McQ at Q&): [1]:
“Riots in Afghanistan and inquiry by Saudi Arabia are the result of a Newsweek story about an alleged incident of flushing the Koran down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
The alleged incident was perpetrated, according to this story, by interrogators at the confinement facility located there.
However, the Washington Times reports, no corroboartion of that allegation has been forthcoming in an investigation now being conducted there. However, there is an alleged incident which has been uncovered, in which a prisoner is accused of flushing pages of a Koran down the toilet in an attempt to clog it”
Not hard to see what happened, here.
So eager was NewsWeak, to generate a story that showed the US and, ultimately, the President, in a bad light, that they couldn’t be bothered to check the story.
It’s as I have been saying now for five years; If the story makes President Bush, and with him the US in Iraq look bad, it doesn’t NEED to be verified… it simply must be true. That has been the way things have been since Bush started running for the office, and the rule went into full force when he won the election.
Certainly, making the actions of our troups, currently involved in a war the left doesn’t approve of, is one way to bring Bush’s good name into question.
As you will see in the comments over at Q&O [2], I have some disagreements with McQ on the genesis of this story.
Update:
I see Tim Graham agrees with my call [3]:
The first thing to be said about this Newsweek scandal is that just as in the Dan Rather case, the allegation of Koran-flushing seemed “too good to check.”