Was Newsweek set up?

[LuckyTheDog]

Has it ocurred to amyone else here that Newsweek might have been set up by its source?

http://comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2005/05/16/134053.html

[FrenchieCat]

1. I'm not sure about that.....

They have some of the biggest Presstitutes in their stable of whoriters.

I tend to doubt that they would need setting up. Maybe they set their own self up....to do a little housecleaning.

[laura888]

2. Yes - this seems a likely scenario to me, as well! n/t

[LuckyTheDog]

3. That seems unlikely, FrenchieCat

If they wanted to fire some reporters, they could have found a much easier way to do it - without trashing their own credibility.

[FrenchieCat]

5. In my mind....their credibility went down the toilet quite a way back.....

Like when the were caught passing around that Kerry Intern story.

Plus, I don't like the fact that they are so closely aligned with Msnbc and NBC (GE) and WAPO. It's like incest of the worse kind.

[FrenchieCat]

6. On 2nd thought.....

Maybe they were not toeing the line quite as close as BushCo would have liked. Maybe 75% leaning to the right was not good enough for this admin.

So yes, it possible.

[whistle]

4. Yes, I think so, just like Dan Rather was at CBS

[Gold Metal Flake]

7. Yup.

Government veted, government sources.

After the publishing, the vetting is ignored, the sources change their story.

Guckert-bitch Scottie makes himself availablke to media to blast Newsweek morons.

Newsweek pusses out.

More morons caught by half-assed Machiavelli Rove.

Face it. We are on our own.

Vote? Don't be stupid.

[babsbunny]

8. Should we email Newsweek

with our support? Or our disgust for being cowards?

[FrenchieCat]

9. Sorry, that's not anything I can do......

As I hate all of these bastards and have already had my run in with these lying fools.

Can't support a magazine that's part of the lying Corporate media pool.

If they go down, I'm clapping. Sometimes you've got to take the good with the bad.

[Gold Metal Flake]

17. Stop it with the picture.

Makin' me want to have hope in the vote.

[Gold Metal Flake]

16. The real problem is not Newsweek.

Fuck all this diversionary bullshit.

Take the ball straight up the middle.

[unhappycamper]

10. From CNN's front page

I grabbed this from CNN's front page before it disappears. Nice picture, eh? Any of you Photoshop experts care to comment?


Muslims in India get their message across.

(I am posting this picture / question in all Newsweek threads.)

[Nite Owl]

11. The guy who was just on

Olberman, I forget his name but he's from the LAT I think, he always has him on, just said that. The article was shown to the Pentagon before they printed it and nothing was denied and now all of a sudden the WH has a fit and they are left holding the bag. He said this and CBS were like they were set up.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. At the beginning of Olbermann's show I thought I heard something strange

Did he not say in the intro to his show that before Newsweek reported on the Koran-in-the-toilet incident that the same story had previously appeared in about a dozen other publications? Did I hear that right?

[Nite Owl]

19. I missed the beginning of

KO but I did hear that somewhere, maybe on AAR this afternoon. Just like the CBS fiasco the story is true.

[Poiuyt]

12. That was brought up on both Hardball and Countdown this evening

It looks like a lot of people are smelling something fishy.

[KharmaTrain]

13. Newsweek = WAPO = Shot Over The Bow

First, when this story first starting flaring up last night, I smelled Rove all over it. Seemed so convenient to kill the messenger, as this regime loves to do, when they need a convenient tar baby. This was to quickly deflect any bad videos that may play and turn it into a regime plus. And, yes, I think Newsweek was set up.

Donald Graham is still distrusted by this regime and try as he might to suck up, they still want him to know whose boss (as well as always playing favorites to the Moonie Times). Smearing Newsweek like CBS also helps another of this regime's favorite...Time/Warner. First, it give CNNServative tons of material to play with...bashing a competitor of Time and currying favor with the regime at the same time. This is a win-win for them.

How ironic this afternoon, Leslie Blitzer "covers" this story by "interviewing" Whorie Kurtz who works for (SIC) the Washington Post. Wolfie made sure to draw the connections between the WAPO and Newsweek, but sure didn't mention that HIS network is owned by a rival media conglomerate.

This regime is very good at playing all ends against the middle with the media and has them so conflicted now that whatever story they want to plant or twist, they have willing accomplices in virtually every newsroom.

