There's misinformation going on.

here's some clarity:

Video - Olbermann: an honest report on the Newsweek retraction


http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVide...1_050516-01.rm

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Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts
RAW STORY

Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States, RAW STORY has learned.
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Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

Where the Newsweek report likely erred was in saying that the U.S. was slated to acknowledge desecrating the Quran in internal investigations, and in relying on a single anonymous source to make grave allegations. But reports of desecration are manifold.

One such incidentâ??during which the Koran allegedly was thrown in a pile and stepped onâ??prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in Mar. 2002, which led to an apology. The New York Times interviewed former detainee Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi May 1, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp.

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans, " Times reporters Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt wrote in "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay."

The hunger strike and apology story was also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The people the law forgot, " Guardian, Dec. 3, 2003) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive, " Daily Mirror, Mar. 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. â??It was a very bad situation for us, â?? said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. â??We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.â?? (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment, " Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in Mar. 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, (Aug. 4, 2004, deposition available here.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", Apr. 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site (which describes itself as a "non-sectarian Islamic human rights website"): http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=6862

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com, available at: http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=1611

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal, " May 2, 2005).


http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsw...report_516.htm

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Muslims skeptical over Newsweek back-track on Koran By Sayed Salahuddin
Mon May 16, 10:05 AM ET



KABUL (Reuters) - Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down.



The report in Newsweek's May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.

Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true.

"We will not be deceived by this, " Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan, referring to the magazine's retraction.

"This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it."

Aman was the leader of a group of clerics who Sunday vowed to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran.

That call for a jihad, or holy war, still stood, he said.

Newsweek originally said investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators "had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.

Last week's bloody anti-American protests across Afghanistan were the worst since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

"NOT CERTAIN"

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

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

Afghans were unconvinced.

"It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake, " said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer and journalist in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday. "No one will accept it."

"Possibly, the American government put pressure on the magazine to issue the retraction to avoid the anger of Muslims, " said Sayed Elyas Sedaqat, who heads a cultural group in the city.

In neighboring Pakistan, a religious party said it was going ahead with a call for protests on May 27.

"Newsweek is back-tracking but it's not just their report, " said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. "All innocent people released from U.S. custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Koran.

A spokesman for the Taliban, who denied any involvement in last week's Afghan protests, said the original report was true. "Newsweek is changing its story because of pressure from the U.S. government, " Abdul Latif Hakimi said by telephone.

In Kabul, a U.S. military spokesman told a news briefing the Newsweek retraction had no bearing on the U.S. position.

"Any disrespect to the Koran and any other religion is not tolerated by our culture and our values, " said Colonel Jim Yonts.

Kabul University student Abdul Khaliq said Newsweek should be held accountable. "If this was a mistake by Newsweek it should be banned, " he said.

At the weekend, President Hamid Karzai urged Washington to punish anyone found guilty of desecration. The government had no immediate comment on the Newsweek clarification.

In Pakistan, where a November edition of Newsweek was banned for publishing a photograph of a woman's body painted with inscriptions from the Koran, the government last week expressed deep concern about the Guantanamo report and said perpetrators of the reported desecration should be held accountable. (Reporting by Qurban Ali Hamzi in BADAKHSHAN, Dawood Wafa in JALALABAD, Saeed Ali Achakzai in SPIN BOLDAK, Tahir Ikram in ISLAMABAD, Robert Birsel in KABUL)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._pakistan_dc_2