There are a lot of things I don’t understand in this world. For example, scientists in November were able to produce batteries powered by the properties of ground-up spinach. Apparently peas would have worked just as well, but professor Shuguang Zhang, associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at M.I.T., said spinach is cheaper and more available. “You can buy nice bags of washed baby spinach, and you can get that year-round,” he stated.
While Popeye might have considered spinach-powered batteries possible, I certainly hadn’t. My admittedly limited capacities have also been baffled by the current events of this week.
I don’t understand the recent riots commonly blamed on a hotly contested Newsweek article. The piece alleged that soldiers at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet in the process of interrogation, though the story has since been retracted. Protests spread like wildfire across the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Palestine. In Afghanistan, unrest caused the death of 16 people and the injuries to many more.
If the allegations are true, which they probably aren’t, flushing the Quran was a stupid move on the interrogators’ part. Not only was it likely to increase general tension, but it also doesn’t seem to be an effective technique. Why would such blasphemy encourage terrorist suspects to cough up information helping U.S. interests?
However, regardless of side issues, I think the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat that’s not grazing in its own backyard.
Granted, I’m not Newsweek’s biggest fan. I consider Newsweek, TIME and U.S. News & World Report as the big three “McNews” of the magazine world, serving pre-processed lard completely devoid of nutritional value. However, I do not think that Newsweek truly erred in running the article. In matters of national security and secrecy, it’s important to consider that sources are often anonymous for obvious reasons. Newspapers must often rely, as Newsweek did, on one anonymous source. If only one whistleblower comes forward, it doesn’t mean the story is untrue; sometimes bringing uncorroborated details into the public light is the only way to encourage others to come forward. I hope this incident will not make reporters hesitant to jump on wrongful acts perpetuated by the United States, even if the sources are anonymous.
It would, of course, be nice to see such allegations reported as rumors, not facts. Even so, Newsweek went above and beyond the normal call by submitting the article to the Pentagon for comment before it hit publication. Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek, said the news item came back with no dispute about the Quran detail until days later, just hours before Newsweek’s deadline. The fact that the Pentagon took so long to verify this story suggests to me there was something to investigate and something worthy of public interest.
Additionally, no one could have
anticipated the furor the story would cause. Stories about Quran abuse have been printed before without unleashing massive protests.
Whitaker also notes that there was a time lag between when the story first appeared and when the protests began, adding that the Newsweek article was one of many elements leading to the riots.
Despite these mitigating factors, White House spokesman Scott McClellan seems to be putting most of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Newsweek’s staff, continually discussing the serious consequences of the report and detailing lives lost as a result.
It’s all well and good for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to claim that people need to be just as careful about what they say as what they do, but the uproar over Newsweek’s use of anonymous sources is misdirected at best. Riots did not occur in a vacuum but were the result of a pressured buildup that was exploited by extremists. Clearly, the policies of the United States in Guantanamo Bay and the world in general need to be addressed. Anti-U.S. sentiment only endangers our lives, creates instability and derails peace processes essential to world harmony.
I only wish that mistakes, when made, could be less fatal. Mark Whitaker is not denying that his magazine could have been more careful. Let us hope that we, the general public, don’t make the mistake of allowing a debate over sources to overshadow the terrible incidents that have occurred at interrogators’ hands.

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