I am an equal opportunity critic. The hypocrisy coming out of the right wing blogosphere since Newsweek admit to shoddy reporting in their Koran desecration story is mind boggling, especially the shady characters that espouses them. Glenn Reynolds at instapundit moralized thus:
"People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because -- let's be clear here -- Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad."
Et tu Glenn. Is it that cut and dry? This is the same guy who spent every week agitating for war with Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was probably involved in 9/11, a war, which ended up snuffing out the lifes of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Damage the image of the United States in the eyes of the international community for years to come. But the macho keyboardist saw nothing wrong with that. Newsweek, in his wingnutted psyche has to be stopped at any cost even in the face of his own wrong assumptions that thousands of innocent people ended up paying the ultimate price for.
Update:
"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not."
"The report has had serious consequences," McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."
Is it just me? Can Scott McClellan lecture anybody on ethics? This guy make a living out of spewing lies in defense of policies that kill hundreds of thousands of people by some estimates. Scott, do the freaking math. The consequences of the lies you tell and the effects of newsweek's story. I am not excusing irresponsible reporting. It is not like newsweek is the first to report the doggone story anyway. It is been swirling around for a while on the blogosphere. How about Scott and his boss taking responsibility for mesopotamia [iraq]?
Man, the audacity of these people [bush &Co] is maddening... yuck.