Words...Consequences

Well gee, last Thursday, May 12th from the Chair of the Joint Chiefs:

General Myers also told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Carl Eichenberry, disagrees with the reports that protests in the city of Jalalabad were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident.

"It is the judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran, but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his cabinet are conducting in Afghanistan. He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," he explained.

Yet now, news organizations are just saying the protests were solely caused by the flushed Quran (or Koran), Myers statement (except for Olbermann) has disappeared into the memory hole. And the response of the Bush Administration and the cowardice of our press has not been in greater evidence since the jingoistic days of March/April 2003.

Meanwhile, the Administration that brought you Iraq (with its press facilitators) are saying statements that any person with a non-addled brain would find tragic and laughable:


"People lost their lives. People are dead," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do."


"I do think it's done a lot of harm," Rice said. "Of course, 16 people died but it's also done a lot of harm to America's efforts" to demonstrate tolerance and breed goodwill in the Muslim world.


McClellan said a retraction was only "a good first step" and said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military."