Rutland (Vt.) Herald: "Diverting attention: NEWSWEEK is not the issue."

[Bluebear]

Newsweek is not the issue.

Newsweek has issued a retraction in connection with a story it wrote claiming that an internal Pentagon report found that U.S. personnel at the Guantanamo prison had flushed pages of the Quran down the toilet. The story is said to have set off riots in Afghanistan and unrest elsewhere.

The unfortunate effect of Newsweek's error is to divert attention from the important story: American abuse of Muslims and disrespect for their religion.

Officials in the government are only too happy to change the story from one of torture and cruelty to one of journalistic malfeasance. Thus, the misstatements of a journalist's source loom larger in importance than the kind of abusive behavior occurring at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere. The same thing happened during the election campaign to the CBS story on President Bush's record of service in the National Guard: Phony charges from a dubious source obscured actual issues about Bush's service.

The administration has used Newsweek's mistake to issue the usual denunciation of the press's use of unnamed sources, even though it routinely uses unnamed sources to spin the news....

more

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050518/NEWS/505180305/1038

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. We won't be hearing about anymore prisoner abuse from Newsweek

or anyplace else for a while.

[LightningFlash]

2. This is a very wise man who is writing that..

I too believe that this is to divert attention from the real lies. The fixed and illegally planned war, along with the prisoner abuse that was manufactured around it.

[Bluebear]

3. Very glad to have you at DU, welcome!

[Hissyspit]

4. Recommended. Kick. Welcome to DU!

They should have mentioned the failure to cover the UK/Iraq War Memo.

[pacifictiger]

5. I find it curious that

of Newsweek's claimed global circulation of 23million (19mil US), only 30 thousand is written in Arabic for middle eastern distribution.
One article in 30 thousand copies, among how many million people in all of the arabic speaking countries is supposed to be the killing catalyst?
Seems like someone wants an excuse for something.
And more 'justification' for muzzling what few journalists we have left.

[Bluebear]

6. It smells very fishy dudn't it? nt

[whistle]

7. "Uzbekistan and US: Strange bedfellows"....background

<snip>
Central Asia

Uzbekistan and US: Strange bedfellows
By Jonathan Feiser
July 12, 2003

Winston Churchill once observed, "In war it is not always possible to have everything go exactly as one likes. In working with allies, it sometimes happens they develop opinions of their own." Now, in the modern "war on terror", this same visionary paradigm continues to propagate itself throughout every facet of US diplomacy and security policy.

Since September 11, 2001, several Central Asia regimes have demonstrated both cause and support for the operational objectives of US determination. In the meantime, however, the mere existence of this US footprint in Central Asia has continued to attract the attention and security concerns of both Russia and, to a lesser degree, China. The former preponderance of Russia's modern "near abroad" remains to this day, just as much a geopolitical factor as a psychological one. In terms of both military power and ethnic majority, Uzbekistan exists both as a strategic hub for US forces and as a much-desired ally envisaged by Russia. There nevertheless exists inherent weakness within this deceivingly perfect-looking picture. Uzbek President Islam Karimov runs a one-man government routinely bashed for a variety of human-rights and local border violations that have remained a continual bane of the relationship between his regime and the United States.

One major source of the state's perpetual decay remains housed within the economy. The very nature of Uzbekistan's shadow economy acts as an antithesis to any form of state-building mechanisms. In turn, the essential middle class and privatization management designed to facilitate democratization remains morbidly lifeless. Nonetheless, with the "war on terror" in full pulse, Karimov currently enjoys a different kind of business that warrants international aid from the United States. The source of this reality is based upon a vast tract of geopolitical concerns that revolve around the regional security presence of US military forces and Karimov's battle with Islamic militants.

<more>
<link> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EG12Ag01.html

<other links> http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/terrorwar/analysis/2004/0715uzbekaid.htm

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2924.htm

http://www.muslimuzbekistan.com/eng/ennews/2003/06/ennews18062003_g.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/14/world/main695223.shtml

[Bluebear]

8. kick