Ahmed Tharwat

Responding to the allegations of the desecration of the Qur'an, which was recently retracted from a Newsweek story, Mr. McCllellan, the White House spokesmen declared, "The story has damaged the image of the United State abroad". Following that breath-taking insight, Mark Whitaker, the Newsweek editor said in a lawyer's tone, "I thought the magazine had retracted what we think we may have gotten wrong". Can't you almost feel his arm being twisted behind his back?

This farcical situation makes you wonder if they even teach history in our journalism schools any more. Or why has the Bush Administration waited two weeks after the alleged report was published to do damage control. How many dead Arabs does it take to make the Bush administration think about the image of the U.S. abroad? Does anyone with a shred of common sense really believe the claim that the Newsweek report has damaged the United States' credibility in the world? Has everyone been ignoring what has been happening in the last three years? Invading two countries with majority Muslim populations in two years (Afghanistan and Iraq); more than 100,000 Iraqis dead so far; more than 1600 American soldiers dead in a controversial invasion; and nothing to show for it accept a pile of ballots. This doesn't even take into consideration our failure to sign major global environmental and non-proliferation treaties.

In almost a comical tragic way, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that "people need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be very careful about what they do. I wish he had listened to his own advice before invading Iraq. Ironically, in the political dynamics of the Middle East, you can say anything you want as long as you don't act on it. Here it was the alleged actions of U.S. soldiers that wound up in a news article that triggered this whole series of events. The Newsweek could have retracted their statement as causally as they did with their reporting in the first place.

It seems in this era that is moving from the freedom of expression to the freedom of spinning, no one knows who is telling the truth anymore. Our media now is experiencing tremendous pressure from the right wing propaganda machine and the Bush administration, so that even the most respected media outlet like Times, Public Broadcasting and CBS are caving in to the pressure. The Times is hiring editors from the WSJ editorials staff, while National Public Television is now led by a conservative executive. Remember the pressure that the political machine for the Bush administration put on CBS 60 minutes to try to prevent the airing of the scandal in Abu Gharaib. Now they seem to be exerting a mountainous pressure on Newsweek to retract their story even after publishing it.

Whether what happened in Guantanamo Bay is true or not, and most of the people I've spoken with seem to think it is irrelevant to the fact that the American standing in the world, especially in the Muslim world, has reached rock bottom since the invasion of Iraq. There is no amount of spinning, damage control or retracting that could fix that. With an administration that is so right wing that it can't even see the reality in which it operates, and a president who is guided by looking at people in the eyes and letting his gut-feeling guide him through complex world events, how can one small line in a magazine article do all that much damage in the Muslim world. What Muslims and the peace-loving people around the world should abhor about is not the abuse of the Qur'an in the Guantanamo Bay but the Bush administration abuse of the principles of the Qur'an in the world, namely justice and peace!

Ahmed Tharwat/ producer
BelAhdan
Arab American TV Show
Airs on Public TV Sundays 10:30PM
952-933-6825
www.Belahdan.com

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