May 20, 2005

Flames of hate

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.

There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants
[Since when did "militants" hang out in London posing as "protesters?"--Jen]
angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq.
[Horsepucky!
That Koran flushing is just an excuse.
They've been upset with the West and ready to wage war for Islam for years, decades, centuries!]

Some among the crowd burned an effigy of Tony Blair on a crucifix and then set fire to a Union flag and a Stars and Stripes.

Led by a man on a megaphone, they chanted, "USA watch your back, Osama is coming back" and "Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush". A small detail of police watched as they shouted: "Bomb, bomb New York" and "George Bush, you will pay, with your blood, with your head."

Demonstrators in Grosvenor Square, some with their faces covered with scarves, waved placards which included the message: "Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow."
[Yawn. I'm almost bored with their outrage and their death threats.
Don't these people ever have any new ideas?--J.T.]

The protest was organised by groups including the Muslim Council for Britain and the Muslim Parliamentary Association of the UK.
[So, will the Evening Standard please explain how these groups are morphed into "militants?"]
Their protest follows fury in the Islamic world over the claims in a Newsweek magazine that US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay had abused the Koran.
[Don't you believe it.
Unfortunately, our Old Media gave this death cult a convenient pretext to "protest," riot and work themselves into a frenzy.
Not to let Newsweek totally off the hook--we could've done without inflammatory stories, knowing how "touchy" these radical Muslims are.]

The magazine later withdrew the article and apologised but not before it triggered riots in Afghanistan in which 17 people died and 100 people were injured.

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Martin Mubanga told the crowd he had seen a copy of the Koran "desecrated" during his time at Camp Delta.

He said: "This was one of the methods they used, throwing the Koran, my Koran, on the floor in my cell."
[Horrors! They put it on the floor!
Of course, Martin did (*wink*) and there will others who have their own testimony about American soldiers "desecrating" their holy stuff at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc.
It's the hot summer trend.]

One of the protesters called for the release of radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza.
[This is the infamous Captain Hook of Finsbury Park mosque.]
He shouted: "Your so-called democracy will fall under the sword of Allah. The day of judgment is coming."
[To which democracy was he referring, do you think? The U.K.'s or Iraq's or what?--Jen]

The demonstration coincided with protests across the world. On the West Bank 2,500 Palestinians streamed out of mosques shouting "Death to America". In Calcutta, India, protesters burned, spat and urinated on the US flag. And in Somalia thousands chanted anti-US slogans.

OK, folks!
Your Muslim Sabbath "Death to America" 5-minute hate is now over.
As long as they keep it to yelling, burning flags and merely threatening death, we can deal with that.
If it turns into actual violence and murder, we have a problem.
I wonder if Londoners were shocked by this--this was a more blatant show of hostility and virulent hatred on the part of the Islamists in Britain that we're used to seeing only in the Arab world, not in the "civilized" countries of the West.
I also have to wonder about the efficacy of the UK's relatively newly enacted religious hate speech laws, which were supposed to prevent the inciting of religious hatred.
Apparently, they protect Muslims inflaming infidel hate and only curb the speech of Christians and Jews in Britain.
(Whatta surprise!)

FOXNews.com - Politics - U.S. Investigates Source of Saddam Photos

President Bush and the U.S. military on Friday condemned the publication of photographs of a near-naked Saddam Hussein in prison and said an investigation had been started to find who took and released the photos.

A front-page picture in the British tabloid The Sun showed the former Iraqi dictator, clad only in white briefs, folding a pair of trousers. Another on an inside page showed Saddam hand-washing a piece of clothing.
[Hahahaha-- I love it!--Jen]

The Sun said it obtained the photos from "U.S. military sources." In the United States, the New York Post ran a story,reprinted the photos and used the same image on its front page...
[...]
Bush was briefed by senior aides Friday morning about the photos' existence, and "strongly supports the aggressive and thorough investigation that is already under way" that seeks to find who took them, White House press spokesman Trent Duffy said.

The White House declined to say what decisions news organizations should make about disseminating the photos. "That's your job," he said.
[President Bush is so precious!
No WH censorship to be found here.]

