Bush administration calls on Newsweek to do more to repair damage from ret

[Judi Lynn]

Bush administration calls on Newsweek to do more to repair damage from retracted article

By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent

May 17, 2005, 2:15 AM EDT


WASHINGTON -- The White House says Newsweek took a "good first step" by retracting its story that U.S. investigators found evidence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran, but it wants the magazine to do more to repair damage caused by the article.

Newsweek on Monday retracted the report in its May 9 issue after officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department criticized its publication and its use of an anonymous source. Protests in Afghanistan, where more than a dozen people died and scores were injured in rioting, and demonstrations elsewhere in the Muslim world were blamed on the article.

"The report had real consequences," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged. There are some who are opposed to the United States and what we stand for who have sought to exploit this allegation. It will take work to undo what can be undone."

McClellan said a retraction was only "a good first step" and said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military."
(snip)

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--newsweek-quran0517may16,0,4607256.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

[Erika]

1. Duplicate Post

[OneAngryDemocrat]

2. Clear the Air, DEMOCRATS!!!

Let's be clear...

NEWSWEEK has not retracted it's story.
It has retracted that their source was 'official'.

The story is REAL - It HAPPENED - Qurans were desecrated.

The only hypocrisy involved in this incident is from the right-wing commentators pretending that NEWSWEEK got it wrong, when they got it absolutely right.

There is no need to bring up falsehoods from the right to explain away NEWSWEEK's mistake - the only mistake NEWSWEEK made was in bowing to White House pressure.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/15/19221/4742

Please visit my website, http://www.shockedandawful.com

[foo_bar]

7. "Newsweek Retracts Quran Desecration Story"

is the headline above this one in LBN. Whether or not it's the truth, it's the public face of it now.

[ogradda]

3. So for forgiveness Newsweek must join

the neocon propaganda machine? Not exactly subtle are they?:eyes:

[jayctravis]

4. Incredible deja vu.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Or else

The hallmark of this administration's requests.

How DARE you expose our evil. Yeah, and now that we're fed up with your effrontery, don't even THINK about getting a response to Conyers' letter about the UK memo.

When are people going to realize that WE OWN THIS WORLD, and anyone who gets in the way hates god?

Time for Newsweek to get a Rathering, and if that's not enough to quell their uppitiness, maybe we'll just have to Baxterize them.

[NightOwwl]

6. I'm not sure I understand, Scottie...

Is Bush so busy riding his bike he can't make a single comment on the reality of the situation? Because your attempts at cover-up and passing the blame just aren't cutting it.

[cestpaspossible]

8. Yes, Newsweek should reveal the name of the official who lied to them.

That would go a long way towards explaining what happened.

Maybe one of the silver linings here will be that reporters will be less likely to use unnamed sources, with this shining example of how they can be burned by them.

[rodeodance]

12. yes, who exactly is the senior governmental official??

[Enraged_Ape]

21. I want this dude(-ette) put under oath in a court of law...

and then tell us whether he/she was REALLY just making it all up.

[Virginian]

32. Make it a policy. Source burns media, Media burns source.

This looks too much like a deliberate attempt to discredit the media that is not under Republican control.

If a trusted high level official is going to give a story and then back out, that person should be exposed. It is not burning a source, that source is unreliable anyway. The public should know who is lying to us.

If the person reetracted because (s)he was threatened, that should come out even louder.

We need a free press in this country to support democracy. It can't be owned by people with an agenda.

[Inland]

23. THat's good! Burn the WH! Have the OFFICIAL explain what he said!

Exactly what did he/sahe say? Why wasn't there a sputtering, incensed denial of the scandalous accusation of desecration of the Koran?

Because the official thought it sounded about right.

[flordehinojos]

9. i wonder how much salt old babs used to, or still does,like to rub on open

wounds. it is a bushie boy modus operandi as well.

LET US ALL CALL ON BUSH TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE HE HAS DONE TO OUR DEMOCRACY BY SETEALING OUR ELECTIONS TIMES TWO, AS WELL AS THE DAMAGE HE HAS DONE TO UNCOUNTED THOUSANDS OF IRAQI CIVILIANS IN IRAQ!

BUSHIE BOY... DON'T OPEN UP YOUR MOUTH ABOUT ANYONE MAKING REPAIRS UNTIL YOU FIRST MAKE YOUR OWN REPAIRS.

[LynnTheDem]

10. When will BUSH DO MORE to make up for his LIES that have caused the DEATH

of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis???

[rodeodance]

11. Newsweek only retracted the part that a 'military internal investigation"

not uncovered Quran abuse at Gitmo.

.....Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine decided to publish the short item after hearing from an unnamed U.S. official that a government probe had found evidence a Quran had been flushed down a toilet by interrogators.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into charges of Quran desecration." The spokesman also said the Pentagon had looked into other charges by detainees that the Quran had been desecrated and found them to be "not credible."

Whitaker said the magazine's original source later said he could not be sure he had read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited and that it might have been in another document.

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Whitaker said. .......

[warrens]

31. It's time for Whitaker to clear this up

The NERVE of those nazis in the White House to say, "people died." Well, how many people died from White House lies about WMD and Al Qaeda connections and 911 connections, all of which were untrue.

Every day, I despise these punks more and more.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

28. X-actly

They're making it sound as if desecration of a holy book is a worse crime than the physical torture of the detainees.

[GoBlue]

13. Duplicity...

"We've not found any wrongdoing on the part of U.S. service members" said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of Joint Chiefs.

[ChrisK]

14. Why is our government not doing its own investigating into this story?

If Bush and his cabinet are so worried about what has happened and the kind of image it's given this country why will he not set the record straight and get an outside party to look into it and have it shown to the world to quill the uprising?

But I guess that sort of goes without saying,right?..Never too good to look under all those rocks...might be a few "bad apples" lurking there.

"We torturer but would never desecrate a holy book..honest" big toothy smile

[salin]

15. Sadly, Scott,

some of what we have learned in the past 14 months about policies and practices (condoned by none less than our Atty General) are not all going to "calm down" high emotions in the Muslim world. More "clear explaining" - just might have the opposite effect. Perhaps a moment of 'be careful for what you ask', Mr. McClellan.

[rodeodance]

16. yes, past time for the WH to do some explaining!!

[rodeodance]

17. don't the media find it strange that this was a senior governmental

offical who changed this story?--(confused about the Report he was talking about). Who got to his official?--Rove etc of course. Now the media is taking the blame!!!!! the perception is that this is another Rathergate!!

[dbt]

18. Newsweek has been successfully Rathered.

Wasn't it Herr Rove who first practiced this move on James Hatfield, author of Fortunate Son? If I remember it right, the book has some pretty well-documented cocaine use by bu$hler. The theory was that Rove was the source of the information; he let it out right before he launched a massive smear/discredit effort against Hatfield.

The messenger was discredited to the point of suicide and the bu$hkamp got to say that "the story has been proven false long ago."

Anyone else remember this?

[sattahipdeep]

19. Then it was Nixon, now it's George W

We're in the midst of a revolution and we have not won yet....



Can't Stop the Music.

[mod mom]

20. The bu$h administration should do more to denounce their immoral war and

torture techniques! This is a scare tactic that has rove written all over it. They don't want real news getting published, only their version of the world will suffice.

[leesa]

22. Well, if someone DOES point out the US policies and practices, we are in

deeper doodoo, Scottie.

[symbolman]

24. How about the Bush administration

who appears to be worried about real lives lost when a practice is exposed, letting us all know WHO REVEALED the CIA Operative which led to many potential deaths last year..

Was it Robert "NoFacts" from CNN?

Why don't they tell us WHICH reported outed the agent and come clean before any more of her contacts are killed or exposed themselves?

The Media belongs to the People, and Image IS Reality. Once they've created a modulus where needing no sources is credible as a news story, then THEY opened up this can of worms.

THere's more to this story than meets the eye, and the Muslims with no media, no tvs or radio, or mags see the truth more readily than the american Sheeple.

of course keeping innocent people (and admittedly some of these characters are severely dangerous) in DOG RUNS is bad policy.

Even if Bush was drug to the Hague tomorrow you can bet he'd eat like a king and have a nice warm pile of straw to sleep in at least.

Scumbag torturing bastards have no shame. When you show no shame or remorse you should be considered mentally ill, and that's what I see in Washington.

[Plaid Adder]

25. See, this is what I keep telling people...NEVER CONCEDE TO THESE PEOPLE!

As soon as you give them an inch they want a mile. Your apology isn't good enough! Now stand still while we strip and flog your ass!

Jesus Christ. Yeah, the tarnishing of our image abroad is really Newsweek's fault. Cause you know Abu Ghraib and the Iraq war would never have happened if it wasn't for Newsweek.

Give me a fucking break! This administration will not be satisfied until every major news outlet has been reduced to a propaganda mouthpiece--which is basically what Scotty is asking for, in so many words.

:banghead:

The Plaid Adder

[shanti]

36. which is why i fear for the internet

they don't have it under control.....yet.

[DemGa]

26. I've never seen the goverment pressuring the press

like this, it's disturbing.

[Spazito]

27. I am beginning to think this 'hoopla' by the White House is going...

to come back and bite them in the ass in a big way. I have noticed that by the White House bringing up the issue of the Koran, it has also brought the issue of the Abu Graib torture to the forefront again. I suspect that is not something the White House planned for in their faux outrage at Newsweek.

