"It is unclear if the Pentagon is going to pursue a probe into the alleged incident or drop it in light of Newsweek's admission. A SouthCom spokesman said the investigation was still open, but Whitman said he did not know whether it had been closed."
LMAO - this story has been around for years now. Of course it won't be investigated. And who wants the same people who conducted the incompetent Abu Ghraib, Canadian troop deaths, Italian journalist death, and countless other toothless investigations.
Long before the corporate media started the inevitable Newsweek witch hunt, the blogosphere was predicting a massive feeding frenzy centered on Newsweek's "anti-Americanism" and calls for someone to "do something."
Of course, the brain-dead echo chamber did exactly that. What does surprise me, however, is that other than ringwingnuttia blogs no one is saying anything Newsweek presented is untrue.
The Bush administration is far and away the most secretive of any previous White House residents. The pliant correspondents are repeatedly told interviews must remain anonymous or they will be denied the access required to do their jobs.
Any journalist with integrity would eventually refuse to conduct themselves in this manner, but White House boot-licking is big business; so they hand in their ethics and play the Rove game.
To be fair, it might easier to stand one's ground if their wasn't a Faux News. Obviously Rove and Faux work in hand in hand; leaving competitors feeling like they must be lapdogs to compete against the Faux News insider positioning.
Once compromised, with just about every story in corporate media sourced as "unnamed senior administration officials," Rove now has unlimited capacity to wreak havoc on the Faux competitors.
The formula is simple: talk to your people and find out which ones have built relationships with the media. Pick one and give them some juicy story, based on truth, with enough untraceability to prevent completely confirming it without the unnamed source. When the media outlet prints or broadcasts it, demand the source to recant the story or refuse to confirm it.
Just as the Bush AWOL story was based on fact, and no one can claim based on facts that Bush served his country honorably; no one is claiming Newsweek lied about the Koran story.
Newsweek published the same Koran abuse story that has been reported on since at least 2002. US soldiers admit part of military POW survival training involves Bible abuse to break down soldiers. Only a disingenuous buffoon (Freeper) would suggest that no one at Guantanamo has ever desecrated the Koran.
So here we have widely reported incidents of Koran abuse from multiple media outlets and sources (as was Bush's AWOL crime.) Newsweek asks a senior administration official "by the way, have you seen any incidents like this in any official reports?" Source say, "oh yeah, I saw it documented in a SouthCom report." Newsweek runs the story by the DoD, and they don't refute it.
So they print it. And the same result happens that has happened every time before it: riots. Remember all the riots after Abu Ghraib? The only difference this time is there is no photos or video that can grab ratings in prime time.
The administration now has the perfect storm. Hey, let's get our leaker to recant. He doesn't exactly recant, but he knows what Rove and company is capable of. So when Newsweek on its own calls him back, he says "wellll, maybe it wasn't the SouthCom report.. it might have been some other report I read."
How many times have you heard that the incident itself has never been retracted, just the report it was found in? Ever? I've heard it twice on AAR: never on any other local news station.
I would like to see this backfire on Bush/Rove, and the corporate media whores finally stand up and say no more unnamed sources. That's what I would like, but it will never happen. As long as liars reside in the White House, and limp-dicked hacks report on it, Rove will use this recipe over and over and over.
UPDATE: Hey, the Pentagon does say Newsweek lied. My crystal ball says this has about as much credibility as this CIA denial regarding Rummy's Abu Ghraib policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment