Posted on 05/17/2005 8:00:55 PM PDT by CHARLITE
There's hardly a reporter in the land who, late at night after the presses have rolled on a story that is then too late to change, hasn't had that terrible feeling of doubt that maybe he has gotten something wrong. We have encountered seasoned newspapermen and women who have gone to bed with that feeling every time they've written through long careers. And we're not inclined to get up on our high horse over the error of Michael Isikoff and Newsweek in respect of the magazine's May 9 report that some American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed pages of the Koran down the toilet. We have long had the sense that the press has been awfully quick to cast aspersions on the administration's conduct of an extraordinarily complex and dangerous war. But the magazine has said it was in error, the consequences were unintended, and they are not the only troubling aspect of this affair.
Indeed, the Bush administration has been so quick to condemn this particular press blunder that it's in danger of committing a blunder of its own. "Disrespect for the holy Koran is something the United States will never tolerate," Secretary of State Rice said last week. It seemed only an afterthought when the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, yesterday made a meek plea for religious leaders to refrain from inciting violence, as if this bout of chauvinistic rage were entirely understandable. Why do we assume these riots were inevitable, especially since it follows a pattern? Every spring since the liberation of Kabul, the Taliban has ginned up anti-American crowds in Afghanistan and Pakistan using pretexts real and imagined. This year the pretext was 10 sentence column in Newsweek.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006701>/a>
"In fairness to Rice, she presumably was referring to government policy, not the actions or opinions of private individuals. Still, by way of comparison, recall that three years ago Palestinian Arab terrorists occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Priests reported that "gunmen tore up Bibles for toilet paper," according to the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colo. The Chicago Tribune noted after the siege that "altars had been turned into cooking and eating tables, a sacrilege to the religious faithful."
Christians in the U.S. responded by declining to riot and refraining from killing anyone. They had the same response 15 or so years ago when the National Endowment for the Arts was subsidizing the scatological desecration of a crucifix and other Christian symbols. This should also put to rest the oft-heard calumny that America's "religious right" is somehow a Christian equivalent of our jihadi enemies."
No, Newsweek published a bogus story. This story helped the enemy and undermined our troops. The Whitehouse didn't do it, and the people who rioted didn't do it. Newsweek did, and it is time these holier than thou folks in the MSM owned up to the power of the press and the distruction they can and, in this case, did do.
The prisoners in Gitmo are throat slitting fanatic mass murderers. Why should anyone give a damn what upsets them? That includes other moslems who if they are with the terrorists, are our enemies. How dare they attack our troops over such nonsense?
If Islam is infected with such craziness then it does not deserve the respect of civilized people.
The Koran wouldn't flush down my toilet....they have better toilets in Cuba, I guess.
Irony of ironies ...it is the Christian Right (many in the military) who is protecting the liberals from the militant Islamists.
Yeah, right.
There were no mistakes. Karl Rove set them up...didnt you hear?
If this had been Fox News, getting it wrong about a Dim administration, we'd be hearing about until the end of time.
That Karl Rove! Just when you thought that no one could outdo J.R. Ewing.
Exactly!
Katrina Vanden Heuvel of the Nation is still claiming that Newsweek got it right!
Latrina is a socialist loon.
Consider the possibility that Clintonista Isikoff planted the blurb a week or two before it might be needed -- when someone in our anti-American diplomatic corps could tip off the Mullahs and Ayatollahs in time to head off any news that the Rosen trial REALLY DOES implicate the Clintons.
Brilliant! I love it!
I've asked you more than once to remove your posts to me.. You said ok in private eail. And yet, you CONTINUE.
Arrgh!
Bug off.
That's why I believe there's a silver lining to this cloud. When whacknut Islamists begin murdering each other, there's really not much of a loss.
The desecration of the Church Of The Nativity - and Christian self-restraint over that incident - was the first thing that came to mind. And come to think of it, the Western press did a mighty job of muting the reports of what happened inside the church.
The USA government is behaving just as bad as Newsweek Magazine. Some one needs to set things straight that Sharia law does not rule the world, no, it does not. There is no good reason to cave into the savages of the world, and it is time to set them straight. The USA behaves as if it is trying to follow Sharia law, which cuts of the hands and feet of humans, and says it is blasphemy to destroy any part of the Koran. In the rest of the world, when you buy something it is yours, and no one has any right to tell you what to do with it. The bible is a Holy Book, but when you buy one, it is yours and you do with it as you please.
It seems that no one dares to tell these savage terrorist anything at all, and our journalists and our government causes these wild people to think that they can rule us all.
No wonder that they keep this crap up, for to them it is fun, and it gives them the feeling of big power, to see the fools of the world trying to appease them. I am angry!
Why would they retract a story,apologize,etc if the story is right?
According to the lunatic left, it's because of pressure from the White house.
Sincerely,
Char
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