Mantra

The most commons phrase I hear from liberals these days is "Bush lied, people died!". The other big one is "No one died when Clinton lied" which I hope they made sure to reference to the people in Kosovo and Iraq, lest we forget that in order to get the press to settle down on his affair he made more sensational news for the media to report on.

Now the conservatives have a chance, "Newsweek lied, people died." A story they ran caused people to act so violently that people died because of it. A story that was completely unverifiable, totally bogus, yet printed as the honest truth. Except, people died for newsweeks sensationalist journalism. It is truly sad that they printed a story with no fact checking, especially a story like this where they knew it had further reaching consequences. Of course though, the news and media outlets have their standard bias, America can do no right.

Drudge has a link to a transcript which tells me something about the press as a whole:

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report....

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That's all I'm saying.

Q As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think Newsweek has talked about it. They took it --

What!? First they go the Dan Rather route with it, "Government Censorship!" they cry, then when beat back by McClellan they finally resort to trying to make it appear as if this incident did happen. Can someone investigate, what? We already know of the report from there, it was not the military who desicrated the Quran, it was the terrorist swine who did it, but of course, being good liberals and all, the facts of the case simply do not matter.

Newsweek Lied, people died.