Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Thoughts on Lies and Liars

More or less as an aside, I need to say this about the dust-up from the item regarding desecration of the Quran reported in Newsweek.
Mark Whitaker says that the piece was legitimate and vetted, but that now their anonymous source has wavered... is no longer sure he read what he said he'd read. Newsweek has retracted the story and apologized.
In my opinion, Newsweek has just been punked. You get a piece, you run the piece, the crap hits the fan in part because of the piece... and suddenly your anonymous inside source isn't sure anymore. Gotcha!
In a time when God knows how many are dead because of the lies of the Bush administration, they are using you as a pinata because of a blurb that was entirely plausible based on proven disregard for Muslim beliefs and institutions at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, and you have no defense because you can't name your source.
Now the White House is saying that an apology isn't enough and you must do more to make up for the real consequences of your "lie." They want you to help them tell their version of the truth. One might reasonably ask when the White House will begin to make up for their lies.
Newsweek got burned on a blurb in its Periscope section... probably, again in my opinion, by the White House. One would hope they will have the confidence and courage to work through this without becoming another conduit for administration propaganda and disinformation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't understand the big flap in the first place, unless the Koran that was trashed was the personal property of one of the prisoners. It may be insensitive, but it isn't immoral or illegal in my book to destroy a physical symbol of anything--be it a school/national/religious/fraternal emblem. It is much less defensible, to me, to defame a person or to deny them the freedom to follow their school/national/religious/fraternally-imposed quirks.
Cop Car

Anonymous said...

1984. Moreso in this administration than any I've seen.