May 20, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:Is Newsweek responsible for those deaths?
In one sense, of course, the rioters hold the responsibility. But on the other hand, look at the rioting that devastated LA after police officers, who had been captured on videotape, were acquitted of brutalising Rodney King. Sure, the hatred of the police, the anger, had been there all along. But no beating, no acquittal, no riots. The police and the jurors were the proximate cause of the riots in LA. It seems pretty clear to me that this is also the case in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the reports of someone flushing the Koran down the toilet were, according to all the news accounts I've read, the force that agitated the rioters and bound them together in deadly violence.
But to say that someone's actions were the cause of a bad thing is not to say that they bear the responsibility. If I give my child a peanut-butter cookie, and my child gives half that cookie to another child, who dies from their peanut allergy, no one in that chain is responsible for the tragedy, even though clearly both mother and child were causes of it--had they acted differently, the death would not have occurred. On the other hand, some are willing to blame the police and/or jurors in the Rodney King incident, because they think that the police and jurors acted wrongly, out of racist motives that fed the righteous flames of anger over race in Los Angeles. It is possible to believe this without excusing the rioters. I may truly believe that during a disaster, people should exit buildings in a calm and orderly fashion--but this does not give me license to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, even though it is the heedless stampeding of other patrons that will actually kill people.
But did Michael Isikoff do anything wrong?
I don't agree with those who say he shouldn't have printed it even if it were true--a press that thinks it's on the government's "team" is not a very good watchdog of our liberties, though I concede it worked pretty well in World War II. I don't have enough knowlege of standards in political reporting to comment upon single-sourcing or anonymous sources--there just aren't that many people who want to keep their revelations about our nation's retail inventory figures on deep background. There is a tradeoff between quality and quantity of information that must be made with anonymous sources, and I don't have any very good idea of where we should draw the line.
But I do think that Mr Isikoff made a pretty big mistake, a la the Dan Rather team, which is that he doesn't seem to have thought very hard about the proletarian details of the story he was reporting. I don't particularly think that this was some case of a partisan who "wanted" the story to be true--I think that Abu Ghraib has unfortunately made these sorts of incidents all too plausible. But nonetheless, he should have done a double take, because as others have pointed out, it is very, very hard to flush a book down a toilet.
Korans are not printed on newsprint (which also clogs the plumbing if you use it often). They are printed on nice paper, as befits their station. They have solid bindings. The Koran runs 77,000 words, plus notes, which is a decent-sized novel.
The Newsweek report nonetheless says, not that the Koran was dunked in the toilet, but that it was flushed down one. Did they have an industrial scale paper chipper on premises? (Shreds would, I'd bet, still be cloggy). Did some maniac stand there for hours, carefully ripping the pages into pieces a few at a time, the better to enjoy the anguished screams of the inmates? What did they do with the covers, which at the very least would be highly-non-dissolving treated cardstock?
I don't say that there aren't possible explanations--that the report actually involved the book being dunked-and-swirled, that it was a latrine, not a toilet, or that they were in fact using a paper chipper of some sort. But once you realise that the story as written is highly questionable, it also becomes quite possible that the source has gotten it wrong somehow. And that should have caused Mr Isikoff, and his editor, to pause and check.
It now seems highly possible that what the source was remembering were unsubstantiated allegations of Koran desecreation by inmates--who, like prisoners the world over, do not have the same credibility as other sources. Particularly when many of them presumably have political reasons to brand America as a defiler of the Koran. Such mistakes happen, and the fault is not having gotten a bad fact, but getting a bad fact that didn't smell quite right, and not catching the whiff of implausibility.
That said, it's all too easy to make mistakes like this. Every time there's an error in a story, bloggers pile on crying "Don't they have fact checkers?" Why, yes, we do, but producing thousands of fact-filled words is, speaking as someone who went from critic to journalist, more difficult than it looks. Once your brain has processed a piece of information incorrectly, it tends to continue processing it incorrectly, no matter how many times you look at it--your brain tells you "right, looked at that, that's a fine fact, move along . . . " To take a trivial example (caught by a fact checker) when I was writing a piece on the unfunded liabilities of America's old-age system, I spelled Jagadeesh Gokhale's name as "Jagdeesh". I checked that piece at least five or six times, and missed it every time.
