Newsweek Urged To Repair Damage

White House Calls Retraction Of Quran Story A 'Good First Step'

(CBS/AP) 
"I think we fail to appreciate the volatility of emotions concerning the Muslim religion and in many parts of the world, particularly less developed, we've got to be careful," said McCain told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.

In Afghanistan, the government on Tuesday welcomed Newsweek's retraction, but said it was still angry at the magazine for damaging its appeal for long-term international aid.

Newsweek's retraction on Monday was a "positive step" toward clearing up Afghans' concern about the report, which alleged that U.S. interrogators desecrated Islam's holy book at Guantanamo Bay, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said.

"But at the same time, we feel angered at the way this story has been handled," Ludin said at a news conference.

By triggering last week's protests, the article provided "enemies of Afghanistan" with a chance to foment violence "especially at this stage now that Afghanistan is trying to build long-term strategic partnerships with the rest of the word," Ludin said.

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine decided to publish the short item after hearing from an unnamed U.S. official that a government probe had found evidence a Quran had been flushed down a toilet by interrogators.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into charges of Quran desecration." The spokesman also said the Pentagon had looked into other charges by detainees that the Quran had been desecrated and found them to be "not credible."

Whitaker said the magazine's original source later said he could not be sure he had read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited and that it might have been in another document.

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Whitaker said.

Klaidman said on The Early Show that the source had been a reliable source in the past.

"Then we took it to one public affairs person for the southern command who had been conducting this investigation. That official declined to comment. And we actually took the extraordinary length of providing the article to another senior responsible government official, someone who would number a position to know or to find out, and he did not dispute any aspects of the story that we ultimately published," he added.