Pissing on the Ashes

Awww, look at this - Newsweek has actually retracted their "Amerikan fascists flushing Korans down toilets trigger floods across length and breadth of Cuba, countless Muslim prisoners drown" story:

Newsweek magazine, under fire for publishing a story that led to deadly protests in Afghanistan, said Monday it was retracting its report that a military probe had found evidence of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier Monday, Bush Administration officials had brushed off an apology that Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker had made in an editor's note and criticized the magazine's handling of the story. ...

Whitaker released a statement through a spokesman later Monday saying the magazine was retracting the article.

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Whitaker said.

In other words, "Now that we've been forced to perform the thorough research that Michael Isikoff couldn't be bothered with in his mad lunge to splatter the President and the American military with rhetorical feces before the entire Muslim world, we realize we probably shouldn't have printed it in the first place, but don't worry, we've got plenty more where this came from."

I couldn't help but notice some more echoing.

Me, yesterday:

Something about this story, er, smelled from the beginning. Leaving aside Jim Geraghty's wry observation that, "I mean, in most parts of the United States, flushing a Bible down a toilet would be NEA-funded performance art," there was something practically implausible about the very concept, as one of TKS's readers pointed out:

"Even in paperback, his'd be a heckuva flush. Where can I get a couple of those government flushinators?"

As for doing this as "intimidation," that never quite made sense to me either, precisely because the far more likely reaction was major-league pissed-offedness, certainly not the sort of response that would be conducive to either breaking a prisoner or loosening his tongue.

Ed Morrissey, today:

This story was just as pointless; what possible news value did a flushed Qu'ran have for the American reader? First, no one bothered to even ask themselves if the story sounded plausible. How would a flushed Qu'ran promote cooperation from a Muslim terrorist? Perhaps threatening to do so would get some positive reaction, but as we've seen in reaction to the story, actually flushing one in front of an Islamist is much more likely to steel themselves against any kind of cooperation. Second, even it did happen, all toilet physics to the contrary, what of it? Does that constitute some sort of Geneva Convention violation?

It's not often that an aircraft carrier follows in the wake of a dinghy.

My red haze of yesterday aside, I really didn't expect Newsweek to pay any real price for this atrocity. But the Radio Equalizer is reporting that the magazine may take it in the shorts to some degree after all.

Not anywhere near what they have earned, but then a swarm of angry hornets isn't usually lethal, either. Doesn't mitigate their sting.