Newsweek magazine's decision to apologize on Sunday for reporting last week that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet wasn't the first hint that the story that has outraged Muslims worldwide may not be true.
On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that the only evidence of any Koran desecration unearthed so far was a log notation describing a Muslim prisoner tossing pages from his holy book into the toilet. "A detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting them in a toilet to stop it up as a protest," Gen. Myers said, in quotes picked up by the Washington Times. "But not where the U.S. did it."
The top military man said that a review of interrogation logs offers no evidence "that there was ever the case of the toilet incident" as reported by Newsweek.
The magazine's misreport prompted anti-American riots in Afghanistan that have so far resulted in the deaths of 17 people - not to mention demands for an apology from President Bush.
Muslim clerics in the Middle East have yet to comment on Gen. Myers' revelation that it was likely one of their own who treated the Koran like toilet paper.
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