration, chanting "Death to America!"

Newsweek reported that a Pentagon spokesman told the publication late last week that the claims were wrong and that the military found no evidence to support allegations of desecration.

Many of the 520 inmates at Guantanamo Bay are said to be Muslims arrested during the American.-led war on terror.


http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/A...hub=topstories

[Confed999]

Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker apologized to victims of the violence triggered by the allegations of desecration.

Too late. :(

[smilingassassin]

The media are slow learners, and quicker with their mouths.

You'd think they would see the ramifications of this type of allegation and do the essential research first.

[Bill]

LOL, yeah...right.

[Bluesman]

Full retraction of the story just issued from NEWSWEEK.

Thanks.

[Asim Aquil]

http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=115

You think Newsweek is going to become a scapegoat when the situation got out of hand? Lets see what action is taken against Newsweek.

[Bluesman]

Excellent commentary here:

Journalists and the Military
Newsweek's explosive allegation was no "honest mistake."

Tuesday, May 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Newsweek deserves credit for coming clean about its dubious Koran desecration story in an attempt to head off further bloodshed. Already its "Periscope" report last week that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the holy book down a toilet has touched off riots throughout the Islamic world, resulting in at least 17 deaths, and added yet another weapon to al Qaeda's recruiting arsenal since many Muslims won't believe the retraction.
Less reassuring, however, is the magazine's contention that the story is a routine error. "There was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here," said Michael Isikoff, who was one of two reporters behind the story. Certainly we all make mistakes. But if printing such an explosive allegation based on the memory of what a single, anonymous source claims he read is standard Newsweek procedure--no documents were even produced--its readers must wonder about the rest of its content too.

The more consequential question here, it seems to us, is why Newsweek was so ready to believe the story was true. The allegation after all repudiated explicit U.S. and Army policy to treat Muslim detainees with religious respect, including time to pray, honoring dietary preferences and access to the Koran. Yet the magazine readily printed a story suggesting that what our enemies claim about Guantanamo is essentially true. Why?





Our own answer is that this is part of a basic media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam and has shown itself with a vengeance during the Iraq conflict and the war on terror. Long gone are the days when AP's Ernie Pyle--an ace reporter by the standards of any era--could use the pronoun "we" in describing the Allied struggle against the Axis. In its place is a kind of permanent adversary media culture that goes beyond reporting the war news--good or bad as it should--and tends to suspect the worst about the military and American purposes.
The best example of this mentality has been the coverage of Abu Ghraib, which quickly morphed from one disgusting episode into media suspicion of the motives and morals of the entire military chain of command. Certainly the photos of sick behavior on the nightshift by a unit from the Maryland Army Reserve were news. But they were first exposed by the Army itself, through the Taguba investigation that was commissioned months before the photos were leaked.

The press corps nonetheless spent weeks developing a "torture narrative" that has since been thoroughly discredited, both by the independent panel headed by former Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger and by every court martial to look at the matter. But rather than acknowledge that perhaps the coverage had been wrong, the media reaction has been to declare the many probes to be part of a wildly improbable cover-up.

As we say, much of this media pose goes back to Vietnam, and the betrayal that the press corps felt about body counts and the "five o'clock follies." Reporters like Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam made their careers by turning into the war's fiercest critics and creating a culture of suspicion that the government always lies. Mr. Sheehan's Vietnam memoir is titled, "A Bright Shining Lie." And for many of today's young reporters it is a kind of moral template.





We aren't saying that reporters shouldn't be skeptical, and they certainly have a duty to report when a war is going badly. Where the press corps goes wrong is in always assuming the worst about military and government motives. Thus U.S. intelligence wasn't merely wrong about Saddam Hussein's WMD, it intentionally "lied" about it to sell an illegitimate war. Thus, too, an antiwar partisan named Joe Wilson with a basically unimportant story about uranium and Niger is hailed as a truth-telling whistle-blower. And reports from Seymour Hersh in late 2001 that the U.S was losing in Afghanistan set off a "quagmire" theme only days before the fall of the Taliban. The readiness of Newsweek to believe a thinly sourced allegation about the Koran at Guantanamo is part of the same mindset.
We have all been reading a great deal lately about both the decline of media credibility, and the decline of both TV news viewership and newspaper circulation. Any other industry looking at such trends would conclude that perhaps there is a connection. Certainly a press corps that wants readers to forgive its own mistakes might start by showing a little more respect and understanding for the men and women who risk their lives to defend the country.


Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Franco Lolan]

This enrages me. People DIED because of this!

[Bluesman]

This enrages me. People DIED because of this!

And many more are yet to die. Our entire effort has been undermined; we won't know the full impact of this for years.