Now, I think that Michael Isikoff and the other editors who checked his work in some sense should have known that there was something implausible about flushing a Koran down the toilet. But I'm not sure that I realised that, when I heard the story (though in my defense, I of course assumed that Mr Isikoff & co. had checked it out). And those of you who did realise that--I guarantee you that if you were doing this five or six days a week, you'd find that there are an amazing number of things that don't strike you as at all odd until someone else points them out--at which point they are obvious enough to burn your retinas into crispy ash.
So I think Mr Isikoff & co made a mistake. But they are not villains; they are simply human. Like their critics, who should give them a little bit of a break now that they've stood up like men and apologized.
Posted by Jane Galt at May 20, 2005 11:26 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksAccording to Ken Layne, the toilets in Guantanamo Bay are Turkish-style holes in the floor. No problem there, other than the inappropriate word "flushed".
I won't dispute Mr Layne without knowing his source; as of two years ago, the toilets at Camp Delta (but not the nicer areas) do seem to have been Turkish toilets. But it's somewhat contradicted by Pentagon reports that Guantanamo inmates have tried to put Koran pages in their toilets in order to clog them, something you can't really do with a Turkish toilet. It's also contradicted by the Newsweek article itself, which reports that interrogators put the Koran "on" a toilet, something it's not really possible to do with a Turkish toilet.
More to the point, I am not arguing about whether it's possible that an interrogator could have put a Koran in a Turkish toilet; if they're still there, presumably he could have, though I find it hard to believe that he was conducting an interrogation in a room with a Turkish toilet in it. The point is that, as written, he is describing the desecration of a Koran by flushing it down a Western-style toilet, which is not really very likely--and signals that the source probably wasn't remembering too well. When you're single-sourcing something inflammatory, you want to make sure your source has it right. Mr Isikoff missed an obvious indication that he should have checked out.
I don't think Isikoff did anything wrong, in the sense that he didn't care whether the story was accurate or not. I do think Newsweek showed poor judgment in printing the story. I don't think this one incident, true or not, added much if anything new to our knowledge of how prisoners are being treated. Any additional knowledge the story might add was outweighed by the manner it would distort the public's view of the overall picture. Look at Abu Graib (sp?). We now know that the abuses that took place there were committed by a very few. For months the abuses were trumpeted by the media -- even though each story added very little if any new information. The end result was that the perception at home and abroad was that the abuses were routine, not unusual. The picture conveyed by the media may have been factually accurate (leaving aside the allegations that the Administration approved of the abuses); ultimately, it was misleading.
Newsweek also showed poor judgment in publishing the story because they failed to properly weigh the emotional content of the story against it's news value. Recall how the media quit broadcasting video of the Twin Towers collapse soon after 9/11? The explanation was that we all knew that the towers had been destroyed and the continued broadcast of the video would serve more to incite rage than to inform. Same with Isikoff's story. It would have been one thing to put the story (if true) into the proper perspective: The US military has taken extraordinary means to be sensitive to the prisoners' religious sensitivities (providing each a copy of the Koran, room to pray, appropriate meals, strict rules for handling the Koran with respect, etc.). Despite these efforts, some members of the military have abused some of the prisoners' religious feelings (females wearing provocative clothing, requiring prisoners to follow the instructions of female guards, etc.). Some of these "abuses" have been approved by the military while others have not. It is also true that some of the prisoners have done things to abuse the sensitivities of their guards (masturbating in front of female guards) or have done things that are apparently inconsistent with their professed beliefs (tearing out pages of the Koran and flushing them down the toilet in an attempt to plug up the plumbing). Published in this context, Isikoff's story (if true) might have added some interesting detail. Absent the context, it had more potential to inflame than inform.
