Now they are retracting the story?
Newsweek, in an attempt to quell the damage done by its Koran desecration story, which included a good number of dead and injured people, has went beyoned the half-assed "we might've gotten it wrong, but we are still investigating" apology which they posted yesterday and actually retracted the story. "After a drumbeat of criticism from the Bush administration and others, Newsweek magazine yesterday went beyond an apology it issued Sunday and retracted an article published May 1 that stated that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to rattle Muslim detainees by flushing a Koran down a toilet." You know, when i first heard this story i wonderd : How does one flush a big book like the Koran down the toilet? My toilet, most of the time, has problems flushing a few toilet papers, and they managed to flush a whole book? They must have some really strong toilets in Gitmo, huh? Anyway.. Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker chose to ignore my advice of just shutting up and leaving this story alone and actually said in an interview that Newsweek deserves credit , because unlike CBS he felt that they were really forthcoming with the Pentagon denials and admitting their errors. "Unlike CBS, we felt we were being extremely forthcoming by publishing all the details and publishing the Pentagon's denials and saying we committed an error. But then it seemed that people felt like we weren't apologizing. In order for people to understand we had made an error, we had to say 'retraction' because that's the word they were looking for." And then he continued: "Ahh, those uppitty truth-concerned people and their stupid demands for a retraction. I mean, we already apologized and everything, why make a bigger deal out of it by demanding a retraction? It's not like that many people died because of our irresponsible reporting. Just a few A-rabs and cameljockeys and who cares about them anyway? Hehehe. Wait.. You are not recording that are you?" Speaking of the reason why a "retraction" was the responsible thing to do ladies and gentlemen, i give you Condi Rice and her take on this story: "I do think it's done a lot of harm," Rice said. "Of course, 16 people died but it's also done a lot of harm to America's efforts" to demonstrate tolerance and breed goodwill in the Muslim world. "The sad thing was that there was a lot of anger that got stirred by a story that was not very well founded," Rice said. Unfortunately, as i pointed here, a retraction is too little too late now and no conspircay-theory-loving-muslim is likely to buy it, no matter what. And David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, shares this view with me: "There is a lot of anger, both here and abroad," Mr. Gergen added. "The Muslim world is going to continue to believe that this actually happened and that Newsweek is only issuing a retraction because of the reaction." Sigh... So MSM, please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, and if it's not too much of a hassle, do not publish stories that might incite Muslim anger or rioting in the future until you are 100% sure that they are true and credible. I know that journalistic standards are hard to keep these days, but trust me when i tell you, it's for the best.
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 5/17/2005 05:00:00 AM
29 Comments:
I agree with the the terrible bastard above me sure torture, racism and humilation became an American way.........we are glad to see some of the true face of SOME Americans this morning on this blog.
COWS!
Nick,
First of all, i am glad you think that 16 people dead and more then 81 people injured in riots over this story to be an "exaggerated" damage. It tells a lot about you, you know?
Second of all, you are probably right about the story being an excuse to riot, but the fact that they didn't until this story came out shows that whatever reason they had to be angry wasn't valid or strong enough. So why give them one, especially if it's not true?
And is it just me or are you completly ignoring the notion that some of those people rioting may be from the Taliban or Taliban sympathizers? They still do exist you know!
And finally, i highly doubt that insulting the religion of Gitmo prisoners to be more effective at ratteling them then torture, but that's just me. And while we are at it, unless they are american citizens or are on american soil, they technically have no constitutional rights, so you can't really deny them something they never had now could you?
Twosret: Simmer down now. Chill it with the anti-american remarks now, will ya?
SM,
No I won't. Everyone on your blog including yourself post anti-arab, anti-muslim posts, why would I chill?
You can delete my posts if you want be my guest.
Umm...folks...the military has yet to deny that it happened. So far, they're 'investigating' the case - the only 'bad' committed here is Newsweek running the story without 'confirming' it. For all we know (and judging by Gitmo's history), it probably did happen.
