O.K., I can understand it's bad to get a story wrong. I can agree that Newsweek should be really really really sure it can trust its sources. But hold them responsible for the deaths in the riots?
Afghanistan's government said Tuesday that Newsweek should be held responsible for damages caused by deadly anti-American demonstrations after the magazine alleged U.S. desecration of the Quran, and it suggested that foreign forces may have helped turn protests violent.
Pakistan joined the international criticism of the magazine's article and said Newsweek's apology and retraction were "not enough."
What if the story had been reported by an Afghani or Pakistani newspaper? How many times have Egyptian or Saudi papers made some incendiary (and often anti-Semitic) accusation?
And what if the story is actually true?
Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo Bay who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees at the military prison, said in interviews and in his book that he never saw a Koran flushed in a toilet but that guards routinely ignored prisoners' sensitivities by tossing it on the ground while searching their cells.
And numerous detainees, whose stories are uncorroborated, have said to various media outlets that at detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, the Koran was stepped on, tossed on the floor and placed in latrines.
"They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," former detainee Aryat Vahitov told Russian television in June 2004.
