Three days after reporter Michael Isikoff committed ritual suicide on "Charlie Rose" in the aftermath of his "bungling" a story about Quran abuse at Gitmo, there was rioting in the editorial cubicles of Newsweek.

Already on edge from a week of putting on and taking off its collective hair-shirt, eyes popped out of sockets at the news weekly while reading the first two paragraphs of Neil Lewis' piece in yesterday's New York Times:

"Newly released documents show that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained repeatedly to FBI agents about disrespectful handling of the Quran by soldiers, and, in one case in 2002, said that guards had flushed a Quran down a toilet.

"The prisoners' accounts are described by the agents in detailed summaries of interrogations at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2003. The documents were among more than 300 pages turned over by the FBI to the American Civil Liberties Union in recent days and publicly disclosed yesterday."

After enduring several days of fevered accusations of journalistic hackery from Bush administration lap dogs, Newsweek fell on its sword, retracted the story and tightened its multiple source rule (the only good thing to come out of this mess).

But as Lady Irony would have it, vindication for Newsweek's original story may not be as far off as chief White House smoke- blower Scott McClellan would have us believe.

Old and new allegations of holy book abuse by American interrogators are beginning to spring up in mainstream newspapers like opium poppies in Afghanistan. These allegations threaten to push Carrie Underwood's "American Idol" win and the indictment of the Runaway Bride from the front page.

Yesterday's Washington Post had a similar story by Dan Eggen and Josh White that included a Pentagon assertion that al Qaida soldiers are trained to lie about their treatment while in U.S. custody. Perhaps they are, but allegations of Quran abuse aside, what the government has already grudgingly conceded -- the unauthorized smearing of fake menstrual blood on detainees and forcing some to stand naked during interrogations -- is pretty damn primitive.

Unfortunately, it's not much of a leap of faith to imagine a sadist from Appalachia stuffing a Quran down the toilet. Worse human rights violations than that are done in our name as the war on terrorism heats up.

The headline in Sunday's Los Angeles Times couldn't have been blunter: "Dozens have alleged Koran's mishandling; Complaints by inmates in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba emerged early. In 2003, the Pentagon set a sensitivity policy after trouble at Guantanamo."

While wise guys at Fox News and CNBC were smirking about how many flushes it would take to get the Quran down a toilet -- thus proving to their viewers that the story is obviously bogus -- L.A. Times reporters Richard Serrano and John Daniszewski were examining government documents, court records and interviewing everyone with knowledge of the allegations, from lawyers to detainees.

But until a digital photo of a guard dog carrying a Quran in its mouth turns up on the front page of the New York Post, McClellan will continue telling skeptics and "Bush haters" how ridiculous it is to imagine that anything less than respectful treatment of "terrorist" suspects takes place under American auspices at all times.

This is how the game goes. Presumably, a detainee makes an initial allegation of holy book desecration. Many months later, the military investigates. Guards and interrogators are asked if they have any idea what the terrorist vermin in their charge are talking about, and of course, they never do. "Sacrilege, what sacrilege? We play cards with the prisoners and give them candy."

Satisfied that it has mounted as vigorous a search for truth that wartime sensibilities allow, military justice then rolls over and plays dead until Amnesty International issues a damning report about the incident and many others 18 months later.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a man whose moral clarity is legendary, put his finger on the problem when he insisted the military had to aggressively counteract "anti-American lies" spread by the media and "a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone" and a "casual disregard for the protection of classified information . . . to the detriment of the country."

According to Rummy, the real problem is our right to know what this war is costing in terms of lives, treasure and moral idiocies committed in our name. Meanwhile, pay no attention to the toilets flushing in the background. That's only the Constitution and a Bible or two going down the drain.