Selective Outrage (by WH="butterfly effect/newsweek effect")

[rodeodance]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-newsweek17may17,0,6304448.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

EDITORIAL
Selective Outrage

May 17, 2005

According to chaos theory, the flapping of a single butterfly's wings can trigger a hurricane halfway across the globe, a phenomenon known as the "butterfly effect." Now the Bush administration thinks it has detected something that might be called the "Newsweek effect." It says the magazine's publication of an item in its May 9 issue, alleging that U.S. guards flushed the Koran down a toilet in order to humiliate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, was a cause of riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan last week that left at least 14 people dead........





The more interesting question may not be how Newsweek goofed, but why the Muslim world is so ready to believe the story. For all the administration's huffing and puffing about Newsweek getting the story wrong, it has produced such a catalog of misdeeds at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that almost any allegation is instantly credited abroad. The administration itself has said that 11 soldiers have been disciplined for abusing prisoners at Gitmo.

The United States has already been convicted in the court of world opinion for its treatment of its prisoners, and that's the administration's fault, not Newsweek's. Shutting down Guantanamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protec

[LdyGuique]

1. The only reason that this is such a flapdoodle is that the NYT

owns Newsweek -- hence, a "liberal bias" can be applied against anything it prints. Newsweek has a long history of accuracy; so, it's unknown why, especially after Dan Rather and Dubya's Memogate, why they didn't insist on corrobation on this particular fact.

As for the riots, the Admin through Myers has already said that the riots had political tensions behind them, rather than the Newsweek article. I'd also comment that self-responsibility would go a long way on riots and their victims. There is no way that anything as divorced from Afghanistan in terms of a paragraph in the U.S. media could ever have a direct cause and effect of such magnitude.

How many times have we witnessed through newsfeeds angry Muslem men taking to the streets and firing their weapons in an orgy of violent protest? This particular cultural element falls squarely on them.

As for whether or not the idea of the desecration of the Qu'ran was contemplated or circulated as an urban legend, that's entirely possible. It may have even happened but have no corroborating evidence other than heresay.

So-called collateral damage has caused more death and destruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan by far -- and the Admin doesn't even count the bodies.

[mouyard]

2. Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post n/t

[katty]

3. US Image already in dumper-grasping for straws,nowNewsweek