Set 'Em Up, Karl

The news this morning is that Newsweek has retracted their story on the desecration of the Koran at the prison camp in Gitmo, caving in, it would seem, to pressure from the White House. This will no doubt be seen by the right wing as a victory over the "liberal media." Attaturk at Eschaton is reporting that the tagline "Newsweek lied, people died" is making it around the Freepirati, proving that they are, if not original, at least careless about human life for the sake of a rimshot. It will also be seen by them as yet another case where the SCLM will do anything to cast the Bush administration in a bad light -- as if they need any help in doing that -- and they will throw up the Dan Rather-Bush National Guard memo incident last fall as a reminder.

On the left some are arguing that this whole thing smells a little fishy, as though Newsweek got suckered into this story and was set up by a campaign-style dirty-trickster. Some see the fine hand of Karl Rove behind it all.

I admit that it's not outside the realm of possibility. The Bush administration has a long record of animosity towards the press, they've already admitted to paying off sympathetic columnists to peddle their stories, and it's well-known that nothing goes on in the Bush administration without clearing the desk of Mr. Rove. So it's not entirely tin-foil-hattish to think that he could plant a bogus story like flushing the Koran and watch it blow up -- literally and figuratively -- to disgrace Newsweek.

But it's not very likely. While Mr. Rove is undoubtedly a very intelligent and crafty political operative, it's giving him far too much credit to say that he could foresee that a small squib of a story would turn into such a disaster for the magazine. If he could do that, he would also have to see that such an action would fall into the category of being a criminal act -- depraved indifference toward human life -- and could possibly lead to harm against our own citizens. People with that kind of mindset and pathology don't usually rise to a level of prominence without leaving a trail of criminal behavior, like his granny chopped up and stuffed in Hefty bags in the freezer. Karl Rove may be the Haldeman and Ehrlichman of the Bush administration, but he's not Heinrich Himmler.

Besides, it's too easy to blame everything on Karl Rove. If all we do is dismiss everything from White House leaks to Robert Novak in the Plame case to engineering the nuclear option in the Senate to getting James Dobson to take the lead on the kulturkampf against gays as being under the direction of Mr. Rove, we are ignoring at our peril the fact that there are other people and movements that think like him but are working independently. It could be just dumb luck and coincidence that two large and respected news organizations tripped over the rug and instead of focusing on the bigger stories -- there are still questions about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, and there other stories out there about Koran desecration -- the flawed messenger becomes the story.

One thing you can be sure of: while Karl Rove may not have planted the Koran-flush story, he will surely exploit it.