With the inquiry ongoing, he also would not comment on how the pictures may affect the U.S. image abroad. But the president downplayed the importance of the photos in stirring up the Iraqi insurgency.

"I think the insurgency is inspired by their desire to stop the march of freedom," Bush said.
[...]
Bush said he did not think photos of would incite further anti-American sentiment in Iraq. "I don't think a photo inspires murderers," the president said.

"These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office where he met with the prime minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

As ever, the President is right and the Leftist shills of the MSM who worry about "further inflaming the Arab street" are wrong.
I can't guess who in the military leaked these or why, but it's gotta be a sight for sore Iraqi eyes to see the formerly awesome and terrifying Butcher of Baghdad in his skivvies in prison, powerless and broken as so many of their family and friends were under Saddam.
I don't think Saddam Hussein's trial and execution can come soon enough for almost all of us.
This is a textbook illustration for Democracy 101, showing what happens to tyrants under a democratic government where the rule of law and a system of modern justice are the order of the day.
Betcha thug dictators all over the world had to change their underwear when they saw these pix!


Here's some upset Iraqis ready to wage jihad over Saddam in his Jockies:
Hamza Adnan, 8, Jinan Jassim, Ayah Faiz, 5, and Duha Munaf, 16, from left, watch Dubai-based satellite television station al-Arabiya in a house in the Karada area of Baghdad, Friday May 20, 2005, as it broadcasts Friday's front page of Britain's mass circulation tabloid newspaper, the Sun, showing Saddam Hussein standing in his white underwear while folding what appears to be a brown pair of trousers.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Donald

"If the Statue of Liberty was destroyed, you wouldn't replace it with the Eiffel Tower," Donald Trump said at a Wednesday morning press conference in New York. You certainly wouldn't replace it with the Freedom Tower.

Trump is proposing an 11th-hour scrapping of the plans for the World Trade Center site, specifically the much-maligned Freedom Tower, in favor of what he calls Twin Towers II. His idea is just what it sounds like -- a rebuilding of the original towers, a bit higher for good measure, with enhanced safety features.
[Actually, the plan for WTCII includes more fire stairs and better fire-proofing, among other things--Jen] His timing is terribly late and his motives unclear, but his aim is true. Who would have thought that nearly four years after the attacks of September 11, Donald Trump would represent New York's last chance for a dignified redevelopment of Ground Zero?

Trump says that he wants to build "a taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the Twin Towers." He also says, more memorably, that the Freedom Tower is "the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life."
[No argument here, The Donald!
The Freedom Tower is pretty lame.]
Given that Trump is an authority on crap, his assessment carries weight, but more importantly his view of the Freedom Tower is widely shared. Beyond its creator, the German architect Daniel Libeskind, few are in love with the monstrosity that is the Freedom Tower. Trump describes it aptly as a "skeleton," and it does have the appearance of a starved-out, postmodern pastiche of a skyscraper, or a sort of nightmare architectural vision of America conquered by the European Union.
[Dare I add that it would also embody the idea that the "Terrorists had won?"
Because that what it look likes to me.]
For those who point out that the original Twin Towers themselves were hardly an aesthetic ideal, the Freedom Tower reminds us of how much worse things can get.

I disagree with the author on this: I really liked the Twin Towers and there's not a time when I don't see a picture of the NY skyline post- 9/11 that I don't miss them and wish that they were back.
When I see them in pictures taken before the attacks, I admire with them with great love and affection, as if they were old twin friends.

