Newsweek: Oops?

Also from CNN (and every network tonight):

Newsweek magazine backed away Sunday from a report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated copies of the Quran while questioning prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. The story was blamed for a wave of anti-American riots in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world, that left at least 15 people dead.

Puzzling? You bet.

A full week later seems like an awfully long time to discover and report the mistake. So long, in fact that it raises whole new questions. Someone suggested to me today that Newsweek is simply the latest news organization to fall on its sword "for this Administration."

Now, why would they do that? And no, I'm not posing this for strictly Devil's Advocate purposes. This is a question that has to be asked, even if just to dismiss it. But I'm not ready to dismiss or endorse it.

Stop and consider what we know HAS happened. Ripping up the Koran and flushing it down the toilet would hardly be the most egregious thing we've learned has been done under the guise of "breaking the will" of detainees. I can think of many, many worse things which the Pentagon has acknowledged.