copied from
Moon of Alabama
Newsweek reported on May 9 about interrogators flushing a Qur'an down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay. This short report lead to deadly unrests in several countries and threats of a renewed jihad in Afghanistan.
Today Newsweek did issue a follow up to the story.
Some headlines now claim: Newsweek: Koran Story Untrue, Newsweek backtracks over Koran report and Editor admits Koran story in doubt and you can be sure to see many more like these tomorrow.
But does the new Newsweek piece, How a Fire Broke Out, really retract the story? I do not think so and you should not either, so please read on.
The article starts with a description of the current unrests and continues:
Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.
How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? ...
Up to this point there is no evidence in the article that Newsweek DID get the facts wrong. DiRita might say whatever he likes, the issues is still open - so why the above question I emphasized? Why at this point of the report? This reader listens up and asks:
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
[NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff] knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but NEWSWEEK National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?" The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the PERISCOPE draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report.
The elder story is double-sourced but one of the sources, a 'senior Defense official', - sure about one detail - is now doubted to be sure of a second one? Because he did not deny it?
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then.
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell.
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship.
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.
So 'these concerns' surfaced in a different report? Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
(Can someone ask DiRita about today's credibility of those WMD-in-Iraq hypers in his department, including himself, - now that 'people are dead because of what these sons of a bitches said'?)
But lets not get distracted: Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt--when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003--was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet."
Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong?
Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an.
The article ends about there.
The essence of the original Newsweek claim and a new aspect was: "There is an official U.S. report about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident". This claim still holds. The version number or draft title of the official U.S. report may have been wrong. But the essence of the story still holds.
There must have been immense pressure on Newsweek to come up with some kind of retraction and they did it in an artful way. They do retract by non-retraction.
The question: "How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong?" is a rhetoric question. The facts were not wrong, but some details are unknown. Indeed the central abuse claim gets rolled out in more details, with more incidents and more sources.
In a sidekick towards the Pentagon the detail on General Miller's non-indictment, not reported the last time, is made public and DiRita gets exposed as the son of a bitch he is.
Some headlines may now say 'Newsweek was wrong'. But when concerned Muslims will study the article, they will understand that in fact, Newsweek sticks to the original report and the additional reporting will add fuel to the fire.
The pressure that obviously has been applied to Newsweek here, did not help on the real issue. The non-retraction retraction might calm some internal U.S. concerns. The Muslim world will see this as the confirmation that it is and it will act upon it in a appropriate way.
Story by
Moon of Alabama