The Freedom Tower project has had nothing but problems: it's completion has been put back for years because of "security concerns," they had to hire another architect to "correct" the problems created by Libeskind's design, the 9/11 victims' families have split into various contentious groups, each with their separate "needs" for the complex and the developer has yet to sign a single tenant for the proposed building.
Building the Towers back would be not only a fitting tribute to the victims, but it would also be an act of defiance, pride and patriotism.
NYC will continue to be the epicenter--the Mecca, if you will--of World Trade.
The Towers symbolized our prosperity, ingenuity, and even, in a charming way, our hubris and certainly our courage--the WTC was the tallest building in the world when it was built and it achieved that distinction using innovative engineering techniques, architectural creativity and robust American investment capital.
Along with the Statue of Liberty, visitors (pilgrims?) coming to New York were greeted by these 2 monuments to American prosperity, modernity and Life.
Trump is right: the Freedom Tower's a skeleton (the top 30 floors are a windmill or something), which would be a pathetic excuse of a replacement for the Towers which had made such a statement
of American economic and global power that the Islamist terrorists had to try twice to destroy them.
I say we should be as determined to build them back. Now.
The fact that almost 4 years have passed since jihadi murderers destroyed them and everyone in them is inexcusable.
Is the Big Apple a "Can Do" great American city or not?
(Small bonus: One of the 2 architects of WTCII is a black man, Kenneth Gardner.)
I'd also like to send out patriot kudos to Donald Trump for using his high public profile to champion WTCII; the man has his faults (heh-heh), but he knows what's good for New York and he loves the Big Apple and the USA.

The latest NYSlimes has the following story:
"In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths"
(I'm not going to link it, because I loathe that paper and you can look it up if you must read it!)
Of course, it's yet another report of our soldiers abusing, torturing and executing 2 of the enemy, this time in Afghanistan.
Here's the meat:

[...]
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
[OK, who's the leaker???
This has got to stop!!--Jen]

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
[This is editorializing by the Slimes of the worst kind!--J.T.]
[...]
The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.
[Wrong, wrong, wrong--there are channels in the military for this!
If you don't like it, take it up with your CO!
This report was classified and we're at war: why is there no respect for this?
Or should we let the NYSlimes and Newsweek run the Pentagon?!?]

Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.
[Well, Jeebus. At least there were "fair and balanced" enough to report this!
But you can tell these pinkos don't believe it.]

Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity.
[It's called war, Gray Lady--and it's often not pretty!]

Blah, blah, blah...and the article continues about how horribly cruel our military is to these "innocent lambs" who were trying to kill them and set the soul-murdering, if not actual murdering Taliban back up in free Afghanistan.
Let's not forget that militant Islamist Afghanis were running amok, burning down mosques and killing each other over an alleged Koran flushing that was supposed to have occurred half-way around the world!

The MSM makes a big mistake with these stories (other than the obvious one of slandering our troops) which is that they assume the American people want to know if our soldiers are treating enemy prisoners a little roughly.
I don't know about you, but I don't.
(Note that as with Abu Ghraib and even the Gitmo "revelations," that these Leftist stories are about internal investigations within the military that are already ongoing and don't need the scrutiny of the latte-sipping, peacenik, red diaper doper babies who form the East Coast Liberal soi-disant "intelligentsia.")
My sympathy meter for these people pretty much tapped out on 9/11/01.
No-one had any pity or compassion for our fellow citizens who had to leap 100 stories to their deaths or who were crushed to pieces when the Towers fell or who had their throats cut on the planes.
We are at war and if the MSM must take the side of our enemy time after time, then something must be done.
The appearance of this story only shows that the Newsweek fiasco chastened Old Media none at all--the only problem was their "anonymous source."
I still believe that there was no source: the story was "fake, but accurate" because they wanted it to be true.
And they hate the military (...as well as the USA...and President Bush...and we Red Staters who support all three.)
If they can't report about our military, except in a negative way--and if you can believe the Slimes's own Elizabeth Bumiller, they can't-- and if they can't respect military files that are "Classified" in wartime,then it's time for the Bush Administration to revive the concept of WARTIME CENSORSHIP for reasons of national security, such as we used in WWII.
The press is so stupid that they can't realize these stories may frighten the enemy, which is definitely good, but they're using them to play "Gotcha" with the Bush Administration and to tie the hands of our soldiers so that they are as powerless as possible when dealing with a deadly, deceptive, violent foe.
Not only did the Slimes defiantly run this story now, in the wake of the Newsweek scandal, to show everyone that they're not leaving the role as the Fifth Column, disguised as the Fourth Estate, but one of their own made a big show of repeating the Eason Jordan fantasy that US soldiers are targeting journos in Iraq:
Guild Chief Under Fire for Comments About Attacks on Journalists in Iraq

Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, drew strong criticism today from some conservative groups for comments she made last Friday about the killing of journalists in Iraq. Foley said, among other things, that she was angry that there was "not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal."

