Newsweek and the White House: The Smell Grows More Rank

This story is getting stranger and stranger, ranker and ranker.

Newsweek spent an unusually long amount of time vetting this story (the reported destruction of a copy of the Koran and flushing it down the toilet), and it was based on a government source. We've had numerous examples over time of interrogators - and please keep in mind that a miniscule amount of these detainees are ever charged with a crime or have been proven to have any useful information to give up - doing really outrageous things (forced - simulated, at times - sex, Abu Ghraib, women interrogators smearing "menstrual" blood on the faces of Muslim men and simulating masturbation in front of them, using family members as pawns to elicit confessions that aren't real, etc.

The White House was given an opportunity to dispute the story before it ran. My understanding now is that they actually had multiple opportunities.

Then, when the trouble broke out in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Newsweek reported was cited (perhaps inappropriately) as the cause, Richard Myers himself, the head of the Joint Chiefs said no, this wasn't the Newsweek story, this was everything else.

NOW... Newsweek back pedals. Then the White House suddenly jumps in and insists the only reason for problems is that Newsweek article. Tries to demean the press (which hasn't needed help there). Then Newsweek retracts. Then the White House jumps harder. As has been pointed out by a few media sources, there is a calculated effort underway to a) blame the press for the mess the White House has been responsible for all along and b) discredit the press with the American public.

This, my friends, is a shell game. The source for the Newsweek report was FROM this administration. The riots were NOT principally because of this Newsweek piece, just as Myers said. Whether it's to distract from the increasing evidence of the cooked war (remember to visit Downing Street Memo), the horrible messes we've created in both Iraq and Afghanistan, or something we don't know yet, the White House really wants to be sure we don't pay attention to these stories in the press. You know, the press that has acted like a laptog and PR agent for this administration.

The press - and increasingly some would say, blogs - are the only established way we're ever going to know any of the crap being pulled. The press, finally and not strongly enough, has recently started behaving (at times) like journalists and not PR agents. The White House needs to neutralize them. And please, don't try to tell me they're worried about Afghans. There is zero evidence of that.

I'll agree that much of the mainstream media has not earned our respect of late. But I'll still put more faith in them than the Bushies. I think we all need to support their efforts to actually do their jobs. We need to know what's being done.