Over at Teekay’s

Newsweek on Sunday retracted (see here, here, and here) , or kind of retracted, a story about interrogation practices at Guantanamo bay that had sparked violent clashes in several Muslim countries, notably Pakistan and Afghanistan. At least 16 people were reported killed in the unrest. Newsweek now says the original source was no longer “confident” he actually saw reported in a Pentagon document what he told the magazine’s reporters — that a Holy Quran had been flushed down the toilet to soften up the detainees.

Oops, sorry, next time we’ll try to confirm what our sources tell us. Really sorry ’bout that.

Scary thing is, though, that the initial report — even if false — sounded entirely credible. And of course there will be those who will tell you that Newsweek was forced by the U.S. government to retract, or is owned by Jews, or is a big nasty U.S. corporation that had no choice but to retract. [Update, as of early afternoon: this has already happened on a mailing list I’m on. Ah, if only I were as good at predicting the stockmarket!] But even these nutcases (which seem to make up around 85 percent of the world’s population) shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s scandalous such a report would ring credible — which it did! And for that, the administration has nobody to blame but itself.