Now that it is firmly established that the riots had nothing to do with the Newsweek article, that Newsweek at most only had small details wrong, and that the Pentagon had its hands on the story for 11 days before they said anything, then we’re left wondering:
Why did the Bush administration go so far out of its way to try to falsely tie the Afghanistan riots to Newsweek’s article?
Ok, well, if the newsweek article did nothing…then what’s this all about?
thisislondon.co.uk/news/arti … source=PA#
[quote]Protesters chant ‘bomb New York’
20 May 2005
A crowd of hardline Islamic protesters chanted the name of Osama bin Laden outside the US Embassy in London today.
The protesters included many men whose faces were covered by their headscarves and at least a number of women.
Their demonstration “against the desecration of the Koran” was being held yards from the steps of the Embassy in Grosvenor Square, which was guarded by a small detail of police.
The crowd, led by a man on a megaphone, chanted “USA watch your back, Osama is coming back” and “Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush”.
They also chanted “Bomb, bomb New York” and “George Bush, you will pay, with your blood, with your head”.
Angry demonstrators waved placards which included the message: “Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow.” [/quote]
Hmm
Now where would they have gotten that idea from?
I think it’s all a ploy. Soon, someone is gonna burn a pile of Korans and when the heads pop up around the world…well… fish in a barrel.
[quote=“mofangongren”]Now that it is firmly established that the riots had nothing to do with the Newsweek article, that Newsweek at most only had small details wrong, and that the Pentagon had its hands on the story for 11 days before they said anything, then we’re left wondering:
Why did the Bush administration go so far out of its way to try to falsely tie the Afghanistan riots to Newsweek’s article?[/quote]
it’s been firmly established that the riots were percipitated by the article.
newsweek retracted the story suffering a huge hit to their reputation in the process.
what exactly did you want the pentagon to do with the story? issue a strong denial? cuz we all know denials from the pentagon carry so much weight with anti-war protestors and islamic anti-american radicals.
newsweek was tied to the riots by the rioters themselves.
". . . in the religious unrest which rage the country (Burma) in October, 14 lives were lost and the junta arrested over 300 people. . .
According to reports, the religious unrest broke out with a minor dispute, as someone threw a stone into a Buddhist monastery compound and it sparked the anger of the Buddhist monks, who mistakenly believed that the occupants of a nearby mosque were responsible for the alleged stone throw."
[color=blue]Somewhere in Burma today is someone who said they saw where the stone was thrown from – and 14 people died and religious turmoil wracked the country for a month. What’s the real problem here though? Someone with a poor sense of direction or religious nuts ready to murder and pillage at the slightest provocation?[/color]
Or here’s another one, a hypothetical. Suppose a magazine in New York City erroneously reported that an artist in New York had a work on display consisting of a crucifix dipped in urine.
A pastor in Columbia, South Carolina subsequently cited the report and conservative Christians in Columbia, on hearing the report, went on a rampage, assaulting and killing everyone they could lay their hands on who spoke with what they considered a New York City accent.
What would your reaction be?
A) The editor of the magazine was primarily at fault and should be forced to go to Columbia, South Carolina to admit his error.
B) Are you kidding? The magazine editor screwed up but that was nothing compared to the overreaction of the religious zealots in South Carolina. Give 'em a fair trial and then hang 'em – and stop being ridiculous.
I’m with you on this, spook. To me, the answer to the question “Who’s wrong?” is: Any culture, values system, or legal system in which desecration of an inanimate object is a death penalty offense, and in which beating your wife or selling your daughter into sex-slavery to the tribe down the road in payment of a debt produce little to no moral outrage whatsoever.
Hobbes, there’s hope for both of us. Like your alter-ego’s hat by the way. Does it pick up electromagnetic signals or is it merely decorative? 
If a news report showed up on TV with footage of a bunch of angry Muslims burning a heap of Bibles, would Christians in North America and Europe head to the streets in droves, killing people, and causing mahem? Probably not … people would be upset by it, pastors and priests would probably have something to say about it, and the Bible is seen by devout Christians as the true word of God.
Now, we have a dubious Newsweek article and dubious reports of former detainees at Guantanamo Bay who say that Korans have been desecrated (I’ve also seen reports that al Qaeda members have been trained to lie about abuses if they are ever to be captured and then released in order to stir up public outrage, I’ll look for the links later), and all havoc breaks loose. I think there’s something of a double standard going on here, like there always has been between the West and the Muslim world. This has been gone over time and again, but it has yet to be deemed “politically correct” by those who decide what is and is not “OK” to talk about or criticize. Call a spade a spade.
Honey, I didn’t mean to bang her. Newsweek made me do it.
I allus knew that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was a big fibber…
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Newsweek has admitted they had no credible evidence for running the story.
At least 15 people have been murdered as a result of this story being published. I see no comments about the barbaric mentality that reacts to unsupported rumours with insane muder like this. Is this mob mentality muder accepted in some patronizing way?
…geesh! :loco:[/quote]
Umm… the people who have been killed are rioters who have been killed by the government forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan - the last report I saw said 15 rioters, with only one being an Afghan policeman.
The “insane murder” was carried out by the gov’ts of Karzai and Musharaf, okay? I don’t doubt that at least in some cases it was necessary for the government forces to fire on the demonstrators- these were angry people- but let’s get the facts straight about who killed whom.
