Politics Newsweek

How can one not see that flushing their holy book down the toilet (which, by the way, i cracked up upon hearing. Does that make me bad?) will create even more anti-american sentiments in the region. All this story did was hamper the military effort.
 
Also, now the military has to try to convince the Muslim world that they didn't flush the books. Communication between them and the Muslims is NOT easy. And if I were a Muslim outraged by the desecration, I wouldn't necessarily believe the military if they told me it wasn't true. I read it in Newsweek after all didn't I? And if they changed the article I might think they just retracted the article to pacify me. They're used to governments in their country trying to cover up their flaws. They might think Newsweek was ordered to retract the article so the military wouldn't look bad. Something like that would have happened in their country, why not ours? Newsweek has caused so much damage with this article. I don't think that one source and two "no comments" are enough to print something that obviously is going to create pandemonium. I think Newsweek had a pretty god idea the trouble this article would cause, which is why they were so hasty to print it. Everyone's going to want a copy of it. This story is on the same scale as the pictures and stories of the prisoner mistreatment and look how big that got. (Only that story had more than one source AND pictures to prove it.)
 
I just got the new issue of Newsweek in the mail this afternoon, and they have an article in it about the Quran scandal.

It is an interesting read and you get more of a feel as to why they decided to print this story and the sources that they had.

It is also interesting to note that Newsweek was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Quran. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports and on Al-Jazeera. Claims by other detainees have been covered in the media since then as well.

The reports that this came from just one governmental source is also false as well. It did come from a government official, but was also in a report that outlined such allegations that was done by Southern Command (which runs Gitmo). A senior official at the defense department pointed out something incorrect about the draft but not about the Quran allegations. There are also prison guard logs that make such mention of abuse of the Quran that Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers made reference to. New York defense attorney Marc Falkoff also gave information. He is representing 13 Yemeni detainess who are at Gitmo, and he says there there were suicide attempts after guards stomped on the Quran and another one threw it in the toilet.

Given this, I can see why they decided to run with it. And it has just come under a lot of heat because of the outrage that was triggered. This isn't the first time this story has been reported in the news.


General Richard Myers has also come out and said that this wave of violence was not triggered by this story.
 
Exhibit A. The government enforcing censorship and therefore, curbing the right to publish the truth despite the fact that it would damage the image of the American gov't to its people.

i'm telling you, fascism.
 
Queen Anne said:
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Well, we can't really say that it's not true...we just don't really have government documentation that it is. There are many detainees, and some guard logs (that talk of other detainees, and not guards desecrating it), that mention issues of desecration (and there is also a lawsuit pending, this one is against guards though).

They had to retract their story because the 'solid' evidence, which is what they used the basis of the story on (the document they were given from the governmental official) has been said to not be valid.

But as I said earlier...this is in no way a brand new story. It's been floating around for ages. The reason this one was so major is that Newsweek thought it had valid evidence from the government that this occurred...and it turned out that was not the case. But this doesn't mean these accusations didn't happen...we just don't have the governmental proof of it happening.
 
Why did it say in my telegraph this morning that even the source has backed down on what they saw? Newsweek should have thought carefully even if they knew it was definate because of all the problems it would cause.
 
noggi16 said:
Why did it say in my telegraph this morning that even the source has backed down on what they saw? Newsweek should have thought carefully even if they knew it was definate because of all the problems it would cause.
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The govermental source has backed down from what he heard/saw from around his department and the documents.

I think Newsweek thought it had reliable stories...and since this wasn't a new story in the news, they couldn't imagine the outrage it caused.
 
Just a fun side trip...couldn't a government official be a postman? Because my postman is the biggest conspiracy theorist I've ever met. Conspiracy theorist is putting it nicely though; he's a complete wackjob. I wouldn't put it past him to send an anonymous wire to Newsweek on some lonely Saturday night saying he was a "government official" and that he had news of Quaran desecration. Gotta love Postman Quincy...
 
[quote name='Queen Anne's Lace' date='May 18 2005, 04:41 PM']Just a fun side trip...couldn't a government official be a postman? Because my postman is the biggest conspiracy theorist I've ever met. Conspiracy theorist is putting it nicely though; he's a complete wackjob. I wouldn't put it past him to send an anonymous wire to Newsweek on some lonely Saturday night saying he was a "government official" and that he had news of Quaran desecration. Gotta love Postman Quincy...
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A postman is a governmental official...but it's not the case that a postman gave this information to Newsweek.

He's said to be a top ranking official (either with the FBI or Defense Department, I believe...and he has been a Newsweek source for quite sometime and has been giving them information for years), but because of the Bush administration (which would rather have information distributed anonymously) and because I'm sure he doesn't want to lose his job...we can't give out his name.

Now to the conspiracy theory aspect...there have been conspiracy theorists who believe that this story was purposely given to Newsweek to draw attention away from how badly things have been going with the actual war. Now while I think that's extreme, it is the buzz right now.

Personally, I do think that this desecration occurred...we just don't have (not because it doesn't exist necessarily) the governmental proof of it happening. There have been too many reports of such cases for it to be entirely fabricated.
 
[quote name='Queen Anne's Lace' date='May 18 2005, 04:52 PM']I was just kidding about my Postman. ;)
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lol...oh I know. But sometimes people on this board can take things so literally, and next thing you know they'd be saying that it was a postman who gave them the information or it was someone off the street. I was just clarifying that this was someone that has been a source for a while. ^_^
 
noggi16 said:
A source that I would imagine has signed something equivalent to the offical secrets act.
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Probably...but that's not a guarentee. The Bush administration does allow information to be given out...but ask you do it on an anonymous basis.

I don't think the point is whether or not this guy was giving up secrets.
 
Probably...but that's not a guarentee. The Bush administration does allow information to be given out...but ask you do it on an anonymous basis.

I don't think the point is whether or not this guy was giving up secrets.
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I think it is the point, now I sure the reason they didn't want this out was not altrustic, but you can see where they are coming from. No story, no riots in the past week, 15 not dead.
 
noggi16 said:
I think it is the point, now I sure the reason they didn't want this out was not altrustic, but you can see where they are coming from. No story, no riots in the past week, 15 not dead.
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General Richard Myers said that the Newsweek story alone did not cause these riots. And we have no proof such demonstrations wouldn't have occurred for other reasons had this story not ran.


The thing that gets me is that there have been reports for over a year of this very thing happening, from various sources.
 
Newsweek printed a story based on faulty sources and 15 died. The Bush administration started a war based on faulty intelligence and thousands of people died. If Newsweek has to issue a retraction and apologize, then I expect the same thing from the president.
 
ms.katejones said:
Newsweek printed a story based on faulty sources and 15 died. The Bush administration started a war based on faulty intelligence and thousands of people died. If Newsweek has to issue a retraction and apologize, then I expect the same thing from the president.
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Exactly!!

I heard the exact same thing today. The White House was demanding a retraction and an apology from Newsweek...yet we have yet to hear the same from them.
 
ms.katejones said:
Newsweek printed a story based on faulty sources and 15 died. The Bush administration started a war based on faulty intelligence and thousands of people died. If Newsweek has to issue a retraction and apologize, then I expect the same thing from the president.
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That's not going to happen. I don't mean to be the skunk at the garden party but this administration is never going to admit that they're wrong. With the stranglehold that they have over the "liberal" media, it's highly unlikely that they'll fess up to any present and future mistakes that they make.
 

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