I don't know how to say this many more ways: We are at war.
This paper and Newsweek and the rest of the MSM's American organs are based in this country and supposedly bought, read by and written for Americans.
If the MSM can't take America's side and that of her military in this war, they either need to shut up and close down or move to France, Saudi Arabia or Iran.
My patience for the biases of Old Media, as well as my sympathy for enemy detainees, has just run completely dry!
As for the troops themselves and their families, God love 'em!, how they stand these kinds of scurrilous, continuous attacks without targeting journalists only shows how basically good, tolerant and noble they are!

May 19, 2005

Ankle Biting Pundits is running a poll to choose the best name (of many hysterical possibilities submitted by their readers) for the whole Newsweak Koran flushing mess here:
Ankle Biting Pundits
It's pretty tough choosing between
*Holy Crap
*Flush to Judgement
*The Pee-Pot Tome Scandal
*Guantana-mode
*Fullashittick
and *Report-A-Potty
but my personal favorite Flush to Judgement is winning!
Go vote and have a good laugh!

May 18, 2005

Grenade at Bush Rally Could've Exploded

A hand grenade that landed within 100 feet of President Bush during his visit last week to a former Soviet republic was a threat to his life and the safety of the tens of thousands in the crowd, the FBI said Wednesday.

The grenade was live but did not explode.

I do believe all those prayers we've been offering up for our President may not have been for nothing.
Surely this was the hand of God.
Thank you, Lord, that neither President Bush nor any Georgians were hurt or killed!
So, tonight, like every night, I'll pray for the President and our troops first thing.
Hope you'll join me--it's the power of "2 or more asking in the Lord's name."

Sissy Willis gives us the real story on George Galloway's appearance in front of that Senate OFF investigatory committee:
Galloway admits he sold his soul

Calm and methodical in his questioning, Committee Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Senator Norm Coleman has the upper hand as studiedly hysterical anti-Bush Brit George Galloway tries to change the subject with groundless accusations against his accusers during Oil-for-Food hearings this morning and afternoon.

"I gave my heart and soul to try to save the Iraqis who were dying because of the sanctions," keens an unspeakably rude and puerile and pompous British MP George Galloway in a classic Marcusian "fiction is truth" inversion offense during Norm Coleman's Oil-for-Food Committee hearing. Rough live transcription:

I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading iraq, and I told the world that your argument for invading iraq was a big pack of lies. I turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong. If the world had listened to Kofi Annan . . .  to Jacques Chirac . . . to me and the anti-war movement, none of this would have happened.  This is the mother of all smokescreens.  You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you have committed. Have a look at Halliburton . . . the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and went who knows where . . . The real sanctions were your own corporations backed by your government.

Unfortunately, little of the hearing is available to us live, as the cables -- even FOXNews -- go live only when things "heat up," giving the advantage to the Brit's hot-headed performance. His rabidly anti-Bush soundbites will be manna for the gaping media maw in the coming news cycles. Presumably that's Galloway's strategy, but we have a gut feeling the truth will out. We won the Revolutionary War fergossake.  This shouldn't be so hard. Coleman gives the impression of a skilled fisherman letting a barracuda on the line wear itself out thrashing before the fisherman effortlessly reels him in.  Galloway will make a lovely trophy on the wall behind Norm Coleman's desk.

Here's a little background on the dynamics of this historic encounter from the Telegram[Sic.--She means The Telegraph--Jen]:

Room 106 of the Senate's Dirksen Building provides the setting today for a clash of two very different political cultures: the grand and slightly ponderous tradition of Capitol Hill and the more demotic, quickfire approach of the new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Advisers to Senator Norm Coleman, the Republican chairing today's hearing, confidently predicted that Mr Galloway was in for a surprise.

"He will be grilled as never before," said one aide. "He won't be able to turn it into some sort of circus. This is deadly serious and he will be called to account."

