It's Appalling. Really.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, at the Daily Press Briefing, May 16:

MR. BOUCHER: I mean, it's appalling, really, that an article that was unfounded to begin with has caused so much harm, including loss of life. And one would expect as the facts come out of how this story was written, one would expect more than the kind of correction we've seen so far.

Perhaps we could get an independent commission. I believe there's some precedent for that...

Q If I can have one follow up to that. Does it concern the President that the primary source for the intelligence on the mobile biological weapons labs was a guy that U.S. intelligence never even interviewed?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, all these issues will be looked at as part of a broad review by the independent commission that the President appointed. It's important that we -- but I remind you, too, that the Iraq Survey Group work -- the work of the Iraq Survey Group is ongoing. Charles Duelfer gave an update to Congress last week, a status report. But again, he reaffirmed what David Kay previously said, that Iraq was in serious violation of its -- of the Security Council resolutions. But it's important that we look at what we learn on the ground and compare that with what we believed prior to going into Iraq. And that's exactly what the independent commission will do.

After all, why should an independent newsweekly, using a previously reliable source, publishing a short sentence in its most 'gossipy' column, which was shown before publication to a different goverment official who had no objection, which merely amplified an allegation that had been made a number of times before, and which according to the Pentagon's person on the scene wasn't even the real reason for the rioting, be held to a lesser standard than the government of a superpower that repeated charges from someone they never actually spoke to, and formally presented such nonsense to the Security Council of the United Nations as part of a widespread effort to mislead the world in support of its predetermined policy of taking military action against a sovereign nation, leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians and American soldiers?

It's appalling, really, that guys like Boucher and McClellan aren't being laughed off the podium when they open their mouths with such comments about Newsweek.

Update: Cf: Olbermann.