To me, flushing the Koran isn't a big deal. Like SM puts it, bloody good toilets they have in Gitmo. But Nick - love it or hate it, YES, some Muslims are yearning for an excuse to 'demonstrate' against the US. Not because they're looking for a 'cheap' excuse (I didn't know excuses were measured in monetary units), but because there's a whole lot of reasons they believe make the US the enemy. I won't expect you to understand because you aren't Muslim, and you aren't on the receiving end of all of this.
BUT...what do you think the entire world's reaction would've been if, say, an American soldier was captured in Iraq, held against his will, then - in attempts to 'break him' a copy of the Torah was flushed down a toilet? Even if this news item was reported in error by, say, Al Jazeera, I bet you good money the world's reaction would be far less civil.
You don't have to understand - this isn't about the Koran being flushed down the toilet - this is, as they say, the straw that broke the camel's back. Are some Muslims waiting for excuses to revolt against the US? Hell yes. The real danger comes from the fact that it happened in Afghanistan - a country fresh out of a war that should've turned it into a democracy. Well, here's democracy for you: people in Afghanistan, although now liberated from the grips of the Taleban thanks to Uncle Sam, still hate Uncle Sam's guts.
Twosret..
Wallah Balash.
Ya gama3a e7na ahl bardo...matkhaloosh el bashawat el khawagat yekhrebooha 3aleina :)
LOL ya Hellme!
I didn't know journalists should be considering 'risk' when reporting the news, regardless of how old or new the news item is.
The greater good to the world is pretty obvious to me: it shows that even the all-mighty American military machine is fallible and human, and that, in principle, no one should be above the law.
I honestly find it difficult to believe that your only argument for not reporting it is that there is no 'good' in it. What's the 'good' in reporting that Kylie has breast cancer?
Hellme,
I woke up this morning to read on this blog, death threats to arabs, degrading posts, humilitaing comments.... from people who claim to be more civilized than arabs (Americans and Australians).
When I wrote SOME Americans I meant SOME Americans. I appreciate that Sandmonkey decided to delete an outrageous post by an Australian Kangaroo although it would have been nice to leave it for the rest of the readers to see what I'm talking about and not get offended.
We sure have the likes of nick the terrible in the arab world as well but for some reason the United States that looks down on the arab world and want to spread freedom and democracy is showing us everyday a poor example, the exact same thing happens in the arab world.
It is time to stop war and seek diplomatic solutions, Politics is not about torture and war, every aggressive action creates more hate.
twosret:
I think you are really only seeing a small segment of American society in blog posts. I'm a pretty moderate American: an independent (that is, I don't register officially with one political party), was annoyed by Clinton's early foriegn policy, am completely annoyed with Bush's trainwreck of a "foriegn policy," and annoyed that some of the good things which occassionally come out of his mouth don't match his actions.
I think I'm pretty rare when it comes to Americans reading Middle Eastern blogs. It's hard to get a handle on who is in the "community" just by reading posts on blogs, and by looking at who-references-who. However, it seems that there is a huge overpopulation of very conservative people reading & posting to these sites.
My suspicion is that a lot of conservatives read these blogs in the hope of finding kernels of "good news." They deeply need to hear that things are going well and improving over there. (I can relate to this... I really, really want the political and economic situation in the Middle East to become magnificent. I've thought this was critical since the Wall came down, and it has taken this long for political leaders to see this as important, too.)
I think you are seeing a really unrepresentative number of reflexively conservative people. I think you are also seeing a common effect of posting online: People write posts very quickly, while putting very little thought into their messages. Therefore, posts online often unintentionally come off as crass and offensive.
You're also seeing another common critter that lives on the 'net: The troll. A lot of these offensive posts are clearly jerks who really don't believe what they are saying... they are just saying something offensive because they want to see the ensuing fight. So, I wouldn't take offensive posts too seriously... that's what they are going for. (There also seem to be, for instance, a lot of people who are trying to impersonate stereotypical hyper-liberals, too, because they are trying to set the conservatives off just to watch the show.)