Sissy's right about America winning that Revolutionary War thing...and it seems that on occasion, Great Britain is ready to refight it in little ways like this one:
the British papers almost universally reported that
Galloway "won" the day and did so with an obvious kind of pride that their Gorgeous George had shown up his "Colonial" counterparts by being more glib, more eloquent, more of an orator and ironically, given his position of being almost certainly complicit in the greatest fraud/scam in world history, the lone occupant of the moral high ground.
And yet the Brits know in their hearts he's probably guilty of committing these crimes against the Iraqi people by taking Saddam's bribes and working the scam by disguising his organization as a charity named for an Iraqi child with cancer.
It was quite a performance.
But he didn't answer the questions Sen. Carl Levin put to him and he didn't satisfy anyone watching on C-SPAN that there was good reason to believe he'd been falsely accused.
If (or should I say when?) it's proven he lied to the Committee, will he serve the requisite jail time in the U.S.A. for Contempt of Congress?
(Don't let it be lost on you--because it wasn't on Galloway--that both Senators Levin and Coleman are Jewish.
And Galloway's no big friend of the Chosen People to say the very least.)
He who laughs last, laughs best; Georgie may be laughing now, but as the cited post makes clear, it may be Coleman and Levin who are laughing last when they fit Galloway for an orange jumpsuit.
I will admit, though, that the man has a terrific vocabulary and certainly is a master in how to dress people down!
He should give John Bolton some pointers!
H/T the Divine Miss Lucianne.

May 16, 2005

Kuwaiti women win right to vote

The Kuwaiti parliament has voted to give women full political rights.

The amendment to the Kuwait's electoral law means women can for the first time vote and stand in parliamentary and local elections.
[...]
The result, announced by the speaker of parliament, was greeted with thunderous applause from the public gallery where backers of the amendment were gathered.
[...]
The change in the law, which was agreed at the end of a 10-hour session, had previously been blocked by a majority of tribal and Islamist members of parliament.

Many of these had argued that Islamic law prohibited women from positions of leadership.

Go, Kuwaiti sisters!
This is wonderful news; I only hope that the fires of freedom and suffrage ignite all over the Arab world (for men, too, and) for my fellow women who've been suffering so long in the muffled silence of their chadors.

Check out the NYSlimes carrying water for their MSM pals over at Newsweak:
Newsweek Apologizes for Report of Koran Insult

Newsweek apologized yesterday for printing a small item on May 9 about reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an item linked to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the deaths of at least 17 people. But the magazine, while acknowledging possible errors in the article, stopped short of retracting it.

Move over, Dan Rather and Mary Mapes--the hubris crown has other, more worthy claimants!
Continuing, the Gay Lady explains:

The report that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet set off the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago.

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, wrote in the issue of the magazine that goes on sale at newsstands today. In an accompanying article, the magazine wrote that its reporters had relied on an American government official, whom it has not identified, who had incomplete knowledge of the situation.
[WTF does this mean??? Their "anonymous source" doesn't exist and/or doesn't know what he's talking about...or did they just make it up because it suited their anti-American, anti-military agenda?--Jen]

But Mr. Whitaker said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know what the ultimate facts are."

THEN WHY DID YOU RUN THE STORY?!!?
(As if we can't guess!)

The information at issue is a sentence in a short "Periscope" item on May 9 about a planned United States Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at the detention facility in Guantánamo. It said that American military investigators had found evidence in an internal report that during the interrogation of detainees, American guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet as a way of trying to provoke the detainees into talking.
[Even this "justified" spin isn't right--the only incident that came close to this was a story that a Muslim Gitmo inmate had tried to flush some pages from his Koran as a form of protest.--J.T.]

Pentagon officials said that no such information was included in the internal report and responded to Newsweek's apology with unusual anger.
[Well, people are dead, you know, and months and years of our military and Bush Administration officials working hard to win Muslims hearts and minds in the Muslim world have been completely undone by this "short" and completely irresponsible "sentence."]

In a statement, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "Newsweek hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations."
Indeed, as Instapundit would say.