As to the issue of should the story have been printed.... How far do we go to appease the feelings of a murderous madman?
Does that question apply in the plural, also?
If I remember the pictures of Gitmo correctly the facility resembled a large kenell with cages in which prisoners were kept. It was hastily constructed in the middle of nowhere, at least a couple of hours from the main base, and for sure was not connected to a water line or sewer infrastructure that would allow for such things as flush toilets. I am absolutely certain therefore that at least initially, and perhaps still to this day, the toilet facilitites were latrine type holes in the ground, or perhaps port-a-potties.
Reports that prisoners tried to clog their own toilets with pages from the Koran are simple lies. As reports made clear the prisoners had buckets to use within their cells, not flush toilets.
"a press that thinks it's on the government's "team" is not a very good watchdog of our liberties"
Oh please, the press is not the sole or even the primary guardian of our civil liberties, and a press that thinks it's on the other "team" is no better.
O.K., "we" should be respectful of others' religions, even if we disagree with their premises. We all now see what irrational fanatics are capable of. I don't find it hard to believe that some U.S. military personnel may have deliberately tried to enrage Muslim prisoners by spitting on the Quran, or tearing it up, or stomping on it. It smacks of the petty tyranny that guards have inflicted on the helpless for centuries. On the other hand, what can we say about the tender sensibilities of Muslim nations (e.g. Saudi Arabia in particular)
that persecute Christians and Non-Muslims as a matter of government policy? Or the ordinary folks who gleefully danced in the streets after 9/11. Or the maniacs who flushed Nick Berg's life down the toilet? Closer to home, how ironic
that many those Americans howling against insults to Muslims thought nothing of protesting "art" images of Christ immersed in urine, and Mary smeared with dung!
Ken, you're thinking of Camp X-Ray, which was decommissioned quite a while back. Camp Delta and its brethren are permanent construction.
Press should be a watchdog, serving the needs of its masters. A watchdog, however, to be effective, needs to know who and when to attack. One that can't make the distinction is a menace and gets put to sleep. For the press, this comes in the form of either censorship or declining readership and revenue.
The fact is that reporters and editors do make value judgements continually on what to research and what to report. There is an infinite quantity of data that they could be pursuing, and they select out certain small bits of it as fitting their interests (or those of their advertisers and consumers) and publish those bits of data. They are not like a search engine which indexes billions of web pages and presents any of it on request.
A press which publishes data simply because it is sensational is like a dog that attacks anyone who enters the property. Yes, both can attract a lot of attention. But they are also a liability both to their masters as well as anyone else in the vicinity.
So, the question is, do you feel you are being served by your watchdog, or is it pursuing its own interests?
Editing one's own work can be extremely difficult; in school I found I typically had to complete the draft of a paper, edit it, abandon it for a week and then edit again. Typically, that week was enough time for me to forget what was 'supposed' to be there, and read the actual words I had written.
The mistakes I had missed the first time never ceased to amaze me.
At any rate, Newsweek would probably get more slack for this were the US media not, generally, throwing its collective credibility in front of a cement truck on a nigh-daily basis. Which is not to say that half-cocked critics should be excused for their own errors; only that the appearance of impropriety short-circuits the process by which impropriety is normally ascribed.
It's a feeling ... I feel Mr Isikoff and Newsweek were just a little bit too eager to fling mud at the US Army and administration. It's a follow-up on their opposition to the whole "war on terror" and war in Iraq particularly.
It's that old beast - bias - but we know there is no way to get rid of it ...
I'm sure that when they get some pieces of news they don't like, like the Swift Boats Veterans, or the Oil for Food Scandal they "fact check" them to death, that is - they hardly report them at all.
That wasn't an innocent or random error. Unconscious (that is unintended) - probably - but then they are never conscious of their biases.