Many of us Americans are very interested in the Middle East, and strongly want the regio to be prosperous. Some of this is for pragmatic reasons, since a prosperous, happy Middle East would be safer and more stable. However, many us have wanted to see a prosperous, happy Middle East simply because we want people to do well, and since in the end we want as much of humanity as possible to live well. I know it's often much safer to be cynical, but many of us just want the people of Egypt, Iraq, Iran, etc. to have the best lives and opportunities possible. (We may not know the best route to get there, though.) We may not say it much, but it often is that simple.
Hey Sandmonkey,
Do these guys even know why you're called the EGYPTIAN Sandmonkey and not the American/Australian/whatever Sandmonkey?
You damn American, you! ;-)
Whoops! Gotta go--the law is here to administer my daily humiliation and torture! Cause y'know, it happens ALL THE TIME, it's the "American way."
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
BTW, any idea where I can find one of those super-flushing toilets that can flush a book? I might have to try it out on AT LEAST a few copies of Newsweek.
Anon - thanks for putting some perspective on things. Much appreciated.
Beth - I think most people know that he is THE Egyptian sandmonkey, because it's his URL. That does not mean there aren't any other sandmonkies, cameljockies, ragheads, goat-f*ckers out there. Hell, I'm one of them - nothing beats a good goat a day.
Two - Don't let it get to you. There's conservative opinion on both sides. The trick is not to let them draw you in to their empty fist fights.
First of all, there are two issues, the first being: not getting the story correct was bad journalism. Plain and simple.
The second issue is that people have a choice to behave violently or to behave non-violently. They have a choice. Some people choose violence and hatred and some people do not.
When people take responsibility for their personal actions (and choose non-violent methods of protest as opposed to violent means), instead of blaming them on others, we will have a much more peaceful world. This applies to ALL people of ALL nations.
Anyone ever heard of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.?
Twsoret man, you have a very good valid point and you always put good reason behind arguments supported with peaceful ideas.
I can see that you are angry today about how some morons post some violent ideas on blogs. I would be angry as shit to see what some people write here if it was directed at me as an American.
Stay cool man and good luck~)
Peace,
Mike
Hey Mike, She, Twos, does post violent and vile diatribes. Perhaps you feel these are moderate. Secondly, the Quran story is based on one of the detainees destroying his US supplied copy in order to clog the sewer system. Newsweak did not bother to verify any of its sourcing, rather going with the sensational with the happy additional reward of bashing the US . Newsweak has been kissing the ass of enemies of the West in general and the US in particular ,for over 3 decades. Sadly, it is not even good enough to use as a puppy trainer.
Twos, Abu Abbas could use your wise counsel. Why don't you hurry on over and help out?
Now, if the rumored desecration of the Quran is enough to send the faithful into a murderous frenzy, then maybe it is time to look at their faith or lack there of . A Christian or Jewish trooper might get angry , but he'd know it was just a book, that faith is from within, faith is a belief. Witness the faith and strength of US POWs in the tender care of Newsweak's ally, the North Vietnamese .Obviously that seems to be an element lacking with our easily offended murderers and their ever so aquiescent apologist buddies.
Other than that, have a lovely night.
mamapajamas, you are really come across like a rabid lunatic.
mamapajamas said:
This has got the be the most egregious case of newsmedia irresponsibility on record.
If you think this is true, you are an idiot. As a small example, go look up "yellow journalism." More likely, though, you are just trying to be inflamatory and smear Newsweek, like a good little GOP hearded sheep. The publication of such a nasty story without careful confirmation was a poor decision, but it was a very small side story, and they did run it by the Pentagon source again before publication. It was sloppy, but it certainly doesn't reduce them to having "NO CREDIBILITY." No media source should be followed blindly, even the usually trustworthy ones. All make mistakes... the criteria should instead be whether a source strives for accuracy, and is appropriately contrite and forthcoming when they inevitably screw up.
Your post claims that Newsweek intentionally incited riots in Afganistan & the Middle East against the United States. You really should evaluate how you analyze things a bit... it appears (just based on a few of your posts) that you are either insane, or an unthinking shill.