If it is being discussed again in North America, there is no doubt it is being brought up in the Middle East again, regardless of what Newsweek may or may not have retracted.

[cliss]

41. I'm thinking the same thing.

I think the White House consistently misreads world opinion. This story was NOT NEW. The Pentagon was aware of the story before it was published, and had no comment on it. = they didn't think it was a big deal.

Result = the muslim world becomes inflamed. On the verge of igniting. Amazingly, Saudi Arabia speaks up. There was no doubt in my mind that they had GONE TOO FAR this time, when it gets to that point. I read on MSN news that over 300 mullahs were planning to "declare holy war" on America.

Even in their dense skulls, they have now realized that the situation is dire.

Over the next few days, watch for public apologies from the White House, possibly directed at Jordan, like it bizarrely was done with the Abu Ghraib scandal. Watch them drag someone out of Gitmo, to be publicly punished. The muslim world is demanding it.

Anticipate it.

[Solly Mack]

29. Come down from the cross Bush....you caused this mess

Don't blame Newsweek for the torture you endorsed.

[Algorem]

30. new way to treat reporters?

Channel 5 news anchor arrested at crime scene

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Rachel Dissell
Plain Dealer Reporter

Maple Heights- Maple Heights police arrested WEWS Channel 5 anchor Curtis Jackson at a crime scene Sunday as he followed a woman to her apartment for an interview.

Chief Rich Maracz said that Jackson was inside the boundaries of a crime scene. He said officers asked Jackson several times to leave before they arrested him.

"He refused to obey the lawful order of police," Maracz said.

WEWS News Director John Butte said that Jackson believed he had the right to go anywhere the general public could. When police asked him to leave, Butte said, Jackson agreed but asked the officer for his name. That was when he was arrested, Butte said...

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1116322461141840.xml&coll=2

[Strawman]

33. The guilty media thesis: Bush's excuse, just like Nixon.

"I think that this has the potential to be one of those so-called tipping points," said David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a senior aide to four presidents. Mr. Gergen also works for U.S. News & World Report, a competitor to Newsweek.

"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."

He said the magazine was smart to issue the retraction, but that it would not quell the outrage. "If anything, it is mushrooming and becoming uglier by the hour," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17koran.html?pagewanted=print

Hmm. Plan on hearing that bit of "conventional wisdom" for a long time people. Bush won't take the blame for "losing" this war. The media will. Just like in Vietnam.

[Kool Kitty]

34. Oh, FU, White House and all the inhabitants thereof.

If any damage should be repaired, it should be the damage your administration has done to Iraq and its people. This is just a distraction to take attention away from the British memo.

[Zorra]

35. White House "zen": "If the Koran gets flushed, and Newsweek retracts

the story, then it never happened."
From the "Dow de Ching" - Commander Cuckoo Bananas

[bluedog]

37. How about all of these others?

Yorkshire Post, November 1, 2004 | Tipton Three turn on the trauma for £22m... injected with "unknown substances", and had their Korans thrown into the toilets.





DAILY MAIL (London), October 28, 2004, ED_3RD; Pg. 1; Pg. 2, TIPTON THREE SUE FOR Pounds 22M, DUNCAN GARDHAM... guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets





DAILY MAIL (London), October 28, 2004, ED_3RD; Pg. 1; Pg. 2, TIPTON THREE SUE FOR Pounds 22M, DUNCAN GARDHAM... guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets





The Express, October 28, 2004, U.K. 3rd Edition; NEWS; Pg. 4, GUANTANAMO BRITONS WILL SUE US FOR £22M, By Lianne Kolirin... guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets





Irish News, October 28, 2004, Pg. 26, British men detained at Guantanamo sue US government for rights abuses;... guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets





Press Association, October 27, 2004, Wednesday, HOME NEWS, GUANTANAMO BRITONS SUE US GOVERNMENT, Mark Sage, PA News, in New York... guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets





Belfast Telegraph, August 5, 2004, Father demands release of his British son after claims of torture at Guantanamo Bay, By Andrew Buncombe in Washington... allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets, while others were injected with ...





Birmingham Post, August 5, 2004, Thursday, First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 2, TIPTON TRIO CLAIM THEY WERE TORTURED BY ALLIES, EMMA PINCH A detainee is led by military police to be interrogated by military officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul... Guards would throw prisoners' Korans into the toilet 'as part of their clear policy to ...





Federal News Service, August 5, 2004 Thursday, PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT - RELEASED GUANTANAMO DETAINEES ALLEGE ABUSE (ABC RADIO, AUSTRALIA, 08:25 (GMT+11) AUGUST 05, 2004)... guards would throw detainees' Korans down the toilet and shave them, to try to get them to ...





