Newsweek causes death of 16, incites further ire against US

I am getting tired of "the media", and fabricated stories, and misquotes, and the lack of fact-checking.

This is just ridiculous.

Newsweek said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who said a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay found interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.

But the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts, Newsweek said.

The result?

The report sparked violent protests across the Muslim world -- from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, Indonesia and Gaza. In the past week the reported desecration was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.

Newsweek hasn't fired anyone, or even retracted the story [edit: as of around 9pm, they have finally retracted the story]. And many people don't believe the "correction":

Muslims in Afghanistan were skeptical about the turnaround on Monday.

"We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters. "It comes because of American pressure." Aman was the leader of a group of clerics who vowed to call for a holy war against the United States.

So, thanks, Newsweek. If your goal was to incite further hatred against the US and raise the possibility not only of dragging out the current war but bringing down more and more war upon our heads...well, congratulations. A fucking plus.