What's the Word for It? Oh, Yeah: Treason

Well, that may be a slightly excessive way to describe this, but if we were living by the code of Hammurabi the Newsweek office would be rubble right now. It shouldn't be surprising that Newsweek wouldn't bother to consider the negative effect their report might have, true or otherwise, before jumping at the chance to discredit the US military and the present administration, but I'm still living under the illusion that even reporters and editors have a responsibility to consider all possible effects of their actions before taking them.

News reporting is as competitive as any other profession, and we all make mistakes, but there's no excuse for being part of the problem in Middle East relations. Stop being part of the problem, Newsweek. Your magazine sucks enough without getting people killed.

UPDATE: Varifrank adds, rightly:

It has been said by many historians that during the early days of World War II that the most effective General in the Soviet Army was “General Winter.” This week with the worldwide rioting in Islamic countries thanks to a erroneous report in Newsweek of US Army interrogators in Guantanamo Bay Cuba desecrating the holy Islamic text, we’ve seen an indication that the most effective remaining General in Al-Queda is “General Media.”

And:

Robert McCormick was the publisher of the Chicago Tribune during the war, he was a rabid hater of FDR and his polices. During the Battle of Midway, one of his reporters uncovered the fact that it was the cracking of the Japanese codes that had lead to the victory. So, what did he do? He published the story, page one -large type! Luckily, Japanese Imperial hubris kept them from accepting the story as true and they did not change their codes. They didn’t know the that the story was true until after the war, but had they been paying attention at the time, it could have lead directly to the deaths of thousands of Americans.

The message should be clear but it's not. You see, You can "hate Bush" all you want but if your actions lead to the deaths of people, Americans or people in other countries, is it really worth it? Is your cause really served by the extension of the war? Do you need to win so bad that you are willing to lose the very civilization in which you live? Is it that they "hate Bush" so much or that they loathe themselves so much that has lead them to be so self-distructive?

How much faster had this war been over had the press not leaped to tell the story that we could trace Osama's Satellite telephone conversations? How much faster could this war be over if our own press and media would stop fighting against America, feeding the anti-western bias that has placed so many of Islam into the hands of local warlords?[tiny bit of copy editing by me]

"General Media" indeed.