jmoiron.net

Newsweek has been in the news a lot lately for an article they published by Michael Isikoff about Qu'ran and religious abuse at Gitmo and Bagram. This was published on the 9th, and on the 12th there were riots in Afghanistan. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan assailed the article, saying:

"The report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged." -- Scott McClellan

In similar fashion, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita blasted the story saying on the record that there were no substantiated reports of Qu'ran or religious abuse. Pressure from the DOD and the west wing soon pushed Newsweek to issue an apology for the effects of their story and then finally for a retraction.

The story had claimed that some military report yet to be released was going to document the Qu'ran and religious abuse that was happening with regards to those prisoners we spirit away from their countries and hold as enemy combatants. The White House and the DOD both vehemently denied that this was the case; that the report contained any such information; and turned up the heat on Newsweek who eventually caved. So Newsweek issues their apology and their retraction, McClellan calls it a "good first step", the green light is on to now refer to this report as "disavowed", "flimsy", "retracted", etc., the allegations quietly go away undenied and officially unsubstantiated, and nobody is surprised.

The left and right have both made a huge stink over this; and both reactions could have been written ahead of time by anyone who ever watches these situations. Typical of the right (or: the extreme right wing, as most of them seem to be known as now adays), they have gone to work attacking Newsweek, calling the magazine names and trying to hurt its feelings. Cries that the magazine is anti-american were futher fueled (and the real issue further obscured) by a recent Japanese Newsweek cover roughly translated below.

The left, on the other hand, have focused (as we always do and usually mistakenly) on the facts: the Newsweek story retraction was not because of the inaccuracies of their allegations, but because they lost their anonymous source amidst the shitstorm. Some start to get it and decide to try to shift the attention to the real issue, that the United States should not be mistreating its prisoners of war, torturing people, or disobeying the Geneva conventions on a whim. They bring into the party people like Saar who look good because they are not left wing or look good because they were in the military, but most of the military outcry has centered around the fact that torture and mistreatment is simply bad intelligence gathering practice.

In the immaculate words of George Galloway, this is all; the so called story, the retraction, the west wing theatrics, the right and left's compulsory reactions; it's all "a massive smokescreen."

Does this prisoner abuse happen? Of course it fucking happens. It shouldn't take a Newsweek story to tell you this, just look at American history (which is tough if you went to school here, since you didn't learn it). The way our military is designed, the way all military is designed, they are trained to hate the enemy. Rhetoric about "Iraqi people" doesn't change the fact that on the ground we've had some manner of slur for our enemies (usually racial) in every war in our history, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that this one is no different.

But you can't print that; you can't print historical analysis combined with heresay and call it news, because you'll be torn apart in the echo chamber. So what can you do? You wait for a report by someone important and you create a story around that report. The Newsweek story wasn't a story because we abuse prisoners; that is known already; it was a story because this information was in a government report.

Was the story responsible for the riots in Afghanistan that resulted in death? This question could just as easily be: "Are the American people so oblivious to the situation in Afghanistan that they believe the populace follows Newsweek and riots on abuse they are already aware of from testimony of their few returned relatives?" But of course, you can't print that; you can't just point out the obviousness of the situation and leave people to realize it themselves. It was only after it was brought up that you can't plan such a riot in 3 days, that it was a statistical impossibility, that McClellan and Di Rita finally started to back off of this obvious fallacy. Its too bad because it was serving their cause well. Only a cursory observation at the events yields the following timeline: Afghani's plan a riot and use a Newsweek article (America's own press) as an inflamatory story to get peoples fire going, McClellan notices the riot, the largest anti-US activity in Afghanistan in months, and passes the blame for this to the recently published Newsweek article; he uses it exactly the same way as the Afghani riot organizers.

Even though nothing assaulting the Newsweek article holds up to any sort of common sense overview, the battle has already been fought and won. People will tout this article as proof of the liberal media, as a ridiculous counterexample to Chomsky's US Media as a propaganda machine model (read this interesting article for insight into this; how the DOD had passed the report as credible before press time); and one side or another will argue over a debate that has no consequence. The Isikov article will go down as disavowed, factually incorrect, flawed, and the abuse can continue until someone else gets caught (when this will repeat, or we'll blame it on some grunts). The 50% of Americans who seem to readily absorb this brand of bullshit will put Newsweek under "France" in their list of things to harbour irrational hatred for, and the real story here, how the scope of conversation on this issue was changed from "Is there abuse" to "Lets talk about Newsweek"; how we chain taxi drivers to the roof and kill them but would never desecrate the Qu'ran; how "well, reports now show that someone might have accidentally touched the Qu'ran or accidentally dropped it near an Asian style toilet" will carry the conversation into June; how the whole character of discourse in this matter will center around some insignificant factual error or lack of official substantiation.