The original account, he said, was "demonstrably false" and "was irresponsible and had significant consequences that reverberated throughout Muslim communities around the world."
[...]

Newsweek's apology comes as the use of anonymous sources by news organizations around the country is under heightened scrutiny. Reader surveys have said that the use of unnamed officials is one of the biggest reasons their trust in the news media has eroded, and several news organizations, including The New York Times, have been tightening the rules on the use of unnamed officials.
[Hahaha! This is too funny!
They haven't done bupkis!
The Slimes is just treading water until the next time they're caught!--Jen]

Mr. Whitaker said yesterday that the magazine adhered as often as possible to a policy of identifying its sources of information.
[I'm still laughing at the lies, aren't you?--Jen]
But, he said, "there are certain sources who will only talk to us on a not-for-attribution basis, particularly when it involves sensitive information, and who would be worried about retribution or other consequences if their identities were known."
[I don't suppose they mean "retribution" in the sense of revenge by the relatives of Afghans killed in the Newsweak riots?]

He said that in this case, the magazine had followed careful and proper reporting techniques. The source had been reliable in the past, he said, and was in a position to know about the report he was describing.
[Uh-huh.
And if you believe they had this "source," Mary Mapes and Bill Burkett has "fake, but accurate" "documents" about Lt. GWB going AWOL from the TANG thirty years ago to sell you!]

In addition, the reporters, Michael Isikoff, a veteran investigative reporter, and John Barry, a national security correspondent, showed a draft of the article to the source and to a senior Pentagon official asking if it was correct. The source corrected one aspect of the article, which focused on the Southern Command's internal report on prisoner abuse.

"But he was silent about the rest of the item," Newsweek reported. "The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report."

In its article published today, the magazine said that although the reference to the Koran was a side element in an article, it was worth printing because it had come from an American government official. Other news organizations had written that American guards had desecrated the Koran,
[Name one.]
Newsweek said, but those reports were based on testimony from former detainees who had been released from Guantánamo.

The magazine said that because of reports of other abuses of prisoners by guards at Guantánamo, the possibility that a Koran was flushed down the toilet did not seem that far-fetched. But it said that to Muslims, such an act was especially inflammatory.
[This is one of the biggest problems revealed by "Toiletgate:" Why is it that the MSM takes it as an article of basic faith that the U.S. military is bad and that no allegation against them is too preposterous???]

In its reconstruction of what happened, Newsweek reported that a copy of the original news item was apparently waved at a news conference on May 6 in Pakistan (the articles are dated several days after their actual publication).

By Tuesday, students in the eastern city of Jalalabad in Afghanistan had started anti-American demonstrations, citing the Newsweek article. It is unclear exactly how the students and other protesters learned of the article, though many Afghans get information from radio programs broadcast in local languages by the Voice of America, BBC and Radio Liberty, which often broadcast foreign news reports.
[No Al Jizz there? Don't you believe it!]
[...]

But some senior Pentagon civilians and military officers in Washington challenged General Eikenberry's assessment and said they saw a direct link between the violence and the Newsweek article.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, commenting on the reported desecration after returning home on Saturday from a trip to Europe, said he blamed "enemies of stability" for exploiting student anger about it to foment violence. Afghans in Ghazni, a city south of Kabul that suffered some of the worst violence, have also said that local "troublemakers" may have taken advantage of the anger to shoot at police.
[...]
"They have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they cannot confirm yet that there were ever the case of the toilet incident, except for one case, a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting in the toilet to stop it up as a protest," he said. "But not where the U.S. did it.

This explanation had little or no effect on the demonstrations in Afghanistan, which spread throughout the week, leaving at least 17 civilians dead and many more wounded.

By the end of the week, the military had completed its internal inquiry and was convinced that the allegation as reported by Newsweek never happened and that the article had played a significant role in inciting the violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Di Rita said. He informed Newsweek that its report was wrong.

Newsweek said this prompted Mr. Isikoff to go back to his source to try to confirm the original account.
[Uh, where is Michael?
MIA all weekend and into this morning...
Izzy is known for sitting on the Monica story, too, to protect his pal Slick Willie.
Drudge was grateful, though.]