At least it is no longer illegal to laugh in Afganistan.
-Mike
Anonymous, Tina, DNA and Mike,
Thanks for your well-intended posts I see a lot of benevolence in your writings (especially anonymous). I lived for seven years in the United States. I visited most States and interacted with people and have seen the good and the bad. I had no intention to generalize, the Godparents of my children are Americans, My husband and children are Americans and I’m not new to the American culture and people.This is my home. The American media have caused Arabs and Arab-Americans so much damage not only to report this event but for the past few years. You can say that I have had it with the ignorance that is portrayed in blogs and on the streets and among politicians.
I’m not even a Muslim and the thought of this event makes me cringe. Russians have done it before to Christians this is nothing new. The Israelis torture Palestinians by wrapping dead bodies of prisoners with Israeli flags in front of their mates. The thing that makes me angry the most is when are humans going to become more civilized? When will the human soul become respected?. What is the difference between barbarians and us? How can we claim culture, civilization and scientific advancement when we can’t keep up with basic human rights?
There were few events this morning that might have caused me to react the way I did. I am against torture and barbaric ways of humiliating humans, I seek peaceful solutions or even legal punishements and like many Americans I was against war. I do get into heated discussions and it might lead me nowhere and yes the idiot might be an 11-year-old German kid. I visit Sandmonkey and GM blogs often and I don’t agree with 90% of their political views but I managed to maintain a civilized discussion. I’m usually sarcastic and seek humor in my posts.
P.S. Mike I’m a female my nickname is a rare female pharaoh ruler
Beth,
There is no need to worry about my relationship with Sandmonkey I know very well who he is and what he stands for. As for your poor humor and sarcasm I will give you 1 out of 10 you are not funny at all. German, Chinese or French must be your first language because you can’t even comprehend English.
Bait,
Since you are one of my fans I would like you to quote me where did I endorse violence in my posts. Abu Abbas doesn’t need my help the Palestinian children and their mothers do. Thank you I got the hint 13 years ago and I’m working on it since then.
My take on this whole story is very simple. I believe that the incident happened and Newsweek simply reported it . The outrage should be on the action like the Abu Ghraib action not the newspaper. I believe that people in Afghanistan and Iraq are very angry, I don’t think Afghanistan now is a model of prosperity or democracy. I don’t think Iraq will be for a while, God only knows how many 100,000's will have to die to get the role model kurdish-American Iraq. Not all the people who protest are the Taliban. I think those are the real people of Afghanistan and their anger should be respected and delt with rather than attacked.
Twos, you have not done a damn thing except prove you either are extremely gullible,willfully ignorant or, at least , have not the first clue about either Newsweak or plumbing. To believe a 700 plus page book can be flushed down a crapper is gobsmackingly ignorant.
One problem with the whole Palistinian rants is that even when given 95% orf the demands, the true colors, the eradicaton of a state shines through .Why aren't you putting on your bomb belt and going after the Jordanians? After all, they ran the Palestinians out of Jordan in 1970. Do you think that is a slly suggestion? Well the idea of sending young people to their "suicide" deaths to keep alive the needless infitada is pretty goddamned stupid, too. Do you not understand that the whole movement has taken on the identity of a death cult?
And exactly what have you done for the left behinds? Light candles in front of your Arafat(I'm a billionaire ) Bobblehead? Exactly where did all the millions Arafat and his cronies sucked up from the gullible , both in and out of government, go? The money sure as hell did not end up rebuilding anything other than the widow Arafat's shopping spress.
Enjoy the wallow in your parallel universe.
Mike said it best...at least it's no longer illegal and based on other news stories, it seems many of the protests started out peaceful and, like many protests around the world, some crazies show up and start trouble, incite the crowd and the authorities. SSDD
As for the Koran being flushed down the toilet or even pages, I think that general myers already gave the explanation and it is now being ignoried in light of the shit storm that came out of this.
I did post the link over at my site and some inside info on how prisons work (my family is in law enforcement).
