Posted on 05/15/2005 12:19:09 PM PDT by hipaatwo
Yesterday's London Times reports on the rioting and deaths triggered by Michael Isikoff's Periscope item in Newsweek on alleged abuse of the Koran at Guantanomo: "Newsweek sparks global riots with one paragraph on Koran." The new issue of Newsweek carries an account by assistant managing editor Evan Thomas on Isikoff's Periscope item: "How a fire broke out." Thomas appears to concede that Isikoff erred and explains how. Thomas writes:
Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief periscope item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.
How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest? While continuing to report events on the ground, NEWSWEEK interviewed government officials, diplomats and its own staffers, and reconstructed this narrative of events:
At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but news-week National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK periscope item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?" The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the periscope draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report. So Isikoff relied on a telephone call with an anonymous government official paraphrasing a forthcoming report, confirmed by placing a draft of the Periscope item before another anonymous government official. Isikoff never saw the underlying report or even had it read to him. Thomas also writes:
After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell.
On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original periscope item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" Thomas doesn't offer any answer to DiRita's question. What does Isikoff have to say? How about another call to Isikoff's anonymous source for comment? Isn't that the least we could expect? But Thomas launches into an even more untrustworthy allegation collected by Isikoff:
In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.What is this doing in an article devoted to Isikoff's original Periscope item asking "How did NEWSWEEK did get its facts wrong?" Thomas appears to be having a hard time concentrating; his attention appears to be wandering. He winds up:
More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident.
Such stories may spark more trouble... Wow. Bader claims abuse of the Koran during his detention in Kandahar, and Bader says he still has nightmares. He has no motive to fabricate anti-American stories. Thanks for passing on Bader's complaints, Mr. Thomas. I buy them completely. And thanks for the warning regarding such "stories" possibly sparking more trouble. We'll try to keep it in mind as we deal with our own nightmares.
Like Lawrence DiRita, I have a question of my own for NEWSWEEK. Is this how an elite newsmagazine confesses error and corrects the record when it makes a big mess?
UPDATE: Reader Otto Timmons has pointed out Mark Whitaker's editorial note on the subject:
Two weeks ago, in our issue dated May 9, Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported in a brief item in our periscope section that 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 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. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghan-istan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.
Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But 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. NEWSWEEK regrets it got a part of the story wrong. NEWSWEEK vows to continue looking into the charges. If there's no substance to the charges, they undoubtedly want to break that story. Pathetic.
With all due respect, this is not a principle, it is a false saying. Words are in fact far more powerful than sticks and stones. They are the foundation of thought which serves as the womb of manifestation.
Could someone please point me to the law that forbids us to chunk a koran in a toilet.
We wouldn't be having this discussion if all the rioters had done was shout outrage.
FNC is part of the establishment.
While they're menstruating.
Besides that point, I was showing that anyone can get their hands on the 'Holy Koran'. Being a big time infidel, I had no problems buying one off the shelf at a local book store. Wasn't even mullah approved as far as I know. I didn't have to sign any promise not to desecrate, abuse, put to wrongful use or burn, flush, fold, spindle or mutilate said Koran.
Screw these clowns...
Hell yes, screw 'em.
I am not saying the rioters do not bear responsibility for their actions. They are acting on false information. That false information was the stone tossed by Newsweek. It initiated a chain of events (ripples) which are subsequently unfolding. Like you said, If I insult a bully's mother, I might set in motion my own subsequent thrashing...
They might want to throw some toilet water on that...
And I didn't suggest that you had absolved them. Both Newsweek and the rioters are in the wrong.
Like you said, If I insult a bully's mother, I might set in motion my own subsequent thrashing...
Do you hold that you would be responsible for your own thrashing?
LOL
Yeah, of course. If I wack a hornets nest, I am provoking a response from the hornets. Just like Newsweek wacking an islamofascist beehive. What did they expect?
My bully example was human-human interaction. Are you saying Islamists are like insects? Careful, you might incite them to violence. ;-)
I think the riots speak more to the nature of the rioters. We already knew that Newsweek aims to put Western civilization and the Bush administration in a bad light.
Right. Moreover the Al Queda thugs -- who have exactly this kind of tactic in their playbook, as a number of others have pointed out -- will take it as a great victory and USE OUR "GUILT" -- for in their eyes "we" include Newsweek, to fire up the passions of the weak-minded and prone to violence against us.
And what of some poor 21 year old US enlisted man who "errs in judgement" and does something like what was falsely claimed or worse. Why then, by damnable precedent of over-zealous regard of religious trip-points we'll be hanging him at a mullah's picnic for the show of it. Feed this tiger of a bad idea and it will only become more hungry to eat our own.
Give Bibles to the muzzies so they can learn a different way. Great idea. Never happen.
BTTT!
"degrees of complexity"
Degrees of complicity, too.
Pray for W and Our Troops
bttt
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