Posted on 05/16/2005 2:02:57 PM PDT by kcvl
Per Fox News...
Ha ha ha!!!
Great one.
Make it a better one by making the "liquid" the urine of a pig.
That ought to be worth the grant.
A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for calling the Quran in the bucket a piece of "art."
Burning a US Flag... OK
Burning President Bush in effigy... Fine
Sticking People in shredders... Valid Police Procedure
Rape Rooms... As long as they keep quiet
Calling US Soldiers "Occupiers"... No Problem
Chopping off heads of innocents... Deserved
Flying Planes into Buildings... Revenge for Unfair Treatment
Forcing to Wear Underwear on Head... Evil
Koran Abuse... Death Penalty
Yep, fair and balanced...
The documents might be fake, but the crux of the story is true.. per Dan Rather :P
Now the dirtbag can add accessory to murder to his resume. How proud he must be.
And a call for revolution..
"Newsweek would like officially to tell you that we're full of ****, and that's why we have more lawyers than you."
Newsweak lied!
People died!
I will not blame 'shoddy journalism', I call it treason. After all, the only purpose of printing this article in the first place was to stir up Muslim anger towards the US and sully our name abroad. And the retraction won't change any of the hell that the false article caused. This is like dragging a skunk accross somebody's living room and then apologizing; the stink remains inspite of the apology.
Don't forget generous portions of elephant dung, too. That would make it a bigger hit with the "progressive" artist community.
Priceless, Rob. Good work!
An editorial in the Arab News, a Saudi English-language newspaper, vouches for the high journalistic standards of an American newsmagazine:
The US weekly "Newsweek" is a highly reputable and responsible publication, rarely prone to making mistakes. So when it reports, as it has done, that copies of the Qur'an were desecrated at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, people will believe the story. People in the Muslim world certainly do. The anger it has stirred up in Afghanistan has left a trail of death and destruction. Incensed at the blasphemy, Afghans have lashed out in fury in all directions. The fact that not only government and UN buildings were burned but even mosques shows the depths of their rage. The same level public anger has been reported from Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt and many other Muslim countries.
Whoops! It turns out the story--which according to Reuters, provoked rioting in Afghanistan that has killed at least 16--wasn't true, as Newsweek now acknowledges:
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.
Reuters quotes Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker: "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either." Andrew Sullivan, who has long had an peculiar preoccupation with "torture" tales, endorses the fake-but-accurate standard of journalism: "I reiterate what I wrote Saturday: 'Even if this incident turns out to be false, our previous policies have made it perfectly plausible.' That's the deeper issue here."
Glenn Reynolds gets it right:
If [Newsweek] had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they'd feel much worse--which is why they generally don't report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don't extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars. . . . People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because--let's be clear here--Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.
Journalists have to make myriad judgment calls, and this is far from the first time a news organization has jumped the gun and reported information that turned out to be false--though usually the consequences aren't so bloody. But it's fair to say this is an example of "adversary" journalism getting out of control. Reporters are not agents of the government, but it wouldn't hurt if, at least during wartime, they were restrained by some sense of patriotism.
-- BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
And you too Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003955.php
"THEY'RE CLOWNS"....Atrios has some excerpts from Jonathan Alter's appearance on the O'Franken Factor this morning:
"The level of incompetence is so staggering here, and yet there's this gap between how astonishingly incompetent — and we can go over particulars in the last year if you want to — how astonishingly incompetent they've been and the perception is still of them as solid citizens..."
...
"The only way you can sort of start to let the public know is to say, no, they don't know what they're doing. They're clowns."
...
"I was among those people who was deceived. When I was told by administration officials that [Iraq was] working on a nuclear weapons program — Paul Wolfowitz told that to me directly. It did cause me some alarm and cause me some sense that it was not worth the risk to not take Saddam out."
At least NewsWeak didn't spend weeks denying their was anything wrong with the story like a certain former anchorman at a certain television network did.
Isn't hindsight wonderfull?
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