UNBELIEVABLE!

Newsweek has finally admitted that they got their Koran desecration story WRONG. But only after sixteen people were killed and a hundred injured in Afghanistan because of this bogus story, and with Afghan clerics threatening a jihad against America (sorry, you mean a peaceful "internal struggle" don't you?) unless the interrogators were handed over for punishment. The punishment in Afghanistan for this crime is death.

The blood of those killed is on the hands of Michael Isikoff and John Barry. As is the tarnished reputation of the United States. Thank goodness for all those checks and balances that the MSM has been telling us make them better than bloggers. It seems that these journalists took so much time to check their information that their anonymous source is "no longer...sure that these concerns (the mishandling of the Koran) had surfaced in the SouthCom report". According to Newsweek,

U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur'an down a toilet. Their (Isikoff and Barry) information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur'an charge. Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an 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.

This would be the same source who is "no longer sure". Great job of verifying a story. And now sixteen people are dead and the Muslim world has yet another reason to hate America. I wonder if the Afghan clerics and the Muslim world which was so outraged about this will still be so keen to protest now that they know that Americans had nothing to do with this- it was one of their own.

Of course, Newsweek doesn't quite understand "why the protest and rioting over Qur'an desecration spread throughout the Islamic region"- it came as "something of a surprise". Gee, is it something to do with the Afghan economy? How they explain protests in Gaza and Indonesia with that one is not mentioned. They seem entirely clueless that the Muslims view the Koran as the word of God and thus is inviolable. Or perhaps they are simply trying to cast a better light on their guilt in the matter- "but guv'nor, we didn't know anyone would get hurt".

Of course, they simply do not issue an apology- even now they are contacting former detainees in order to find "evidence" that something did happen. One fake story didn't stick and so they'll speak to the jihadis to get another. I wonder if they'll bother to verify the next story?

Despicable.