Is Newsweek responsible? Let's ask those that know:
General Myers also told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Carl Eichenberry, disagrees with the reports that protests in the city of Jalalabad were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident."It is the 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, but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his cabinet are conducting in Afghanistan. He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," he explained.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-05-12-voa74.cfm
And as the WP reported:
Newsweek magazine's now-retracted story that a military guard at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet has sparked angry denunciations by the White House and the Pentagon, which have linked the article to Muslim riots and deaths abroad.But American and international media have widely reported similar allegations from detainees and others of desecration of the Muslim holy book for more than two years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701315.html
You're out of date, GT; the Pentagon has now clearly stated that it thinks the story sparked the riots. Also, anyone who has actually read anything by an independant source can clearly see that the article caused it.
I wonder how the media would act if a large industrial company made a manufacturing mistake that contributed to the death / injury of 10 to 15 people? Even if the manufacturing process was extremely complex and went well most of the time.
I suspect if that company used the same excuses newsweek is using they would be gutted in public by the media that is currently defending newsweek's mistake.
It seems to me that the apportioning of blame falls into almost, but not entirely, separate categories: Newsweek is clearly to blame for going to press with an inadequately sourced story (or whatever the proper jargon is), which entails sloppiness in journalism that's incomprehensible to me in the wake of Dan, Eason, etc. And whoever in the Muslim world encouraged people to take to the streets to riot and kill is clearly to blame for those deaths. But there's some overlap, and here I take exception to the peanut butter cookie analogy:
Real-world example. There's a diabetic child in my child's class. My kid wanted to bring cupcakes for his own birthday. Fine, said I, and made cupcakes, but knowing that (a) the child with diabetes might feel left out if he didn't get SOME kind of treat and (b) a second grader whose diabetes was only diagnosed last year might not be sufficiently self-disciplined to say no to a cupcake, I called his parents and confirmed that he could eat some low-glycemic cookies, and sent those with my son with a note instructing the teacher just in case she forgot or it was a sub. That was me being both considerate and responsible, a combo I don't often hit. (If the child had sneaked a cupcake in spite of my efforts, I don't think it would have been my fault.)
Seems to me that Newsweek went one beyond just sending the cupcakes and trusting to the diabetic child's self-control: wanting their story disseminated because, after all, they're a news organization, they encouraged their child to share with EVERYone in the class, so to speak. They didn't force the kid to eat something that would make him sick, but they did provide a tempting treat and encourage its consumption, with the knowledge that it COULD make a certain child sick.
I'm not trying to make out Muslims as children, of course. It's just that this situation just happened to me, and it dovetails pretty well with Jane's analogy.
I think they should've held off on the story until they could confirm it, or until they determined that they couldn't.
I'm with Jacob on this one -- the news media finds plenty of time to fact-check stories they don't like or don't want to be true.
I think this has always been the way bias plays out in the press. There are few cases of deliberate distortion (although they do occur); instead bias takes the form of selectivity in which stories to follow, how aggressively to follow them, what kind of prominence they are given, and how hard the facts are checked depending on how much the story fits the paper's bias.
Newsweek was looking for a story about the US mistreatment of prisoners and disrespect of Muslims -- they found a bogus story that fit the template and ran with it without looking too hard to see if it was actually true. And why should they look hard? It fit the template. And everyone knows the template exists because it's an accurate depiction of reality, right? Right?
Yes Jane, funny that. The Pentagon first told us there was no connection. Then when Newsweek retracted the story they changed their mind. Very convenient. I'm sure there is no connection, right?
The again as the WP said this has been reported for over two years by multiple sources.
Jamie, DRB:
The core of the story, that the Koran was desecrated as part of interrogation techniques, has been reported multiple times by very different sources. Newsweek was hardly the first or the only to report this.
Sir,
"It was hastily constructed in the middle of nowhere, at least a couple of hours from the main base,..."
Guantanamo is like a 10 mile by 6 mile chunk of land surrounded by water and commies. There is no "hours from the main base" there. It's a very good place for humanely, but securely holding these guys, whose status is very very grey.
