Newsweek Retraction

What a crock of shit!

For several days now, much has been made of Newsweek's retraction of a brief story it had published in its May 9 issue that interrogators at the Guantanamo torture camps were abusing the Koran (Qur'an), the Muslamic equivalent to the Christian Bible.

"Fuck you!" I say to the media. Where do they get off making such a story about this retraction?!? This purported incident is only one of a series of events that have been uncovered which illustrate the Bush administration's "by all means necessary" approach to "interrogation".

"Fuck you!" I say to the Bush administration for even trying to imply that their misbegotten, misguided policies, their ill-conceived war in Iraq, and their unconscionable abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Guantanamo) haven't contributed in the least to increased violence in Afghanistan or Iraq.

"Fuck you!" I say to Condi Rice. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! How a woman can be so complicit in the massive loss of life that her husband/president has caused is beyond me. Fuck you!

"Fuck you!" I say to George W. Bush. You pathetic excuse for a "Christian".

"Fuck you!" to anybody who can't place the Newsweek story in its proper context — there would have been no Newsweek story without the war in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib abuse and the Bush administration's lies and manipulation of the emotions related to September 11, 2001.

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!

Here's the story that is the center of this nonsensical firestorm, in the event that the above link is rendered inoperable.

May 9 issue - Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee's hair and sat on the detainee's lap. (New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee's face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

These findings, expected in an upcoming report by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, could put former Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in the hot seat. Two months ago a more senior general, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, was placed in charge of the SouthCom probe, in part, so Miller could be questioned. The FBI e-mails indicate that FBI agents quarreled repeatedly with military commanders, including Miller and his predecessor, retired Gen. Michael Dunleavy, over the military's more aggressive techniques. "Both agreed the bureau has their way of doing business and DOD has their marching orders from the SecDef," one e-mail stated, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Sources familiar with the SouthCom probe say investigators didn't find that Miller authorized abusive treatment. But given the complaints that were being raised, sources say, the report will provoke questions about whether Miller should have known what was happening—and acted to try to prevent it. An Army spokesman declined to comment.

-Michael Isikoff and John Barry

Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker'scomments about the story and the subsequent retraction.