[Leica] newsweek

[imagist at imagist.cnc.net (George Lottermoser)]

> From: mcyclwritr@comcast.net
> Dave,
> The people who rioted claimed it did. And who are we to doubt Muslim 
> extremists, I ask? 

>From an Eric Alterman column in The Nation, June 20 issue:

"Whitman have all sought to blame Newsweek magazine for the deaths of
Afghan citizens killed in weeks of anti-American rioting. The charge is
intellectually insupportable and morally indefensible. Muslims,
worldwide, did not require any new information to heed the jihadists'
call to demonstrate against America. Newsweek's mistaken report of
official confirmation of a Koran having been flushed down a toilet
inside what Amnesty International has termed "the American gulag" in
Guant?namo follows years of confirmed reports of officially sanctioned
torture, both physical and psychological, some of it specifically
designed to offend Muslim sensibilities. A Pew Research Center poll
taken in early 2004 found that large majorities in four Muslim countries
held deeply negative views of the United States. In Jordan, one of our
closest Arab allies, our approval rating hovered at a mere 5 percent.

 As those in a position to know have pointed out, the connection between
the riots and the tiny item in the American newsweekly is tenuous at
best. Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
that the senior commander in Afghanistan believed the protests stemmed
from that country's reconciliation process. "He thought it was not at
all tied to the article in the magazine," Myers explained. Afghan
President Hamid Karzai confirmed this view. "Those demonstrations were
in reality not related to the Newsweek story," he said. "They were more
against the elections in Afghanistan.... They were more against the
strategic partnership with the United States." A cartoon in the
conservative Moonie-owned Washington Times depicting Pakistan as
America's puppy was also exploited in these same demonstrations. What's
more, the FBI has documented detainee complaints at Guant?namo of Koran
mistreatment, including an allegation that guards had "flushed a Koran
in the toilet." The Pentagon confirmed five such incidents, though not
the toilet-flushing one. (In Afghanistan, a Pentagon employee did report
that an interrogator "took a Koran, threw it on the floor and stepped on
it.") This all must be viewed against a backdrop of an Administration
that repeatedly manipulated intelligence data to mislead the nation into
war--next to which Newsweek's mistake, while not insignificant, pales."

Fond regards,
G  e  o  r g  e    L  o  t  t  e  r  m  o  s  e r, imagist
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