Flushed Korans and WMD

Newsweek is currently being raked over the cols by the consevative media for publishing an unconfirmed report that a copy ofthe Koran had been flushed down a toilet by Guantanimo prison guards. But is thi really that different from the Bush Administration's accusations in 2003 that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and was well on its way to producing a nuclear bomb?

Compare the situations:

Newsweek published a story that was plausable given other information that has come out about Guantanimo, but could not be poperly confirmed. People Rioted and some people died as a result.

The Bush Administration spend months playing up Iraqi WMD's, but what was behind it?

Iraqi WMDs were plausable because:

Iraq had chemical weapons in the 1980s and used them on Iranians and Kurds.
Iraq could not account for the destruction of all of them (translation: the proper paperwork could not be found or did not exist.)

And the evidence that they did exist in 2003?

A discredited report of an Iraqi attempt to purchase plutonium cake (used after the Administration was told the evidence was forged).

Satillite photos of industrial activity that don't tell by themselves what the activity is.

An informant in Germany who talked about vast stockpiles of chemical and biological agents and unmanned planes to spread.

Based on a mix of weak evidence and speculation, Bush, Cheney, Rice and others talked about how "certain" they were and how they knew "for a fact" that these purported weapons constituted a "gathering threat."

Was there an opportunity to confirm this inteligence? Of course! But when the returning weapons inspectors threatened to undermine the case for war, the invaion was quickly launced, directly leading to the deaths of more than 1500 Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis.

Newsweek has retracted the story of the flushed Koran. When will Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld going to retract their stories?