The world hates us because Newsweek prints LIES

Been meaning to blog about this all week, but kept forgetting.

The story- as *I*, and in the Boston Phoenix story linked above, see it is Newsweek heard from a source that in a pentagon report Muslim prisoners were forced to piss on their holy book. Newsweek prints this because they feel it's news- that Bush's CHRISTIAN soldiers are treating our 'foes' in such a manner. The Pentagon goes on spin control and says that the story is TOTALLY WRONG, and the report says no such thing.

Now to me, this is where it gets darn funny/sad as many neo-con stories have a habit of doing. The Pentagon has NOT released this report. The American people, and the world, don't know the REAL truth because the report is in the hand of the pentagon and politicians... not in the hand of the media and the people.
However, the white house in typical W. fashion demanded an apology from Newsweek and blamed ALL casualties since the report ON NEWSWEEK. They say because of Newsweek's 'error' people have lost lives and America has lost credibility.
God. I was I was making this up. Because it means that the problem with the US and Iraq is NOT Lynndie England but newspapers reporting about Lynndie England.

I especially liked the quote in the editoral part of the same Phoenix paper from a right wing blogger.

"Whether Americans flushed the Koran down the toilet is irrelevant. Newsweek should not have reported it, even if true. It's common sense, people. Those journalists knew how Muslims would react! Why would you hurt your own country and risk more deaths just to report this fact, To what end???"

Because the truth DESERVES to be told. Because if Bush is telling the world he's trying to protect FREEDOM, the rest of the world should know HOW he's protecting them. Because the only way for us to show we're better then the terrorists of 9/11 is by our ACTIONS.
And I think everyone deserves to know exactly what sort of war we're fighting- whether it's a holy war, a war for oil, or a little of both. I don't think it's to liberate the Iraqis... Because if we were doing something good- I don't think W. and the pentagon would be so secret.

The story sounds believable, heck I've read of other equally bad torture stuff at Gitmo to be true.... Perhaps Newsweek should've tried to have more then one freaking source before they published, but on the other hand perhaps the pentagon could've revealed the report instead of just blaming Newsweek for everything. Perhaps if the US treated it's prisoners better, the Muslims wouldn't have believed the story... or perhaps if the pentagon/ congress had gone after some officers following the Abu Ghraib, the Muslim world would've realized that the bad apples had been punished and were out of the system by the time the Newsweek story came to light.

We need checks and balances in our government. One check and balance is the media. It shouldn't be liberal or conservative- it should report the News- to us and the rest of the world. Whether we like the news or not, we need to know. We have a RIGHT to know.