NYT: "A Sudden Taste For Openness"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/opinion/18wed2.html?th&emc=th

A Sudden Taste for Openness

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It took Newsweek about two weeks to retract its report.

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The White House and the Pentagon have refused to begin any serious examination of the policymaking that led to the abuse, humiliation, torture and even killing of prisoners taken during antiterrorist operations and the invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, the administration has stonewalled outside efforts to accomplish that task. No senior officer or civilian official has been held accountable for policies that put every American soldier at greater risk. The men who wrote the memos on legalized torture and evading the Geneva Conventions have been promoted.

If the Pentagon is as enthusiastic about accountability in its own house as its spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, is when it comes to Newsweek, then it should release the Southern Command's report on Guantánamo Bay, on which the magazine report was based. The administration should also release all the other reports on prisoner abuse it has been withholding, including one by the Central Intelligence Agency about its illegal practice of hiding prisoners from the Red Cross. And it should encourage Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to conduct a full investigation of the formation of the policy on prisoners, rather than pressuring him to stop.

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Just WOW. Can anyone point to a harder hitting article in the NYT in the past 6 months?

It's an editorial, by the way.

they are making fools of themselves

by trying to defame the credibility of newsweek. Call it the 'Schiavo Effect'. I hope they continue to do this, because it's making them look bigger idiots than they already are.

There's a scene in Excalibur where Merlin tricks an enchantress into expellilng all her power on to herself while she was in a dream. BushCo is doing the same thing by trying to tell newsweek about being credible, because everyone the world over knows that this administration has 0, that is ZERO credibility.

the fact that they are never held accountable is one thing. But when they accuse OTHERS of "credibility issues", they draw attention to their OWN credibility. And since there's absolutely NONE there, they're making themselves an easy target. Their usual tactic is to create a smokescreen to deter attention AWAY from their own issues. This time they are drawing attention TO THEMSELVES. And they are so corrupt, so arrogant, they are simply unable to stop themselves.

To the Editor:

Re "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report" (front page, May 17):

I find it ironic that the White House is demanding more than a retraction from Newsweek over its report that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to unnerve detainees by desecrating the Koran.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said: "The report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."

Mr. McClellan said Newsweek's retraction was a "good first step."

As a 9/11 widow who witnessed worldwide support of the United States after 9/11, now, I witness wide hatred of America.

Such hatred has little to do with the Newsweek article. It has everything to do with the Bush administration's pre-emptive war in Iraq. A war based on dead wrong intelligence that has cost thousands of lives. A war based on faulty reasons that have never been retracted, let alone fully explained to the American people or the world.

Mr. McClellan speaks of journalistic standards. How about executive-branch standards that should be met before taking a country into a false war, a war that has made the entire world less safe?

I am all for accountability and retractions. But such things need to start at the top.

Kristen Breitweiser
Shelter Island, N.Y., May 17, 2005

A pity they waited so long.

It took the W.H. 2 years to decide it was time to use this story, so the attention could be diverted from the REAL story: the Downing St memo!

We know it, they know it, the rest of the world knows it.