"Spikey" gets spiked

Scott McClellan says Newsweek's retraction "is a good first step." Um, what more is Newsweek supposed to do, agree to only run stories praising the administration's handling of the war? Don't answer that. Of course, that's what McClellan is demanding.

Personally, I think it's kind of amusing to watch Lucianna Goldberg's favorite reporter get screwed by his own anonymous White House source, but, like me, Keith Olberman (via Atrios) smells something noxious about this whole thing.

One of the most under-publicized analyses of 9/11 concludes that Osama Bin Laden assumed that the attacks on the U.S. would galvanize Islamic anger towards this country, and they'd overthrow their secular governments and woo-hoo we've got an international religious war. Obviously it didn't happen. It didn't even happen when the West went into Iraq. But if stuff like the Newsweek version of a now two-year old tale about toilets and Qu’rans is enough to set off rioting in the streets of countries whose nationals were not even the supposed recipients of the ‘abuse’, then weren’t those members of the military or the government with whom Newsweek vetted the plausibility of its item, honor-bound to say “you can’t print this”?

Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The way Craig Crawford reconstructed it, this one went similarly to the way the Killian Memos story evolved at the White House. The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet - or has its proxies do it for them.

That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous.