TV Tonight: Charlie Rose and Nightline are covering the story. Charlie’s guests are DANIEL KLAIDMAN, Washington Bureau Chief, Newsweek; SHIBLEY TELHAMI, University of Maryland / Brookings Institution; ROGER COHEN, The New York Times, Author, “Soldiers and Slaves”; ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, The Huffington Post

New diary at Kos: Recommend to continue strategizing.

Per MSNBC which says the magazine did so “moments ago.”


From Atrios:

And a little reminder

From Think Progress:

Before the Newsweek report even hit the newsstands, the Associated Press was already noting a “revived Taliban-led insurgency” and the Agence France Press said there was “an upsurge in violence by suspected Taliban rebels” which had left two U.S. Marines dead.



How a Fire Broke Out | The Editor’s Desk


Do these above-linked statements sound like a retraction to you? Below the fold:

EDITOR: … Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur’an charge. [END OF EDITOR’S STATEMENT]

Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur’an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.


Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur’an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them “not credible.” Our original source later said he couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Qur’an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But 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


So, their source fucked them over. Is that an accurate statement?