Newsweek the scapegoat

There are lots of articles out there about Newsweek still and I want to bring you one by John Atcheson entitled, "Laundered, Spun and Hung Out to Dry: The Real Lesson from Last Week's Riots". It continues to dismay me that Newsweek caved in and didn't defend the accuracy of the content of its story even though the source it cited couldn't be substantiated. Here's part of what Atcheson has to say:

Just as with the Dan Rather affair, the balance of evidence suggests that Newsweek’s story was accurate, even if the sourcing was sloppy. The mistreatment of the Koran had been widely reported previously by several newspapers, and verified by US interrogators, former prisoners, the International Red Cross, and others.

When conservatives succeed -- again and again -- in making the manner in which a story critical of their interests is reported the main issue, rather than whether the story is true or not, then careless sourcing is the least of our problems.

The plain fact is, the riots and the anger that sparked them was the inevitable result of the President's policies, not a single one paragraph story in Newsweek. And letting the White House and the conservative talk meisters get away with making Newsweek the fall guy for the consequences of this administration's policy failures is an offense against the journalistic canon far more serious than how news is sourced, and far more damaging to the media’s credibility.

Let's look at the context, and the truths embedded within it. The Bush administration discarded the Geneva Convention and the rule of law in our dealings with Muslims. We’ve been guilty of torturing Arab prisoners; conducting illegal kidnappings under the rubric of "extraordinary rendition"; launching preemptive wars under false pretenses; assaulting the world with sanctimonious and arrogant lectures from the likes of General my-God-can-beat-up- your-God Boykin; and offering hypocritical support of corrupt Arab regimes in the face of high blown rhetoric about championing freedom and democracy. We have abandoned Afghanistan to war lords and drug lords, and our failures in Iraq have allowed that country to descend into chaos, and in the minds of many Arabs, turned us into occupiers, not liberators.

Newsweek is just the latest victim in this administration's desperate attempt to find a scapegoat for their botched war on terror. The fact is, the so-called war on terror is ultimately a battle for the hearts and minds of the Islamic world, and Mr. Bush’s strategy for waging that war is a policy fiasco of epic proportions.

As the Defense Policy Board said in a report released in September of 2004, outlining the failure of the US to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world, "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies."

The right wing spin machine is determined not to let the current administration be held accountable for the mess we're in. So far, the press is letting them get away with it.