HOLD EVERYTHING! Stop The Presses! This "Retraction" is 100% SPIN!

Up2Late

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Mon May-16-05 09:24 PM
Original message

HOLD EVERYTHING! Stop The Presses! This "Retraction" is 100% SPIN!

I have a Question. Did ANYONE see or Hear this Statement By NEWSWEEK? Because it sure ain't at NEWSWEEK .COM! And I've been searching the Internet over the last hour, trying to find the Statement, but I've found NOTHING! I became suspicious when I noticed that this "BIG NEWS STORY" was no longer being covered on ANY of the Cable "news" channels, they've MOVED ON! In fact CNN/HLN has a NEW "Baby snatcher" "Developing Story" going right now!

The only thing I've found is REPORTS and "news" articles ABOUT this alleged statement. AND, It's NO different that what NEWSWEEK said Yesterday!

This is what MSNBC's (Newsweek's on-line partner) report says (and it's almost identical of EVERY other report):

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7864705/>
Newsweek acknowledged problems with the story and its editor, Mark Whitaker, apologized in an editor’s note in this week’s edition. The accusations spawned protests in Afghanistan that left 15 dead and scores injured.

Whitaker wrote in an editor’s note that “We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.”

‘We are retracting ... ’
But after the White House criticized Newsweek’s response to the story, Whitaker issued a statement later Monday through a spokesman saying the magazine was retracting the story.

“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.

Now, Here's what the Editor's Note the above statement refereed to says:

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7857154/site/newsweek/>

Newsweek

May 23 issue - Did a report in NEWSWEEK set off a wave of deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan? That's what numerous news accounts suggested last week as angry Afghans took to the streets to protest reports, linked to us, that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Qur'an while interrogating Muslim terror suspects. We were as alarmed as anyone to hear of the violence, which left at least 15 Afghans dead and scores injured. But I think it's important for the public to know exactly what we reported, why, and how subsequent events unfolded.

Two weeks ago, in our issue dated May 9, Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported in a brief item in our Periscope section that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur'an down a toilet. Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur'an charge.

RELATED STORY

The Islamic World: How a Fire Broke Out

Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.

Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

—Mark Whitaker
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

So I ask again: Did anyone SEE or hear this alleged retraction? the only thing I see being retracted is Newsweak's claim that "...that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse...", Not that it did NOT happen! It DID, but the U.S. Report on this Abuse either did not, or NO longer makes that finding! :crazy:

You see what I'm saying? Am I completely wrong on this? Or Has Someone (like KKKarl Rove) put this "Statement" out there, and let the Media Echo Chamber do the rest?