Monday - May 16, 2005

We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert ….

Sixteen people dead and over one hundred injured during riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek publishes inflammatory story accusing military of flushng Koran down toilet at Guantanamo Detention Facility.

Newsweek didn’t validate their source, who is now recanting his story. Newsweek wishes to apolgize for lousy reporting, bad practices in journalism, liberal bias, overcharging for subscriptions and for defending Dan Rather last year .... well, the first two, at least. Families of dead in Afghanistan are not amused ....

“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,” Whitaker wrote in the magazine’s latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a “knowledgeable government source” who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.

But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.

Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. “As to whether anything like this happened, we just don’t know,” he said in an interview. “We’re not saying it absolutely happened but we can’t say that it absolutely didn’t happen either.”

Did you catch that last sentence from Whitaker? Now that’s what I call an “open-ended mea culpa” .... or perhaps better known as just plain bullshit.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/16/2005 at 12:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Media-Bias • Stoopid-People •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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