Keith Devens .com

It's not clear yet if Newsweek lied, although I'm sure rightwingers will nonetheless condemn it as evidence of a liberal media conspiracy.

Speaking of lying and dying, shouldn't some bloggers stop and think about how they've been promoting this administrations foreign policy agenda which has lead to a lot of unnecessary deaths?

Argh, self parody! Her title was obviously a play on the "Bush lied, people died" canard that people such as yourself harp on.

Anyway, I wouldn't necessarily call it lying either, but it's damn near close to it. Publishing unsubstantiated claims from an anonymous source is one step away from simply fabricating facts.

Clayton Cramer's note on this is worthwhile (via Glenn).

Well, it's not only alleged WMD lies. There are numerous fishy episodes on record which contributed to unnecessary loss of life. Taken as a whole, the Iraq gambit smells rotten.

I hope the Newsweek story is false (and not just proven to be mischaracterized or partially false), but I would be more surprised to learn that psych ops didn't employ this technique. Seems like an obvious play.

With regard to the Newsweek article, there should be an investigation to settle the matter. Newsweek should encourage it if only to restore their journalistic integrity.

Juan cole
A soldier has written in.
"I have no doubt the stories about trashing the Koran are true."

I'd like to correct something Cole wrote. Newsweek didn't merely "back away" from their story. They retracted it.

We simply won't know if the story is true without further investigation.

It was reported on MSNBC last night that the administration was given the Newsweek article prior to publication, and that they did not challenge any aspect of it. This supposedley was also true for the infamous Dan Rather national-guard memo.

Tough call for Newsweek. They choose a "fact" quoted from a source in the US Government, and which had been reported several times in the past, and they also show the story to the White House prior to publication.

Although I'm not caught up in the most recent developments, yesterday I heard that Newsweek retracted the story due to their source "backing away from the quote". Note that this has no bearing on whether or not a Koran was desecrated by US forces.