You have to be a pretty bad apple to get yourself taken there, and I can't imagine dealing with the prisoners there is easy. They are horrid people, taught to resist, and capable of all manner of vile behavior. They will not identify themselves or their nationalities or "rank" within the structure of the organizations they fought for. They lie. They are extremely violent. When they are released they tell ridiculous stories about the conditions under which they were held. The camp probably has a staff of a few hundred people. At this point nearly 2000 people have done a tour there. It would be impossible to hide some officially sanctioned program of abuse. The events at Abu Graib happend IIRC on one eveing shift, or over the course of few days at any rate, and word got out almost immediately.
Don't know and don't care if the koran story is true. I know nothing remotely like torture is being done to any of them. Spraying a hose into the cage to wash away the mixture of feces, semin, and food that has been thrown all over the place is not torture. It's an unfortunate chore made neccesary by the behavior of the prisoner, who could silently and passively resist interrogation for the duration and never endure much in the way of discomfort. The guards at Guantanamo, unlike the guards at Abu Graib, are meticulously supervised. (Just not by the press). Their procedures are reviewed carefully by real lawyers who don't take the possibility of a court martial lightly.
They are being "borken down" if you will by the fact that they are in a controlled prison environment without access to word from the outside world and with no idea when they will be released.
Indeed they are far safer than the prisoners in the general population of most prisons in the United States because they are constantly under observation and prevented from harming one another.
I didn't kill anyone over piss christ, and the contrast with newsweek's coverage of transgressive art exhibits is astoninshing. If I were ever to put a koran in the toilet I would first secure an NEA grant in order to make certain the press coverage was favorable.
regards,
vtrtl
vtrtl: You have to be a pretty bad apple to get yourself taken there, and I can't imagine dealing with the prisoners there is easy. They are horrid people, taught to resist, and capable of all manner of vile behavior.
Ah, the old canard: being taken to Guantanamo Bay is tantamount to proof of guilt.
Even the US government has had to let up on that one. Isn't it time you did, too?
Jane, you silly goose. As Molly Ivins pointed out in her latest op-ed, the fault lies not with the people at Newsweek who printed the bogus story, nor the crazies who thought murdering others was the ideal way to react to the story. The fault belongs to, yes, George Bush. Always. Everything. And don't you forget it!
Jesurgilac,
The Guantanamo prisoners are not being -punished- for a -crime-. Those are are suspected of having committed serious crimes will be tried before any punishment is handed down. Few will be tried in this way, even though the circumstances under which many have been taken prisoner are powerful evidence of actions that are nearly universally recognized as crimes among the community of nations. (Fighting from protected places, abuse of protected symbols, unlawful ruses &c).
They are being detained because the circumstances of their capture lead us to believe that they are either very dangerous, or very valuable - eg that they have knowledge of the plans and structure of the terror network that has made clear its intention to continue to directly target innocents (like, I might note, you).
An M1A1 "insurgent" who survives an engagement with the coalition forces in Iraq or Afghanistan does not get a trip to Guantanamo unless there is a pretty strong suspicion that he is of that kind of value. That's what I meant by "bad apples."
Nothing that I know about Guantanamo troubles me. I would prefer it if it were not necessary for the United States to be running a detention center on Cuba for the purpose of holding these people, but I believe it is necessary, and I believe that under the circumstances it is being done in just about as humane a manner as possible. I would prefer it if three people I knew well, along with the other 3000 who died with them, were not murdered on 11 SEP 01 by members of the same deranged death cult to which the Guantanamo detainees belong. I wish that day had never happened.
I believe that Al-Queda has chosen to fight the US in Iraq, and that information acquired through the Guantanamo operations has been instrumental in shortening the reach of global islamic terror organizations. In short, I believe Guantanamo has contributed to the prevention of the slaughter of more innocents, at the cost of having to do something - carefully - that is perhaps morally ambiguous.
One may argue the necessity, in terms of US national interest, of the Iraq war. but I believe it is absolutely necessary to play an offensive game against islamist terror. They are less capable of carrying out another 11 Sep than they once were, but they are no less willing.
regards,
vtrtl
Newsweek does not deserve a break and they did not apologize like men. It has turned into a big White House is pressuring Newsweek, not Newsweek shouldn't have published the story even if it had been true.
