Newsweek Publishes Taliban Propoganda

May 12, 2005: Anti-American protests have spread to the capital, sparked by an unsubstantiated accusations by a U.S. newsmagazine. Newsweek magazine published a hearsay item about American interrogators at Guantanamo desecrating the Koran to intimidate suspected terrorists. The Taliban has been trying to spread similar stories, but have no credibility. American media has more clout, even if the story in question is basically a rumor. The pro-Taliban groups will push this story as much as they can, but the Taliban support is basically restricted to some Pushtun tribes in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

May 11, 2005: American and Afghan troops put down the rioting in Jalalabad (east of Kabul, near the Pakistani border), killing four protestors and wounding sixty others. Hundreds of protestors tried to attack American and Afghan troops, and did destroy some government, UN and NGO buildings. There were smaller demonstrations in other towns, as the pro-Taliban Afghans now have a cause to rally around. American officials say they are investigating the accusations about desecrating the Koran. American interrogators are not supposed to do this sort of thing, and the American reporters who came up with the story don't have much in the way of evidence.

May 10, 2005: Anti-American rioting broke out in Jalalabad, when local Islamic radicals became aware of a story in an American newsmagazine, accusing U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay prison, of flushing pages of the Koran down a toilet as a way to intimidate Afghan prisoners, and get them to reveal information about Taliban or al Qaeda operations. Jalalabad is a pro-Taliban town, and many locals are still upset that the Taliban is no longer running the country.

Following two days of riots, the strategy page names Newsweek as the source of a hearsay story about our interagators destroying pages from the Koran in order to shake up Taliban prisoners. Of course, this also happened to be a totally false, highly ridiculous but rather important bit of propoganda that the Taliban had been trying unsuccessfully (until now) to publicise in order to stir up anti-american feeling. I hope you'll join me in writing an email to the editor and some of Newsweeks main adverstisers in registering our displeasure at their putting the lives of American soldiers directly in harms way with this totally irresponsbile reporting. Please note the editors email address is mark.whitaker@newsweek.com. A copy of my email to newsweek follows:

----- Original Message ----- From: wiseghy@yahoo.com To: mark.whitaker@newsweek.com Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 5:18 PM Subject: Object strongly to Taliban Hearsay Items

Editor: I pulled the following piece from thestrategypage.com.

If true, this certainly would reflect the most irresponsible bit of journalism I can recall. Printing a hearsay item on something as provocative as this could result directly in getting an American Soldier killed, to say nothing of destabilizing a country in a very fragile state. I can only assume to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you did not intend also on deliberating publishing false enemy propaganda.

I hope your readers with family overseas will be able to forgive this grave oversight.

--by the way, I NEVER have written to an editor before, on anything, but this error seemed to warrant my notifying you of my deep concern.

Signed,

Jxxxx.x.xxxx Pleasant Hill, California

The Koran is not a substitute for the pagan idols destroyed by (Mohammad). The only true copy resides in Heaven. The earthly copies are merely paper and ink ~ those who think they can be desecreted should be removed from the community because they are false Moslems fit only for the slaughter.

(Made it sound like a Sura, but there are Islamic scholars out there who know exactly what I'm saying)

" If true, this certainly would reflect the most irresponsible bit of journalism I can recall. Printing a hearsay item on something as provocative as this could result directly in getting an American Soldier killed, "

I heard it reported today ( almost 100% certain that it was on Special Report with Brit Hume ) that the true story was that a prisoner in Gitmo tried flushing some pages of the Koran down a toilet to create a disturbance.
Newsweek and Isikoff couldn't be bothered to get their facts straight in their urgency to slam US troops.
Newsweek ,the NYT and CBS are obviously in a race to the bottom.
With the rest of the fossil media in hot pursuit.

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