Frankly, I found Myers explanation a lot more feasible than the "desecration" story simply because I've heard these kinds of stories before.
For a quick and dirty of what I was explaining on my blog, prisoners in prisons around the world have been known to stuff things in the toilet in their cells in order to flood them for various reasons.
1) When you are locked in a cell for upmteen hours a day, your choices for "protesting" your treatment are limited. Prisoners have done these kinds of things when they are angry about privileges like commissary, yard/exercise, library (yes, books), etc have been taken away from them. Usually because they already did something that got the privileges taken away. In the case of Gitmo, the sheer fact that they are locked up for several years now is probably warying on them.
2) Prisoners have done so in order to be removed from their cells because they WANT to be taken to solitary confinement (often times used as a punishment for this kind of behavior). Why would they "want"? because they are being threatened by other prisoners with physical harm and solitary confinement is a form of protective custody. nobody can get to you there. Threats from the prisoners could be because a debt is outstanding; one group/gang/tribe is at odds with another; prisoners believe that the prisoner in question is a stool pigeon/narc/informant; etc
3) They want to confront the guards physically and they have to draw them into the cell. flooding the cell and then refusing to come out peacably forces the guards to come in and "extract" the prisoner. This can be pretty violent if the prisoner resists.
4) They want to go to "solitary confinement" and look like it's under protest so that they CAN pass information to officers without appearing to cooperate.
5) Sometimes they are just nutjobs that do anything to get attention or express their insanity.
That is no bullshit. Happens ALL the time in regular prisons around the US and the world. Why anyone would think that a prisoner would be adverse to using the Koran, even if he is Muslim, to do this is kind of surprising. It would be a deep fallacy to believe that these men have any deeper respect for the Koran or wouldn't use any means necessary, including the Koran, to get their points across.
Taqqiya or simply less reverent than others or simply desperate. Happens to the best of men (and I highly doubt that these guys in Gitmo qualify as the "best").
And please, let us lay off with the "all muslims" thing. If all muslims went wacko at the thought of this, then we'd have one hell of a tsunami and lots more bombs going off. There is a contingent of folks who have yet to move away from superstitious nonsense (and they all don't live in the ME). The sad part is, they were just handed a nice piece of propaganda so they can get more recruits and people can keep dying.
The simple fact is, even if it happened, it doesn't constitute "torture". Interestingly, I've yet to hear anything that I would consitute as torture out of any stories. "Abuse", yeah, cause that's what you call things when people take pictures of naked prisoners on dog leashes.
Wide spread American military behavior? Nope. I know too many people in the military that would go ape shit if they were told to do that. Even to their enemies. There is honor in many men. People get prosecuted when they lose that. it's a simple fact and all over the news.
And, Nick, my friend, the argument about "constitutional rights" is so yesterday. First, if you look up the constitution of the US (have you ever done so?) the rights and guarantees of due process under the law do not and have never extended to prisoners of war or other combatants. never. Secondly, the constitution expressly says that the rights are guaranteed to "citizens of the United States", including those that are naturalized, but does not include any language about other countries' citizens.
Now, in normal law cases, we like to extend those courtesies reserved for US citizens to non-citizens because it shows we are civilized and because we recognize that taking that away from anyone means that it could be taken away from us, but it does not mean we have to extend those same courtesies to enemies from a conflict.
We didn't extend that to WWI, WWII, Korean, Vietnamese, Gulf War I or any other POWs and other combatants we picked up on the field of battle. AT most, the Geneva conventions could be applied and those do not require giving the POWs attornies or court hearings in civilian courts.
Now, we can quibble about whether the Gitmo prisoners meet the definition of POW under the Geneva convention or "non-uniformed" combatants, which are treated differently in the Geneva Conventions, but you can't really quibble about the constitution. That's why the supreme court, full of liberal judges, won't even hear a case regarding "constitutional rights" of Gitmo prisoners.
As to who is to blame, I have several fingers to point:
1) Enemies of the US looking to stir up trouble where ever they can in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq (if they could, but they didn't). I do mean AQ and other organizations like them.
