"Story that might not be true paints a sadly accurate picture" -- Op-Ed Headline, Seattle Times, May 19, 2005.

First Tom Plate says that it's all the fault of the American Military. If it weren't for Abu Ghraib, Newsweek never would have been suckered into publishing their single source, uncorroborated, hearsay report.

Sure, it was a serious error to go public with a story like this on the basis of a sole source. Newsweek, after all, isn't some bumptious, fly-by-night blog; it's one of the best magazines around, with a famously superb fact-checking staff that ordinarily can distinguish the fly from the ointment with the best of them.

But the print story surfaced in this magazine against the backdrop of those awful pictures of Arab and Muslim prisoners being humiliated, violated and dehumanized by their American captors at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Without those pictures - and other tales of abuse - the Quran-toilet story would never have been published without far more extensive fact-checking, and surely not on the basis of a single source.

And of course it's all Bush's fault for daring to respond to terrorist attacks in the first place.

Newsweek's little sin is thus nothing compared to this administration's much greater sins. By launching a war against terror in a way that is probably working to infuriate a good part of the Muslim world, the administration has pretty much succeeded in spreading anti-Americanism even without Osama bin Laden's help.

Let's see, terrorists are responsible for: World Trade Center bombing I; World Trade Center bombing II; attacking the USS Cole; attacks on Embassies in Moscow, Manilia, Kenya, & Tanzania; attempting to assassinate a U.S. President; and attacking our military bases in Riyadh & Dhahran. Before Bush became President, the United States had a policy of ignoring terrorist attacks (or at best, responding weakly). But infuriating Muslims is all Bush's fault for starting the War on Terror and offending the terrorists. (src)