Drudge has picked up on the story that was the buzz of the blogosphere over the weekend.

Click here for full Myopic Zeal coverage of Newsweek’s culpability in the protest deaths.

And Danny Carlton over at JackLewis.net has a different look at the issue.

Most bloggers have focused on what rectal openings the “journalists” at Newsweek are for publishing such a story, and then for offering such a tardy and wimpy “apology” I want to look at something else.

Let’s take two scenarios:

Scenario #1: A copy of the Koran is flushed down a toilet

Scenario #2: A person holding the Koran shoots and kills an innocent person.

Which defiles the Koran more? If the Koran is an object to be worshipped (an idol), then Scenario #1 would. But if the Koran is a source of information to be honored and obeyed, Scenario #2 would defile it more (if part of that message was to respect life and not shed innocent blood, which most Moslems claim it does)

So even if some interrogator flushed a copy of the Koran, if the Koran is the book of wisdom Moslems keep telling us it is, then those who’ve murdered in the name of the Koran have done far, far worse

More people are commenting today. Michelle Malking is all over it. Captain Ed has the following to say about Newsweek’s attempt to blame the Pentagon:

The Pentagon does not issue knee-jerk denials for stories on which they have no information, nor should that be their fallback procedure. If Newsweek chooses to run stories about military procedures based on a single anonymous source after hearing from the Pentagon that they have no record of any such activity, that hardly puts the onus on the Pentagon. Whitaker and Newsweek have started a sleight-of-hand attempt that amounts to a claim that the Pentagon should have stopped them before Isikoff and Baker libeled Gitmo personnel, when the use of single anonymous sourcing should have ben enough for Newsweek to spike the story until it was properly confirmed.

Not only have Isikoff and Baker, and Whitaker, put American soldiers and Marines in further danger, now they blame the military for not censoring them. It’s pathetic, it’s ridiculous, and Newsweek should be ashamed of themselves for this offensive defense of its incompetence and abjectly biased reporting.

LaShawn thinks that even if it’s true, Newsweek should not have reported it.

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer, via Instapundit, has some great points. Michael Williams laughs at the threat of holy war [ED: See comments for clarification]. And Jay Tea, while admitting that the violent protests may have been predictable, wonders if they should have been predictable by reasonable people?

So, bring on the abuse, the sanctions, the penalties for Newsweek. Ban their reporters from covering events. Contact and boycott their advertisers. Pillory them in public. Blame them for the damage to our diplomatic efforts. Mock them. Deride them. Taunt them. Make them stand in the corner at press events while wearing silly hats. Use back issues as toilet paper.

But don’t hold them liable for the deaths. To do that is to excuse the real people to blame — the rioters themselves.

It’s a good point.