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The situation in Iraq is ugly enough. Now violent anti-American protests are spreading throughout Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's hideout before a U.S. invasion scattered or captured his terrorist gang. The protests were ignited by a brief report in Newsweek that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay prison flushed copies of the Koran down the toilet as part of their effort to break down Muslim inmates. This is just what we need after the photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating and abusing Muslim prisoners.
That is how I began my Sunday column, which was written Friday. By Monday, the big news was the editor of Newsweek retracting and apologizing for the story. It turns out the magazine based its report on an anonymous source - "a senior U.S. government official" - who now says he can't be sure if the story about pages of the Koran being put down the toilet was true.
In this week's issue of Newsweek, editor Mark Whitaker issued an apology but stopped short of a retraction of the May 9 report. He wrote: "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to the victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
Whitaker wrote that the magazine will continue its investigation because "we don't know for certain what we got wrong." However, under White House pressure, the magazine issued a retraction by the end of the day Monday.
This is more than another serious lapse in journalistic standards that strikes a blow at the credibility of news organizations. This blunder has had deadly consequences, with at least 15 people killed in anti-American rioting across Afghanistan and in parts of Pakistan. It also has further inflamed anti-American passions in the Muslim world and put U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where desecration of the Koran is punishable by death, in greater danger.
Obviously, I regret making reference to the Newsweek item in my Sunday column, which provoked an angry reaction from readers who questioned my patriotism and accused me of trying undermine military morale in a time of war. I wish I had known the story's accuracy was in dispute. Newsweek's Whitaker said Pentagon officials did not challenge the story for 11 days after its publication. Even after Arab news outlets translated the story and rioting erupted, U.S. officials reacted by saying they would investigate and take "appropriate action" if the allegation proved true.
I make no excuse for assuming Newsweek had nailed down the story. It doesn't matter that the story was picked up by newspapers and wire services around the world. As a reporter who covered Washington for almost two decades, I should have been skeptical. I should have remembered Ronald Reagan's rule - trust but verify. So pass the crow and take your best shot. Many of you already have.
Other news organizations had previously published similar stories about U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay defiling the Koran, the holy text of Islam. But those reports were attributed to former detainees, not an anonymous Pentagon official. Given everything else we know about what went on inside Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the Newsweek report did not seem all that far-fetched.
While the Pentagon is angrily disputing the Koran allegation, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote on Monday, "U.S. officials have confirmed numerous reports by detainees, especially at Abu Ghraib, about guards attempting to humiliate them with tactics that violate religious taboos of the Muslim faith. A senior Pentagon official has confirmed reports that female interrogators rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes, touched them provocatively and pretended to spread menstrual blood on them."
The Newsweek retraction cannot erase the photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib or the documented mistreatment of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo. I stand by my view that the abuse of Muslim prisoners has made the battle against Islamic extremism more difficult and put U.S. troops at greater risk.
As I wrote Sunday: "The overwhelming majority of our soldiers have conducted themselves with courage and honor, and they deserve our gratitude and support. Let's support them by doing everything we can to keep them safe. Let's also support them by insisting that American values be part of their armor. Let's support them with political and military leadership that understands and respects other religions and cultures. Let's support them by holding not only the grunts accountable for the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib but the higher-ups who failed to do their jobs."
I would now add this: And let's support our troops by insisting that news organizations adhere to the highest journalistic standards in reporting on the war, including stringent limits on the use of unnamed sources.
--Philip Gailey's e-mail address is gailey@sptimes.com