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[Macam]

It's okay, a lot of people don't believe me when I say Jesus doesn't exist either or that Billy Corgan is, in fact, one of the greatest musicians around today. Besides, in this case, I'm just going with the facts, whether they're well publicized or not, and I'm not drawing any crazy conclusions here. It's easy enough to dispel a lot of the White House myths anyway. "Last throes" anyone?

 

[AssMan]

The riots in Afghanistan riots that caused around 14 deaths were not related to the Newsweek story as acknowledged by military officials on the ground and Hamid Karzai. That was pure WH spin

Can you provide a link? I'd like to read it myself. =P

Newsweek used a source who had been accurate before, let the Pentagon see the item before they published it (and nobody bothered to deny the story)

Riiiiiiiiiiight. Newsweek was telling millions of arab viewers that the story may STILL be true, even though they didn't have the evidence. Isn't there a rule in journalism about an unamed source that misled people loses his anonymity?


Newsweek is protecting this liar, because they know the story hurt our country. That's what they wanted and they got it.

 

[Guileless]

Yes Mandark I have faith that the system will work eventually, as it more or less has done for 200+ years so far. I think the fantasy world is the one where people think that any day now Bush is going to wipe his ass with the Bill of Rights and ship out all the Democrats to gulags in West Texas. The administration is probably overreaching now on the Guantanamo detainees, and the courts will eventually craft the final say on how to deal with them.

The administration will comply. The sun will come up and Madden will come out in July, and everything will be fine. Calling people who disagree with you fascists is not a constructive way of dealing with things. If I'm wrong and in 20 years we meet up in a reeducation camp in Texas where we were sent by Emperor Bush without due process, I will apologize.

And for the umpteenth time: The riots in Afghanistan riots that caused around 14 deaths were not related to the Newsweek story as acknowledged by military officials on the ground and Hamid Karzai. That was pure WH spin.

A Pakastani cricket star/politician held up a copy of Newsweek on TV and gave a fiery speech about the story. Shortly thereafter, the riots happened. The stories I read said the riots were also about other issues, and I'm sure the actual causes of the riots are some complicated combination of prior issues and the article, but it is wrong to say the riots weren't related to the Newsweek article. Are you making some distinction between the riots where people died and other riots that were a result of the TV speech?

 

[GG-Duo]

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/analysis/toons/2005/06/17/mikula/

ok. i know that's a ridiculous venue to get numbers, but what the fuck.

 

[Macam]

Can you provide a link? I'd like to read it myself. =P

Sure.

PRESIDENT KARZAI: Ma'am, yes, we discussed those questions on the -- on the demonstrations, or the so-called demonstrations in part of the -- parts of Afghanistan. You saw that government buildings were burned and private property was damaged, broken. Those demonstrations were, in reality, not related to the Newsweek story. They were more against the elections in Afghanistan; they were more against the progress in Afghanistan; they were more against the strategic partnership with the United States.

We know who did it. We know the guys. We know the people behind those demonstrations. And if -- unfortunately, you don't hear -- follow the Afghan press, but if you listen to the Voice of America, the Radio Liberty, and the BBC, the Afghan population condemned that -- those acts of arson in Afghanistan.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050523.html

Q Back on Newsweek. Richard Myers, last Thursday -- I'm going to read you a quote from him. He said, "It's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said it was "more tied up in the political process and reconciliation that President Karzai and his cabinet were conducting." And he said that that was from an after-action report he got that day.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050517-2.html#b

With regards to your second point...

Riiiiiiiiiiight. Newsweek was telling millions of arab viewers that the story may STILL be true, even though they didn't have the evidence. Isn't there a rule in journalism about an unamed source that misled people loses his anonymity?

Newsweek is protecting this liar, because they know the story hurt our country. That's what they wanted and they got it.

If you read Newsweek, you'd know it's petty, tame, and they hardly have any real incentive to "hurt the country". Again, as Mandark pointed out, the administration had every opportunity to dismiss this story and it's not Newsweek's fault that the Department of Defense irresponsibly surrendered that option prior to the publication of the story and then played the victim afterwards.

Regarding anonymous sources, I'd just like to point out the hypocrisy of that statement (taken from the previous link):

Q In context of the Newsweek situation, I think we hear the caution you're giving us about reporting things based on a single anonymous source. What, then, are we supposed to do with information that this White House gives us under the conditions that it comes from a single anonymous source?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to.

Q Frequent briefings by senior administration officials in which the ground rules are we can only identify them as a single anonymous source.

...

Q With all due respect, though, it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everyone else's aren't.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm not saying that at all. In fact, I think you may have missed what I said. I think that we should move away from the use of -- the long-used practice of the background briefings, and we've taken steps to do that. But I was putting in context what these background briefings that you're referring to are about. They're about individuals providing context to remarks or policies that may have been implemented by the administration, and you have other officials on the record talking about --

Q Sometimes you do --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- hang on -- talking about those policies. You also have incidents, or instances, where individuals are providing context to meetings with world leaders, and there's some diplomatic sensitivities involved there.

Q We also have incidents, like most recently with the energy speech, where it was before the President made his comments, it was all we had -- and we had to make the decision of whether to report this from anonymous sources who, frankly, in that case, we didn't even know who they were.

I don't think we need to go into the "anonymous liars" who provided us with intelligence about those magical WMDs either.

Guileless: Your philosophy of inaction is disturbing. It's based upon blind faith of past actions with a total disregard to the current violations of rights, ethics, and laws. Your current standard of living was not brought upon by idling watching with apathy and indifference the events of the world unfold.

 

[Mandark]

Guileless:

When the executive branch sets a policy that you know to be unconstitutional, defends that policy in court, and fights implementing due process in spite of court orders, doesn't that worry you?

The administration says they want to suspend due process. They have suspended due process. Due process is suspended right now. You are defending a political party by saying "Don't worry, they won't be able to do everything they want, since some of it is so fundamentally wrong that the Supreme Court will slap them down." Do you realize how utterly insane that line of reasoning is?

But you don't want to face this, so you use dumb-ass rhetorical devices to pretend this is a conspiracy theory. "Well everyone thinks all the Democrats will be locked up, hur dur dur." When you're arguing against a straw man, it shows you're scared to face facts.

I'm saying that hundreds of people have already been locked up for years without a trial, they're locked up now without a trial, there are multiple reports of physical and mental abuse at the prison, and no international humanitarian groups have been allowed in to investigate. It's already happened. It's happening now.

The process always works? Nobody's due process is ever infringed upon?

Let's not forget which end of the political spectrum is defending that sort of stuff these days.

Assman: Newsweek has tens of millions of Arab "viewers?" Huh?

Look, Newsweek ran it by the Pentagon and nobody denied it (if I recall, they had a week to ring up Newsweek and comment). What does this tell you about 1) the credibility of the report, and 2) the Pentagon's culpability in the riots, if this in fact triggered them?

No, there is no rule about losing your anonymity if you mislead people. Now you're just making shit up. (see: Judith Miller and all her WMD story sources)

And honestly, it's amazing the kind of pretzel you're twisting yourself into here. There's a conspiracy with this official and Newsweek to make people hate America, so they made up a story about a Koran being flushed, ran it as a minor item, and then as a total, wacky coincidence, the Pentagon says later "oh yeah, we did abuse some Korans, piss on them and stuff?"

Once again, you'd be a lot more credible if you weren't really obviously ignorant of the actual facts involved. Your conjectures would still be silly, though.


Macam:

Did the Pentagon ever deny that the reported incident happened, or just deny that the incident had been reported in that particular paper? I remember that there was a non-denial denial at some point, but I really didn't follow this one too closely.