Week 5

Smart Retort

Week 5

Welcome to this week's Smart Retorts.

This one is about the Newsweek Koran desecration story fiasco.

Initially, this week's column made me immediately think back on another recent one, "It's not about the balance or the bias, it's all about the Benjamins", where Gil appeared to be defending bias in news stories.

(psst. Look where it's gotten some of your reporter colleagues on this one, Gil.)

In this week's column, Gil states "The Newsweek scandal, for all its ferocity, has largely glossed over that no one is really denying the incident described took place."

Oh really?

Must have missed what Tommy Franks had to say, which you can read here:

They cannot confirm yet that there was ever the case of the toilet incident, except for one case -- a log entry which they still have to confirm -- where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting [them] in the toilet to stop it up as a protest. -- Tommy Franks

Perhaps Gil missed that a military spokesman, "dismissed the claims as unbelievable" right in NEWSWEEK!!!!!?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7857407/site/newsweek/page/2/

A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

The U.S. had a memo on handling the Koran.

More than two years ago, the Pentagon issued detailed rules for handling the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, requiring U.S. personnel to ensure that the holy book is not placed in "offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas." The three-page memorandum, dated Jan. 19, 2003, says that only Muslim chaplains and Muslim interpreters can handle the holy book, and only after putting on clean gloves in full view of detainees.

OK, we're off to a good start this week!

Let's examine this one about the Nixon Watergate scandal, which reads like a plagiarized sentence off a moonbat's liberal website:

"Without Deep Throat, the story never breaks wide open in the manner it did. The dirty tricks and subsequent cover-up goes unreported."

It's hard to figure how the story would have never broken when the initial burglary arrest was made on June 17, 1972. Right off the bat, one of the burglars claimed to work for the CIA apparently before the Washington Post even broke the story.

It's hard to believe that Deep Throat was any type of smoking gun, or essential party in the Watergate scandal that would have left things unreported.

Just ask the former city editor of the Washington Post, Barry Sussman. It appears that Deep Throat was not all that essential to the Washington Post reporting on the Watergate Scandal.

Deep Throat barely figured in the Post's Watergate coverage. He was nice to have around, but that's about it.

Gil uses the phrase "telling the truth" several times in his article.

Is it ironic that his own biased column and the retracted Newsweek story do little to accomplish that objective?