IPR Strategic Business Information Database, June 28, 2004, THEY ALLEGE ABUSE BY U.S. CAPTORS... at Guantanamo. "They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," Vakhitov said.





BBC Monitoring International Reports, June 26, 2004, RUSSIAN TV INTERVIEWS FREED GUANTANAMO PRISONERS... bucket instead of a toilet. People were in cells, ... ... floor. (Vahitov) They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet.





The Observer, March 14, 2004, Observer News Pages, Pg. 5, 5420 words, World Exclusive: Inside Guantanamo: How we survived jail hell: For two years the Tipton Three have been silent prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Now, in this remarkable interview with David Rose, they describe for the first time the extraordinary story of their journey from the West Midlands to Camp Delta, David Rose... ... sleeping tents, copies of the Koran would be trampled on by ... ... occasion, thrown into a toilet bucket.

[indie_voter]

38. Pakistan dismisses Newsweek retraction on Koran

Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, has called on Washington to conduct an inquiry and to share results with Islamabad.

The Pentagon has said that an investigation remained open into allegations contained in the report.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of a hardline six-party Islamic alliance in Pakistan, said Newsweek's retraction was unlikely to cool tempers in the Muslim world.

"Whatever (Newsweek) magazine has done now is under pressure (from the U.S. government)," he said. "It has not denied what it has reported and many people freed from Guantanamo Bay have narrated the same thing."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/religion_pakistan_koran_dc

[Rose Siding]

39. AP: State Dept. Tries to Undo Newsweek Damage

WASHINGTON - The State Department, moving to undo damage it says was caused by a Newsweek article alleging U.S. desecration of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, is telling its embassies to spread the word abroad that America respects all religious faiths.

In a two-page cable sent Monday night to all U.S. diplomatic posts, the department told the ambassadors to inform host governments and local media that Newsweek had retracted its report that investigators found evidence interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Quran.
...
"We condemn all acts inciting violent protest and we express our sympathies to those injured in recent demonstrations and to the families of those killed," the State Department cable said. "We urge all members of the press to provide the same wide coverage to the magazine's retraction as was given to the original allegations."

The United States, the cable said, "is a tolerant society in which freedom of religion for all faiths is ardently defended.... Disrespect of the Holy Quran is not, has not been and will never be the policy of the United States."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050517/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/newsweek_quran

It's just a good thing no one in the Muslim world heard that Coulter advocated invasion and conversion, or that bush was the first to resurrect the term "crusade" or that BOYKIN was PROMOTED. :sarcasm:

[Roland99]

40. How about this administration apologizes for an unjust war,

torturing innocent prisoners, shoving copies of the Quran into piss buckets, murdering people, bombing innocents, etc.??


Naaah...can't have that, can we?


It's time for a revolution, people!

[ninkasi]

42. Explaining our policies

Toward Muslims, and prisoners, whether at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or at any other prison the U.S. controls will only cause outrage such as the world as never seen.

There is photographic evidence of what went on at Abu Ghraib, and remember that the worst of the pictures have not been released. Are Muslims, or the rest of the world, to believe, in light of what has been verified about our brutal torture techniques, that anything anybody in this country has to say is the truth?

Too many of our government thugs are so used to being able to say anything, regardless of how illogical or stupid, and having the American people accept it as truth. They are mistaking Muslims, the ones under attack, with our citizens, who can't be bothered with finding out the truth, or just accepting whatever Faux or Rush says, and letting it go at that.

We are destroying two countries right now. We are bringing prisoners to Gitmo without charging them, without letting them see lawyers, and without letting the world community know what is really going on inside that hell-hole.

We went too far a long time ago, but now it looks as though we can't stop the damage we started. This is what happens when a country allows itself to be governed by people who steal elections, ignore treaties, pander to the rich and soak the poor, and start illegal wars against countries who have not attacked us, nor had the ability to do so.

What we have done will some day be written about in future history books as an atrocity equal to Hitler and Stalin's savage regimes. Death does not always come from a bullet or a bomb; sometimes it comes by starvation, no clean drinking water, no medical facilities, or a variety of other ways, all of which we have brought about to Iraq, for example, under the guise of spreading democracy.

We have become the monster we used to fear. Newsweek can not change this.

[Roland99]

43. ***Afghan Riots Not Tied to Report on Quran Handling, General Says***

http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2005/May/13-299433.html

Washington – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.

According to initial reports, the situation in Jalalabad began on May 10 with peaceful student protests reacting to a report in Newsweek magazine that U.S. military interrogators questioning Muslim detainees at the Guantanamo detention center “had placed Quran s on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book.” By the following day the protests in the city had turned violent with reports of several individuals killed, dozens wounded, and widespread looting of government, diplomatic and nongovernmental assets.

However, Myers said an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report.

[killbotfactory]

44. Someone forgot to give him the memo

oops.