Newsweek's retraction of its short report on Koran desecration at Guantanamo allows the True Believers now to assume that the whole Abu Ghraib scandal was made up and promoted by the "liberal media" and that all other bad news for the Bush administration is just pure press bias.
As outcomes go, this one seems designed by Karl Rove.
The problem with Newsweek's story was not the single source, since many corporate and government scandals have depended on single brave whistle-blowers. The problem is that the single-source began to back away from his/her account. (Story in today's NYTimes.)
Stories of prisoner abuse and the use of religious taboos to psychologically break Muslim prisoners have been swirling for months. Our own Attorney General is on the record excusing torture. It's not as though a single retracted story in Newsweek is responsible for the ill-will toward America in Muslim countries.
But why are we wasting our breath defending the Mainstream Media? They're huge corporations just like the guys who jerk El Presidente's guy-wires. They've shown no particular care for calling out this bunch for their lies. So I plan to lose no sleep over their careless crash-and-burn.
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