Look at what this has done to our image. Despite our government having strict regulations against any of their employees desecrating or otherwise harming the Koran, according to this story some knuckleheads did. Now if Abu Ghraib proved anything, it's that in any otherwise excellent military, there are some stupid people. That doesn't brand the whole thing as immoral. Stories like this try to make it seem like this is policy when in fact it is not.
Newsweek should never have published this story. One of the Islamic leaders said something to the effect of, "you must think 100 times before you insult a Muslim." Well, maybe they thought a dozen times but they should have just left the story out. I think there is enough anti-Americanism going on in those countries anyways without our media giving them new fodder.
The psychotic reaction of those involved in the riots should tell us something about who we are facing. People who would kill us (probably all of us) for desecrating one Koran. It's as if their religion is that shaky and Allah that weak that flushing one book would hurt him. If your god is that powerful, why is he threatened by this?
GT:
Concerning earlier allegations of "Koran abuse": True, true... and so what? Newsweek has a couple of advantages that impose on it a couple of obligations, IMHO. First, they have both their own staff reporters and access to the AP and its ilk, with worldwide resources, enabling them to gather news in a fashion that a simple blogger cannot. (No offense to simple bloggers who do journalism, just not on the wide-ranging basis that a news organization such as Newsweek is able to.) Second, they have a very large readership, gained over decades of publication, again something a simple blogger can't claim - even Instapundit or Kos. These advantages are not only not available to simple bloggers but are also not entirely available to small-town papers or low-circulation mags.
The obligations these advantages impose seem to me to be (a) a standard of truth in reporting that requires more than one anonymous source unless (two sub-things) that source is unimpeachable and the story is so important as to render its immediate reporting vital, and (b) the guts not to blame others when their reporting has, or may have had, bad consequences. I don't "blame" Newsweek for the barbaric actions of rioters and murderers. But I think their idea of "journalistic standards" appears to have a strong ideological basis and needs to be examined carefully, and I think that they were correct to retract the story, though their apology for using sloppy standards was halfhearted at best.
While it is never a matter of “they did it, so we can too”, it is odd that so much time is spent on defending the indefensible. The choirboys at Gitmo are not there because they were caught tipping over outhouses as a college prank. They were there because they were caught giving aide, comfort, and material support to the Taliban and al Qaeda. They were taught to use our kindness against us as a matter of training, and trained to make any and all allegations against us to inflame the Islamic world. I believe that Isikoff knowingly chose to ignore the captured training material that clearly states this and at the very least was in too big a hurry to slam the war, Bush and the military.
I find it particularly difficult to “honor” those who, when the Taliban was in power murdered men, women and children because they were not “true believers”, and executed women for the “ungodly” crimes of wearing makeup, having a job, and going to school, by cutting off their heads in a soccer field. I couldn’t give a fig if the instance did happen, after the same batch of their “brethren” have bombed churches, synagogues, desecrated the 3rd holiest Christian site, the Church of the Nativity, used artillery to destroy a statue of Buddha and destroyed the burial site of Joseph. The Koran is no more worthy of esteem than the Torah and the Bible that much of it was twisted from.
Frankly, if Isikoff had some higher purpose, which at this point is still unknown, he did no more wrong than yell fire in a crowded theater (which is a crime). He should take responsibility of his part in the result, but I doubt he will. But he’s really smart and he’s got “credentials”, he’s the hall mark of an industry that kid’s it’s self as to it’s place in society. The American media has become crowded with a bunch of inbred hacks that can’t see that they have elevated the profession from the 5th estate to a 5th column. They don’t have to tow the “government line”, just don’t lie, cheat, steal and get people killed.
Once upon a time, super-duper reporter Isikoff had what was arguably the scoop of a lifetime: a carefully sourced story about the President of the United States having an ongoing affair with an intern AND pressuring her to lie under oath about.
What happened?
HINT: Matt Drudge scooped "Newsweek"...