The reporter Michael Isikoff was reporting a fact, and the sad fact is that it is true. Newsweek doesn’t lie. In fact, US soldiers tried to flush a Koran down the john. Fact. Newsweek reported this fact. The truth will come out a year from now.
The Intl Red Cross has now confirmed this sorry incident.
[quote=“Cola”]The reporter Michael Isikoff was reporting a fact, and the sad fact is that it is true. Newsweek doesn’t lie. In fact, US soldiers tried to flush a Koran down the john. Fact. Newsweek reported this fact. The truth will come out a year from now.
The Intl Red Cross has now confirmed this sorry incident.[/quote]
wait, if they reported a “fact”, why do we need to wait a year for the “truth” to come out?
newsweek did NOT report a fact. newsweek reported that according to an anonymous source, an account of a koran toilet flushing would appear in a pentagon report. this did not happen. they screwed up.
[quote=“Flipper”][quote=“Cola”]The reporter Michael Isikoff was reporting a fact, and the sad fact is that it is true. Newsweek doesn’t lie. In fact, US soldiers tried to flush a Koran down the john. Fact. Newsweek reported this fact. The truth will come out a year from now.
The Intl Red Cross has now confirmed this sorry incident.[/quote]
wait, if they reported a “fact”, why do we need to wait a year for the “truth” to come out?
newsweek did NOT report a fact. newsweek reported that according to an anonymous source, an account of a koran toilet flushing would appear in a pentagon report. this did not happen. they screwed up.[/quote]
Flipper, I am not sure on this, but the source has in fact told the reporter that what he heard about the Penta report is true, or was true. Newsweek did not screw up. America soldiers who flushed the Koran down the toilet screwed up. Wait until the truth comes out.
Don’t beleve the White House coverup on this. It happened. It will come out.
The big question, 914, is this, I think:
Was Newsweek responsible for the deaths of 17 Islamokazis? I don’t agree with that conclusion.
Do you?
[and who coined this new word – Islamokazis? I guess it is from the Japanese WWII suicide pilots called divine wind pilots, or Kami-kaze pilots. Mixed in with nazis to get the weir spelling of Islamokazis. Otherwise it would be Islamokazes?
Typical American spelling errors, like sake is pronounced and spelled saki.]
And you want us to believe that all those people in Afghanistan were supposedly murderously upset about the absence of a single abuse incident from a report? After all, it’s been reported for some time that Gitmo guards had been knocking Koran’s into toilet buckets, etc. … and that didn’t spark any riots. Of all the things that Newsweek might have done wrong, it was that they relied on a guy who mistakenly said that Koran flushing was going to be in an upcoming report. Nothing else.
That’s like blaming Car & Driver magazine because their source told them that the a/c controls in the 2006 Toyota Camry would have rounded buttons instead of squared-off buttons.
Now, getting back to the truth of the matter, let’s look at what someone in Afghanistan has to say about the riots:
Let’s see what Hamid Karzai has to say:
[quote]“We were angry about that,” Mr. Karzai said of the Newsweek report. But he suggested that the real target of the violent demonstrations was something else.
“It was directed at the peace process that we have of inviting back the thousands of the Taliban to come back to their country,” he said. “It was actually against the elections in Afghanistan. So we know what was going on there.” Parliamentary elections are due in autumn.[/quote]
So, perhaps it looks like Afghans couldn’t give a crap whether Newsweek mistakenly reported on the contents of an investigative report. Looks like all that violence came from another issue entirely.
So, now, one can only wonder why on earth the Bush administration is going to such absurd lengths to try to put the heat on Newsweek.
Geneva Convention? Naaaw…thats not for the media. ICRC…useless.
[quote]Who Really Violated the Geneva Conventions?
May 22, 2005, by Frank Salvato
A British tabloid
According to some on this forum (mainly the defenders of ‘W’ but possibly others included), facts are not necessarily true. Aparently you can have true facts and false facts. So it might well be necessary to wait for a year for the tructh to come out.
An interesting piece discussing the contrast you mention in how the Kuran is treated in the US vs. how the Bible is treated in Saudi Arabia:
Well said, LBTW. Bibles aren’t merely being desecrated by the Saudi government, but the owners of those Bibles are being imprisoned or killed just for having the book (see link above). Just another reminder of the the kind of double standard you are talking about.
Probably to fundamentalalists of all types, there are some who feel that you can throw their holy book into the crapper only at mortal peril – such people eat heartily from the grave insult being dished out. And let’s not kid ourselves, the accusations for some 2-3 years now are that U.S. military guards have been knocking or tossing Korans into buckets or other toilets used by Muslim inmates who under the circumstances of their imprisonment are likely to be fundamentalists.
There was a guy on my block when I was a kid. Most of us could toss around all sorts of the worst mother jokes, but this guy was a different matter. Whatever stereotypes might exist about Italian guys being devoted to their moms (not really a bad stereotype, although his brothers were living at home in their 30s), this guy lived up to them and more. You did not say a word in jest about this guy’s mom.
That said, there is no such indication that this is the situation with the Newsweek article. Karzai was on CNN again this morning saying that the riots/deaths stemmed from the political situation in Afghanistan and weren’t related to the Newsweek piece. I tend to believe him and the U.S. generals on this.
And for once I agree with MFGR!
Slap my face and call me silly but don’t call me late for breakfast. Now, pour myself a nice tall glass of shut up juice and hit the road jack…