Target Centermass

Day: May 16, 2005

  • Newsweek Retracts Quran Abuse Story

    Yesterday, Newsweek backed off its hit piece aimed at the military and the Bush administration. Today, they completely retracted it. Tomorrow, the resulting riot victims will still be dead and the tarnished U.S. image will still be stained.

    Newsweek magazine has retracted a story that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Qur’an to get inmates at Guantanamo Bay to talk – a report that led to anti-American riots in which at least 17 people died.

    “Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur’an abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” the magazine’s editor, Mark Whitaker, said late Monday.

    […]

    The report sparked the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

    At least 17 people have been killed over the past week as protests turned into violent clashes with police.

    The May 9 article said American interrogators were placing copies of the Qur’an on toilets to rattle suspects, and in one case “flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

    Guess what? Yeah, the damage is already done. This retraction is meaningless where it counts, the Islamic world. Chad at In the Bullpen points to a story showing Islamic clerics ain’t buying what Newsweek is now selling, and then goes on to explain why the retraction has no traction.

    Again this comes not only from a group already believing the United States is in a war against Islam, something the MSM and several Left-leaning politicians and pundits advance ‘unwittingly’, but it also comes from people that only have the slightest clue of what a free press is. The lack of understanding that Newsweek is not controlled by the government is partially responsible for the same non-believing that a retraction was not pushed by the Bush Administration.

    Chad goes on to show how the radical clerics have historically used such opportunities to their advantage.

    Meanwhile, Phil at Shades of Gray agrees the piece was a political hit and repercussions will continue.

    What to make of this? First, it seems that (once again) our highly reliable media has screwed up. Second, it seems that (once again) it has screwed up in a way that is, to say the least, unhelpful for the ongoing war on terror. Finally, it seems that (once again) this may blow over too quickly.

    […]

    Thanks to this slap-dash journalism, we can expect even more bad blood between the US and her allies and groups within the Middle East and the like, as this story will no doubt enter into the great domain of the urban legend – sure, the story is wrong, but expect to hear various Middle Eastern sources to cite this non-incident as yet another example of the US’s evil.

    Newsweek opened it’s own Pandora’s Box, and now we all have to wait and see how much of a butcher’s bill is to be extracted.

  • France Protests End of National Holiday

    The fundamental problem of socialism and communism in a nutshell: lack of personal incentive impairs the public ability to provide. Just ask the French.

    Teachers, transport workers and much of France ignored the government’s call to sacrifice a paid holiday to raise money for the elderly Monday — causing widespread disruption on a day meant to symbolize national unity.

    Public transport in up to 90 cities and towns across France was disrupted. Many city halls and classrooms were closed, post offices scaled back services because of striking employees and many private companies gave their staff the day off. Polls showed more than half of the leisure-loving French planned to stay home.

    The national “Day of Solidarity” — an extra work day in place of the annual Pentecost holiday — was part of the government’s response to a 2003 heat wave that killed 15,000 people, mostly elderly.

    Under a new law, workers give up a holiday, while their employers pay into a government fund to improve health care for the aged and handicapped. The extra day of work was expected to reap about $2.5 billion a year in additional revenue for health care.

    Many liked the idea of sacrificing for the greater good in the aftermath of the tragic heat wave. But in recent months, opposition to the plan became intermingled with discontent on issues ranging from high unemployment to budget cuts enacted by the unpopular Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

    “On Monday, the government is going to feel the backlash from a totally unilateral measure made against the advice of unions and seen by workers as unjust, ineffective and hypocritical,” said Maryse Dumas, the No. 2 official at the communist-backed CGT union.

    […]

    As for the day of solidarity — front pages declared it a failure.

    “Pentecost: The Black Monday of Operation Solidarity,” read Le Figaro’s banner headline. The paper called the chaos a “social and political test for the government” as Chirac seeks to win a “yes” vote in France’s May 29 referendum on the EU constitution.

    Want a little more proof of the power of personal incentive?

    In Paris, bus and subway drivers were wooed to work with a special $125 bonus. It was one of few cities where the subway was running normally.

    There’s a little bit more evidence to add to the wealth history has already accumulated.