Another once upon a time, super-duper reporter Isikoff had a detailed account of a nasty sexual encounter between one Kathleen Willey and the President of the United States, in the Oval Office, with support from eyewitnesses and documentary evidence.
Again, what happened to that news story in the pages of "Newsweek"?
HINT: Matt Drudge....
Paula jones...Juanita Broadderick...lather, rinse, repeat, coverup...bluedress...coverup...coverup...coverup...
Say, is there a pattern here to anyone besides me?
Uber-reporter Mikey Isikoff clearly has the ability to sit on a news story; he did so time after time after time, when it helped a certain political party that was in the White House...
So why the rush to press with a poorly sourced and highly questionable "news" story? Oh, wait, is there a different political party in the White House than there was for most of the 1990's?
Could that be maybe, possibly, some part of the situation?
Nahhhhhh, why, that would be unprofessional. Like, oh, going on the air with (badly) forged documents...certainly no one would do anything like that...
On the plus side, maybe some people have learned a little something about the Moslem part of the world...
The single leader of murder against Muslims in the world’s present history is Saddam. The single leading organization murdering Muslims in the world was the Taliban and al Qaeda cabal. Frankly if the deadly riots against any mistreatment of the prisoners at Gitmo was caused by Isikoff it would be purely happenstance, but this does not alleviate the responsibility of Isikoff to cease the insanely biased editorials. He and others like him are not reporters, and the news media has not had reporters in the main stream outlets for a tragically long time.
Where, for instance, is the outrage in the Muslim world and the pages of the esteemed Newsweek, NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, etc, etc against the statements of the al Qaeda leader in Iraq that he can murder innocent men, women, and children? This is directly against the teachings of the Koran, but we have self proclaimed “reporters” blaming Bush for what Newsweek accomplished, and all in the same “news cycle”.
Where was Isikoff outrage at the government’s inaction under the former President for the ghastly slaughter in Rwanda, that he would further endanger American interests in Africa by pointing out that administration’s faults? Apparently the Ratherism of, “we don’t have the proof, but we know it’s probably true” is the level of journalisms integrity today. The Chicago Tribune (I believe) just fired a long time columnist for fabricating sources, like Jason Blair, for making up really interesting people, places and things. The fact that she wasn’t “found out” sooner speaks more to her political bent than any other single factor, she, Blair, and Rather/Mapes work for the interests of the side that has officially stated that, “it’s not the nature of the evidence, but the seriousness of the charge”. Lie a little, get ignored, lie a lot and get published.
For his part in the ongoing journalistic tragedy, Isikoff should have his keyboard slammed over his knuckles and be drummed out of the service, but he’ll probably get Blair’s corner office and Mary Mapes as his producer.
“America will cease to be great when it ceases to be good”. Looks to me as though almost half of us are there.
Jane--you are tight that fact-checking your own work--even for obvious problems--is hard; miss something once and you just keep missing it.
I was a math and economics major; by senior year, I had had 8 math classes beyond calculus. In my senior econometrics thesis, I took the derivative of x^2 as x--wrote it up that way and coded it that way--in the early stages of the project. Over the next few months, I read that paper a dozen times, revised it thoroughly twice; my professor read it twice and edited it thoroughly both times--and neither of us caught the mistake until the very end of the semester--a mistake that any decent freshman calculus student could identify.
Meanwhile, the US Marines are desecrating the Bible in a way that is equally disrespecful of Islam and every bit as inflammatory as Newsweek. And they're proud enough of it to put it on their website.
In their defence, their Commander-in-Chief did say that they were on a crusade. Just as well Newsweek didn't report THAT. Or did they?
Difference being, AlanDownunder, that Christians do not hold the Bible itself, the paper and binding and so forth, as sacred; it's the words within it that are considered holy. Whether you take this distinction as a sign of Christianity's insensitivity, Islam's sensitivity, Christianity's maturity, Islam's reverence for the sacred, Christianity's obliviousness to cultural differences, the military's or the government's obliviousness to cultural differences, the need for some Muslims to develop a certain amount of cultural relativism, or whatever, it's important.