[jasmeel]

14. It's the liberal media attacking the helpless * administration!n/t

[Tinoire]

18. They reported the truth. Got one detail wrong & as usual the people

who need to detract from the truth jumped on that one little detail that it was in a SouthCom report (which, as Kos(?) pointed out, it may very well have been before they rushed and scrubbed it). Typical tactic when you don't like the truth- find a detail to try to discredit the whole thing. They would have done the same thing with Abu Ghraib except that they couldn't fight photographs.

Isikoff's source was one he'd used before. I don't think he was set up because this was not an earth-shattering revelation.

Everyone knows this stuff has been happening. It's been widely reported by prisoners, talked about by soldiers and even today, on Juan Cole's site, you can read what a military officer had to say about it:

"I'm a former US military officer, and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school--Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.

The course I attended . . . had a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI (counter-intelligence), interrogators, etc for those running the camp.

One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around, etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school.

I have no doubt the stories about trashing the Koran are true.

(snip)

3. This incident with the bible trashing. Camp was (in the late 1990s). It was towards the end of the camp experience, which was 2-3 days of captivity. We were penned in concrete cell blocks about 4' x 4' x 4'--told to kneel, but allowed to squat or sit. There was no door, just a flap that could be let down if it was too cold outside (which it was--actually light snow fell). Each trainee was interrogated to some extent, all experienced some physical interrogation such as pushing, shoving, getting slammed against a wall (usually a large metal sheet set up so that it would not seriously injure trainees) with some actually water-boarded (not me).

The bible trashing was done by one of the top-ranked leaders of the camp, who was always giving us speeches--sort of 'making it real' so to speak, because it is a pretty contrived environment. But by the end it almost seemed real. Guards spoke English with a Russian accent, wore Russian-looking uniforms. So the bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling--we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally--how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech. Then he kicked over the soup pot, and threw us back in the cells. Big climax. And psychologically it was crushing and heartbreaking, and then we were left isolated to contemplate this.

And all of these moods and thoughts were created in this fake camp--just imagine how it is for these guys at Gitmo.

So many have tried to commit suicide....by now they all must have some serious psychological problems. This is without a doubt torture. Premeditated, planned....a fine lot of criminals we have in charge of the USA these days. Gitmo is so Orwellian--so Room 101. They are playing on the deepest feelings and fears."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantanamo-controversies-bible-and.html

======

A. From The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 20, 2005:

Lawyers allege abuse of 12 at Guantanamo
By Frank Davies
Inquirer Washington Bureau

<.......................>

Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey , who interviewed clients late last month. Others said that pills were hidden in their food and that people came to their cells claiming to be their attorneys, to gain information.

"All have been physically abused, and, however you define the term, the treatment of these men crossed the line," (attorney Tom) Wilner said. "There was torture, make no mistake about it." ...

B. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

72.They were never given prayer mats and initially they didn't get a Koran. When the Korans were provided, they were kicked and thrown about by the guards and on occasion thrown in the buckets used for the toilets. This kept happening. When it happened it was always said to be an accident but it was a recurrent theme.

C. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

74. Asif says that `it was impossible to pray because initially we did not know the direction to pray, but also given that we couldn't move and the harassment from the guards, it was simply not feasible. The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it. It is clear to me that the conditions in our cells and our general treatment were designed by the officers in charge of the interrogation process to "soften us up"'.

D. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

Statement of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, "Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay," released publicly on August 4, 2004, para. 72, 74, available online at:
http://www.ccr- ny.org/v2/reports/docs/
Gitmo=compositestatementFINAL23july04.pdf,
accessed on August 19, 2004.

The disrespect of the Koran by guards at Camp X-Ray was one of the factors prompting a hunger strike. Ibid., para. 111-117.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/5/15/211444/985

===

On August 18, 2004, ANSA, the Italian news agency, wrote of the families of detainees from Bahrain at Guantanamo:


"The families' anxiety grew after the publication of a report by the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), which contained information about tortures and maltreatment of prisoners. The report, based on testimony by three former Guantanamo prisoners,
Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmad, defines as brutal the methods of the U.S. jailers. According to the report, prisoners were brutally beaten and compelled to watch other prisoners sodomising each other by force. The 150-page document says reptiles were taken to the cells in an attempt to force prisoner confessions, while the Koran was thrown into the toilets before the eyes of the detained."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantanamo-controversies-bible-and.html