The writer's invocation of the memory of Ernie Pyle is very apt, and I wonder what a reporter/journalist of that era would make of his modern colleagues.

I remember something a reporter (and it may have been Ernie) from WWII said as he was leaving the briefing in which entire press contingent had been told the detailed plans for the invasion of Sicily by Eisenhower himself: "I'm afraid to take a drink now." No thought that someone would attempt to 'scoop' the story - total trust, because they felt they were all in this thing together.

No more. The media is the enemy of the American soldier, and it is no wonder at all that commanders are unwilling to be forthcoming to the press. I would no more tell a reporter what my plans were than I'd tell Zarqawi, because essentially, it'd be the same thing.

[Asim Aquil]

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2005-d...main/main2.htm

Apparrently there is another witness that correllates the Quran story, but more importantly his treatment by US soldiers and the Pakistani prison is appalling. That too an innocent and a person that has no charges on him.

Y'know people call this a War against Terror/Islam. It just seems like a war against humanity.

[highsea]

"Certainly a press corps that wants readers to forgive its own mistakes might start by showing a little more respect and understanding for the men and women who risk their lives to defend the country."

Amen.

[Bluesman]

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2005-d...main/main2.htm

Apparrently there is another witness that correllates the Quran story, but more importantly his treatment by US soldiers and the Pakistani prison is appalling. That too an innocent and a person that has no charges on him.

Y'know people call this a War against Terror/Islam. It just seems like a war against humanity.

Would it surprise you that an aQ training manual instructs former detainees to lie about the conditions of their captivity?

IF AN INDICTMENT IS ISSUED AND THE TRIAL, BEGINS, THE BROTHER HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING:

1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.

2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.

3. Make arrangements for the brother’s defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother’s family or court-appointed.

4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.]

5. Some brothers may tell and may be lured by the state security investigators to testify against the brothers [i.e. affirmation witness], either by not keeping them together in the same prison during the trials, or by letting them talk to the media. In this case,they have to be treated gently, and should be offered good advice, good treatment, and pray that God may guide them.

6. During the trial, the court has to be notified of any mistreatment of the brothers inside the prison.

[Asim Aquil]

Would it surprise you that an aQ training manual instructs former detainees to lie about the conditions of their captivity?

yes it does. Hmmm my bad probably but I couldn't find any reference to any lying. They're out to ruin America, so I guess that'd be an effective way to hurt the morale.

But given that this Pakistani, was released by the Americans as not an AQ, I doubt he was trained by that manual. Now the Pakistani Prison has falsely kept him in jail without trial, as well, which sucks a little bit more than his treatment before.

Non-terror related Pakistanis also visitted Afghanistan regularly. Its my opinion that any Pakistani that was caught returning from Afghanistan was arrested by Pakistani rangers and the rest got arrested when the Taliban fell.

[Bill]

"The media is the enemy of the American soldier,"

They're an enemy to the nation which has given them license to kill via words. The fifth column, the enemy within.

"and it is no wonder at all that commanders are unwilling to be forthcoming to the press. I would no more tell a reporter what my plans were than I'd tell Zarqawi, because essentially, it'd be the same thing."

EXACTLY the same thing.

[InfiniteDreams]

Bluesman you put it into perspective.

This is TREASON not freedom of speech. We are in a war for christs sake what the hell are they thinking? I would bet someone had a little chit chat with NEWSWEEK behind closed doors and told them how the cow eats the cabbage.

This is the greastest nation on earth but when our freedoms and liberty hurt those defending those freedoms and liberties we reached a threshold and come to a crossroads. I love this country and our freedoms but in wartime things aren't status quo.

I don't give a rats *** whether the story is true or not. The guys aren't in there for traffic tickets... Nothing good can come from this type of reporting.

The sad reailty is that it shows us just what we're up against.... the mentality of the muslim extremists. These people go nuts and riot, kill and injure others at a newsweek report? It gives even more validity to the fact that these guys are outta control and we're not to turn our backs on them.

Do these guys not work? It seems like these extremists have alot of time on their hands and no sense of purpose in life. Everything the US does these guys get worked up over. They have nothing to do so let's hate the USA. When they burn our flags we don't go crazy over here. Seriously something's a little funny with these people (muslim extremists).

I've read the Koran and Islam is a beautiful religion but these guys are off their rockers and maybe it's because they're poor and uneducated. And that's the US's fault too right? Maybe if they have the access to information and freedom to choose for themselves things would be different. But it seems Islam is all there is for them so that's there only option. It's almost as if religion is shoved down their throats.

We're facing an enemy that is so far out there which is something the liberals obviously don't seem to understand when they print stories like this.