I can't figure out either of your links. The AlterNet one points to their homepage and nothing on it seems to apply; the Marine Corps one appears to be broken. I'm going to take a stab at one example of Bible "desecration" you MIGHT be talking about, because I know the Corps uses the American flag this way:
In POW training, Marines may be kept from urinating for painfully long periods of time, then led to a pit with the flag in the bottom of it and told that if they want to urinate, they have to urinate on the flag. If they don't do so immediately, the trainer correctly reminds them that the flag is only cloth - it's the principles for which it stands that have value. If they p*ss on the flag because it's the only place they can, but aren't doing so in order to make a point about those principles, no harm, no foul. Their obligation to try to survive and return home as healthy as possible far outweighs any obligation to honor a rectangle of fabric.
Sorry, Jamie. I made a mistake with the first link.
The second link is good though. It's to the USMC website. The marines have a tank prowling around Iraq called "New Testament". Go to the link and check the photo. Here's the caption to the photo:
Caption:
Haditha Dam, Al Anbar, Iraq - The 'New Testament' a tank with 4th Tank Co., 1st Tank battalion attached to 3/25 prepares to lead the way during a recent mission. Photo by: Cpl. Ken Melton
You know how a Muslim would take that. You may not know why it would bother a real Christian somewhat more than Newsweek's over-reliance on a vacillating source.
Thanks, AlanDU - I can get to the Corps's site now. (I wonder if your link was so popular that - no, I can't imagine. Just a glitch.)
I'm interested in your interpretation. Seems to me that calling a tank "New Testament," while it's an unusual choice, isn't exactly "desecration." First off, as stated by others above, there's no strong Christian tradition that the paper, ink, name, terminology, or other characteristics of the Bible are holy in and of themselves; I've never asked my priest, but I think I could name my cat "New Testament" without committing a sin. (Rest assured that I will ask my priest this weekend. The backstory will no doubt take some time.) Second, a "testament" is a covenant, vow, contract. A covenant that says "We will support you to the extent that you seek freedom, and we will oppose you to the extent that you oppress your own people or others," analogous to the Marines' own "No better friend, no worse enemy," seems like a much better deal than "We will support you to the extent that you Maintain Stability At Any Cost." Third, even Jesus said He came to bring "not peace, but the sword." (Out of context, I know.)
Jamie,
You're right in that "desecration" was an over-statement - my overblown shorthand for a dissonance between the Jesus of "who is my neighbour?" and the name of His part of the Bible on the barrel of a gun. If Americans are thingy about any of their cultural symbols like Muslims are about the Koran, that symbol would be the Stars & Stripes more so than the Bible.
My basic complaint about a tank called "New Testament" is more tactical than theological. Iraq is not all-out war - it's a battle for hearts and minds. It's an attempt to replace a dictatorship with a democracy at the risk of instead creating an Iran-like theocracy, and a tank called "New Testament" looks awfully theocratic. It's an attempt to win over the Muslim in the street from supporting Muslim insurgents to supporting secular multicultural democracy and a tank called "New Testament" looks not very secular-multicultural.
If I was a grunt in Iraq on foot patrol or in a humvee, I wouldn't be thanking my comrades for giving the Islamic street the Christian bird from the relative safety of their tank.
Bellicose Christianity has become way too politically correct in the US (or is that Christian bellicosity? - it's a two-way street when the separation of powers dissolves). What else explains that no marine in the tank, in command of the tank, taking the photos of it or putting it on the USMC website saw anything wrong - religiously, ideologically or tactically. This is what happens when the Commander-in-Chief talks about his "crusade" and when GOP, churches and military interpenetrate each other to their mutual degradation.
For me, that tank symbolises a lot of what is going wrong with the US right now. Pretty much all of it apart from the resource-hogging, increasing secrecy, war profiteering, media distortion, environmental vandalism, increasing wealth disparity, massive national debt and ballooning budget deficit, that is.
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