Such Hypocrits

According to an article this morning in the Chicago Tribune, the Bush administration is pressuring Newsweek to do more to atone for incorrectly reporting that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. From the article:

"Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the magazine should decide for itself how to undo what he called 'serious consequences' and 'lasting damage' from its reporting, but he repeatedly offered a suggestion. 'One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are,' McClellan said. 'Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care.'

This is the same response that they had when Dan Rather used documents that turned out to have been forged in a story about Bush's "service" in the Texas Air National Guard, although in that case, I believe, they never denied the accuracy of the story, just that the evidence was faulty.

They demand accountability when journalist's story turns out to be factually incorrect, but show absolutely no accountability when they misled the entire country and went to war over ridiculous claims of Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. What are the "serious consequences" and "lasting damage"? If there are any, do they even begin to compare to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation?