If that's a retraction, imagine what the hit-piece looks like!

Alright, I'm embellishing some but Charmaine didn't take too well to Newsweek's 'retraction' of it's desecrated-Koran story yesterday. She makes a good case that what we read and heard from them yesterday isn't so much a retraction but a retrenchment hidden behind an apology.

Read it and draw your conclusions as to how convincing an argument it is. I immediately noticed her reference to Heather McDonald's piece from City-Journal published earlier this year. It is, hands down, the best refutation of any and all the conspiracy-as-policy theories that we suffered through last year about Abu Ghraib.

I am still struck--as I was when I first read it--at the disconnect that exists between the picture that gets painted of policy and procedure by interrogators involved with such and the musings of Uncle Sy and the like:

A master narrative-call it the "torture narrative"-sprang up: the government's 2002 decision to deny Geneva-convention status to al-Qaida fighters, it held, "led directly to the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq," to quote the Washington Post. In particular, torturous interrogation methods, developed at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan in illegal disregard of Geneva protections, migrated to Abu Ghraib and were manifest in the abuse photos.

This story's success depends on the reader's remaining ignorant of the actual interrogation techniques promulgated in the war on terror. Not only were they light years from real torture and hedged around with bureaucratic safeguards, but they had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib anarchy. Moreover, the decision on the Geneva conventions was irrelevant to interrogation practices in Iraq.

McDonald goes on to recount exactly what the safeguards were, what the actual policies were and what did/didn't work to extract information from combatants and suspected terrorists. Furthermore, the US Armed Forces own dealings in the matter counter the conspiratorial musings.

The courts-martial proceedings of Charles Graner and Lyndie England, and frankly every other soldier involved with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, continue putting the lie to the torture narrative. While allegations similar to what Newsweek mentioned have floated around for years now, it is wise to consider something before drawing any conclusions.

As Jack Shafer points out in Slate yesterday: Could it be that the Gitmo prisoners lied or exaggerated about the Quran story, pushing forward the most outrageous meme in their inventory, and that their inflated charges percolated up to Newsweek? The Abu Ghraib photos and reports from various U.S. military lock-downs around the world should prepare us for the possibility that U.S. handlers committed such sacrilege. But if the original source of the allegations turns out to be prisoners, we might want to view their charges with the same doubts we apply to any testimonies about prisons from prisoners.

It is entirely possible that the conduct alleged did in fact occur, and that is why it bears investigation. But this predilection for trusting anonymous sources over and over with the assumption that it is always appropriate to dis-believe everything you hear from your government is damaging. Damaging to the nation's effort to win a war and damaging to the credibility of the press operation it burns.

Yet they don't learn. As Charmaine points out in making her primary point: [From Newsweek] More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, . . .claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident...

Essentially, what they are saying is: "Well, our source at the Pentagon was wrong about the Koran desecration coming out in their own internal investigation, buuuuutttt, it really is happening anyway.

It's fake but accurate all over again.