A Tale of Two Stories

Via Daily Kos:

The tale of two stories at the Washington Post:

"British Intelligence Warned of Iraq War"
By Walter Pincus
May 13, 2005
-- Page A18 --

"Newsweek Apologizes: Inaccurate Report on Koran Led to Riot"
By Howard Kurtz
May 16, 2005
-- Page A01 --

Burying the really important stuff. Glad to see the Post hasn't changed much.

Jim Lobe has a question:

Who is the "son of a bitch" referred to in this comment by a U.S. Defence Department spokesman?

"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

Is he an unnamed Defence Department source who told Newsweek magazine that he had read a government document detailing an incident where U.S. military personnel at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, allegedly flushed a Koran down a toilet?

After all, that report, which was printed in a small item in last week's "Periscope" section of the magazine, spurred violent protests across the Muslim world, particularly in Afghanistan where at least 15 people were killed and the government of President Hamid Karzai badly shaken just a week before he was due to travel here.

Or is the "son of a bitch" U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration began fixing intelligence at least eight months before invading Iraq in order to make the public believe that Baghdad posed a serious threat to the United States and its allies?

Hmm. That's a tough one.

And, well, this was certainly predictable, wasn't it?

Glenn, the Newsweek retraction has got me thinking: how many *other* MSM allegations of US military abuse/torture of prisoners were based on a single anonymous sources? How many of them depended solely on the "testimony" of Al Qaeda training camp graduates, who are taught to fabricate claims of abuse?

This could be the ideal challenge of bloggers (the media is hardly inclined to police itself), going through past stories with a fine tooth comb. (And I've no doubt many exist.)

Newsweek has set a precedent by retracting this one. Will other media outlets retract their own poorly sourced stories, when confronted?

Kinda sucks that we have all those pictures, reports, memos, and documents though.

Seriously, this whole fiasco is pissing me off big time. I know it shouldn't since it's par for the course for McClellan, Rove, Disinfopundit, etc., but still. How some people sleep at night is beyond me.