"But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report," Newsweek wrote, suggesting that it had perhaps been in other investigative reports. "Told of what the Newsweek source said, Di Rita exploded," the magazine wrote. " 'How could he be credible now?' " it quoted him as saying.

I have serious doubts as to whether this "anonymous senior Pentagon official" source even exists--my gut reaction is to to say that Isikoff and Barry just made "him" up, like Woodward and Bernstein's fake "Deep Throat."
The story's authors seem to be in hiding and aren't out front and center defending their report.
If the MSM got their Valerie Plame investigation (for which NYSlimes reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper are about to go to jail because they refuse to reveal their "anonymous sources"), then this should occasion something far more severe, in that people are actually dead as a direct result of the story.
The American public wants answers and we want them now!

As for the Muslims around the globe who have been upset and outraged by the story, I don't think that apologies, retractions or even flower arrangements sent to the funerals of the vicitims of the resulting violence will be able to undo what these criminally irresponsible journalists have done.
The damage has been done.
One of the largest questions raised by the scandal is whether the Newsweak people were naive and dumb enough to believe that the story wouldn't attract the attention of Muslims on the other side of the world and that therefore, it wouldn't "hurt" to publish it or whether their hatred of this country, its military and this president is so virulent that they knew the story would have an inflammatory effect on the world's Muslims and published the known false story for just such a purpose.
The other problem we face is that there still remain radical Islamists who can be enraged to kill at the drop of a hat.
In the present instance, we have Muslims killing other Muslims, but how long before this little mob on the mean block of the "Arab street" turns their anger to whites, Christians and Jews, Westerners, Americans, American GIs, etc.?
Obviously, we had struck a delicate balance in Afghanistan before the shock waves from this "sexed up" story appeared which is now destroyed, perhaps for a very long time.
As we've seen radical Muslim terrorists burn down and blow up churches and synagogues (with our Holy books the Bible and the Torah in them) around the world and kill, arrest and torture Christians and Jews on a regular bases in their countries, we haven't launched deadly riots to protest their intolerance of any religion but Islam.
(Not even when "Palestinian" terrorists trashed and looted the place of our Lord's birth in Bethlehem a couple of years ago, using Bibles there as toilet paper.)
Freedom House's Paul Marshall had this to say about the Newsweak story at NRO:

In all of these countries, the greatest danger is not from the courts, but from vigilantes and mobs. In Pakistan in 1997,Shantinagar, a Christian town of some 10,000 people, was burned to the ground after a man there was accused of tearing pages from a Koran. In the Netherlands last fall, the documentary producer Theo Van Gogh was butchered after he produced a documentary Submission featuring Koranic verses on women’s bodies.

Even if Newsweek publishes a full retraction, the damage is done. Much of the Muslim world will regard it merely as a cover-up and feel reconfirmed in the view that America is at war with Islam.
[Well, yes. Radical Islamism, anyway.--Jen]
It will undercut the U.S., including in Afghanistan and Iraq, far more than Abu Ghraib did. “We can understand torturing prisoners, no matter how repulsive” Newsweek quotes one Pakistani saying, “But insulting the Qur’an is like torturing all Muslims.”

This contrast is meaningful, not only because the terrorists have a double standard regarding the respect demanded by their religion and not given to ours, but it also points up the ready appropriation of violence and murder on the part of the Religion of Pieces.
On a related note, there was a pitiful turnout of 50 people on Saturday in Washington, D.C. for the March against Terror, supposedly organized to give peaceful, "moderate" Muslims a rare chance to make a stand against their murderous, violent and radical Muslim brothers and sisters.
One wonders if the concept of "moderate Muslims" isn't as much a myth as US soldiers at Gitmo flushing the Koran...

There's more excellent analysis of Toiletgate by Roger Kimball, Austin Bay, who calls it the MSM's "Abu Ghraib"--another story they "sexed up"-- and naturally, The PowerLine men.
Do I have to point out that this horrible reverse occurs at a critical point in the Global War on Islamist Terror?
Where is the outrage, America?!
Will this one stupid, horrible "story" lose us the whole war???