2) The stupid low level "analyst" jackleg they probably skimmed a report on the way up the ladder and couldn't get their story straight but wanted to be the next "deep throat" and leaked garbage.
3) Newsweek and other media that are quick to jump on stories without fully verifying the info in order to try and beat the next guy out of a story and hope they turn into the "watergate" boys and gain instant fame and fortune. They forget one thing; watergate wasn't simply put together on "info" from "deep throat" but actually required research and analytical thinking. None of which appears to trickle down in journalism these days.
That's my long and subversive take on this.
Bait,
I will not reply to your personal attacks and the attempt to change topic. It is non of your business what I do because you simply have no idea and in addition I have learned not to give attention to a 13 years old German kid.
Back to topic, Where in my posts did I ever encourage violence?
Kat, Your post is talking about different scenarios that can happen in any prisons. The topic on hand is very specific
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701315.html
The above link reports that what the newsweek reported is not new.
Here is a quote of Washington Post:-
Quote
"Former detainee Abdallah Tabarak told a Moroccan newspaper in December that he saw guards throw Korans in the toilet, according to a BBC translation of the article.
"When I wanted to pray, they would burst into my cell with police dogs to terrorize me and prevent me from praying," he said. "They also would trample the Koran underfoot and throw it in the urine bucket. We staged protests in the prison about the desecrating of the Holy Koran, so the management promised us that they would issue orders to the American soldiers not to touch the copies of the Koran again."
Unquote
Jeez Louise! You folks have loads of time on your hands.
Give it a break already. Some opinions just can't be reconciled.
My two cents to the commenters here: many are concentrating on Newsweek and have forgottent the real story.
As for the technicallity of flushing a book down the toilet , it doesn't matter if if got flushed which it may not because it is a BOOK after all but just throwing it in the toilet counts as desecration , that is the point, not the point that if it had actually gone down that drainage system to the sewage..so please stop the scenarios of having to prove if a book can go down the toilet or not...
Twosret ya binti walahi ma7adsh min dol fehm 3awzin n'ul eh kul wahed 'a3ed ighani 3ala lailah ;)
DNA..excellent point.
As for Korans in the toilet and all the other accusations of released detainees, I have as yet to hear "torture" and I am more skeptical about these guys who have just as many reasons to lie their butts off (reported before or not) than I am of something being reported to me by the government at this stage.
Also, desecration or not, true or not, holy or otherwise, it's a lame excuse to go on a rampage.
Sandmonkey: "And is it just me or are you completly ignoring the notion that some of those people rioting may be from the Taliban or Taliban sympathizers? They still do exist you know!"
EXACTLY!!!
Will the MSM ever come to understand that they are being played as useful fools??
"Uh... actually, this is an OLD story that has already been reported in the Guardian, Al Jazeera, etc and has been widely known on the Arab Street for more than a year.
What, precisely, did Newsweek gain by reporting it at the cost of 17 lives?"
Good question. Any link to this and the utter flop that the Free Muslims march in DC turned out to be? Not a direct and deliberate one, by any stretch of the imagination, but the timing of the story sure sucks. When will the MSM give mainstream, moderate Muslims a break, for christ's sake??? A little support would be appreciated much more than road blocks.
Highlander,
I guess you are right people like Gatorbait are no better than Bin Laden they drag the Palestinian cause into every topic lol!
He looks good in his grey jalabia hiding like a coward behind his PC. Can hear the goat in the background reading his garbage.
T.
Twosret: brilliant comment. My salutations. I agree with everything you said but would like to add that its pointless and totally futile to be civilized with racists on this blog or elsewhere.
I really dont know why we in the Arab and Muslim world demonstrate against good USA. It kills us, it occupies us, it brings us nothing but death and disaster under some wacko crusade, why oh why do we dislike it so much, I wonder?
Seriously: I know there are many good Americans, but unfortunately, they're not the ones talking to us in this part of the world. We only see murderers, racists and sick officers proudly flashing V-signs and wide smiles over our dead bodies. I have no sympathy or respect for those.
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