Posted on 05/16/2005 6:22:00 PM PDT by wagglebee
First it was CBS News fabricating a story out of whole cloth in its discredited "60 Minutes" report on George W. Bush's Air National Guard record in Texas. Two weeks ago, liberals-for-hire journalists Michael Isikoff and John Barry belched up a poorly sourced and dubious report that a copy of the Koran was flushed down an apocryphal toilet during interrogation of Muslim prisoners held at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay.
Only this time the repercussions abroad have caused Muslims to riot in the streets of Kabul, leading to the deaths of about 15 people, and resulted in strained relationships with the Afghan government, not to mention millions of Muslims that follow Al-Jazeera.
Playing into the hands of Islamist fanatics and anti-Americans around the world, Newsweek has not only tipped its hand at its own agenda, but also set back the cause of U.S. foreign policy, which is attempting to make the case for democracy in countries that have never known it.
Like Dan Rather and his producers at "60 Minutes," Newsweek's reporters were trying to mine whatever unsavory pickings they might be able to glean from U.S. treatment of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo, in the spirit of the Abu Ghraib scandals.
With no real attempt made either to find credible sources or to vet whatever gossip they stumbled across, Isikoff and Barry lurched into print with the inflammatory suggestion that a Koran was unceremoniously cast into a commode by U.S. interrogators to break the spirit of a detainee.
With the rising tide of furious Afghans, and angry denials by the Department of Defense and Condoleezza Rice, Newsweek's editors had to issue an apology of sorts, feeling sanctimoniously sorry for getting "any part of our story wrong," and extending their superfluous sympathies "to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
Again, like CBS, the principal motivation for the story seemed to be to discredit President Bush and American foreign policy under his administration. Anything that would give credence to Islamist and anti-American claims that the U.S. is either torturing or otherwise humiliating Muslim prisoners is fair game, according to this crowd.
With Abu Ghraib the poster boy for impropriety, jumping on the attack bandwagon is the preferred method of the liberal media blaming misbehavior of lower-level military personnel as merely a surrogate for the sanctioned military policy of higher-ups. As former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger unhappily concluded in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, today's press wants to make a "judgment first, [and find] evidence later."
One wonders why the liberal media tiptoe around the sensitivities of Muslims, whose every religious belief has to be respected, yet they regularly denigrate devout Christian beliefs as self-deceptions by the less intelligent or dogmatic, and in the case of fundamentalists, simply superstitions held by inflexible rubes and Bible-thumpers.
One also wonders why, a few years back, liberals were very much in support of the right of dissenters to burn the flag, or to wear it as underwear or use it as toilet paper. "It's only a piece of colored cloth," they declared. "Who cares what a person does with a piece of cloth?"
Blinded to the spiritual dimension of the U.S. flag, liberals routinely ridiculed the patriotic impulses of Americans who did not wish to see their country's symbol and the thousands of soldiers who died for it thus desecrated.
Yet when an alleged copy of the Koran is similarly violated, liberals fall all over themselves to expose this outrage, how deep-seated beliefs of millions of Muslims are being regularly debased and traduced by the ignorant Americans who support President Bush.
That's the message and it's sheer hypocrisy, if not treasonous. The liberal media don't care any more about the Koran than they do about the Bible. It's simply a sleazy way for them to inflame any group that is demonstrably anti-Bush and against current U.S. foreign policy, thus mirroring their own attitudes. Is this not "aiding and comforting the enemy"?
Doesn't anyone question why thousands of Muslims would take to the streets, anyway, only to vent their anger about a book being destroyed, instead of marching against human beings being mistreated at a prison? Would Americans take to the streets if an Imam on our shores flushed a Bible down the hopper? Would the media take up the cudgels?
Many have difficulty understanding why thousands of people think a printed book is more important than a fellow human being. And many others question why some journalists would deliberately try to enrage them for blatantly ideological purposes.
Many have difficulty understanding why thousands of people think a printed book is more important than a fellow human being. And many others question why some journalists would deliberately try to enrage them for blatantly ideological purposes.
I really think the White House and the Pentagon should yank Newsweek's press access over this.
Ummm... Arab society runs on bribery. Is there any possibility that American anti-Americans are PAID in return for their anti-Americanism. How much would it take to compromise, say, a respected reporter like Jayson Blair?
John Batchelor's show is going to be good tonight. He has been a staunch defender of John Bolton and the troops protecting us.
This is beyond treason. This is incitement t omurder and war. Both of these two libtards should pay the ultimate price. The blood of dozens is now on their hands; the blood of thousands will be before this is over.
The "gold medal" has to go to Walter Duranty of the New York Slimes. In the 1930's he covered-up Stalin's genocide and wrote about how wonderful the USSR was. For these apologetics he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp?ZoomFont=YES
Great flag-Koran analogy. I hadn't thought of it that way.
Shame on the liberal media.
I would want these two numbskulls and their editor to rationally explain what possible public good this story served. It doesn't involve abuse, and it doesn't involve criminal activity or corruption. If it were true, it would have been something the Military would have quickly investigated and handled. And it wouldn't have happened again.
And one more time, are there NOT more compelling stories to investigate? How about Hillary's fund raising scandal? Too scared? I thought so.
How the sexual predator scandal involving New York politicians and interns. Oh, Democrats are the main suspects? I thought so.
Democrats have accused Tom DeLay of unethical conduct. There is plenty of evidence that many Democrats have done exactly the same, and worse. Not interested? I thought so.
NEWSWEEK - Once again you bastards have tipped the world to your immature bias against conservatives. But this time, you got people killed. Yes - you are a bunch of bastards!
What time is his show on?
East Coast
The liberal attitude toward the American flag or the Bible was the first thing that came to my mind when this story broke, it demonstrates the blatant hypocrisy of the left.
Great job of putting everything in perspective.
Don't smoke in the dynamite room!
Dan Ratherbiased probably has it at his house where he is busy re-editing and over-dubbing it to match the script he wrote.
"And one more time, are there NOT more compelling stories to investigate? How about Hillary's fund raising scandal? Too scared? I thought so."
Precisely why the Clinton-butt-kisser Isikoff came out with this explosive but false report...to divert public attention from Hillary's troubles.
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