Newsweek hesitated here, on the reasonable assumption that just as the magazine was wrong to proceed to publish the story without sufficient foundation, it would be wrong, without sufficient foundation, to take an Orwellian step into "retracting" it.

But, understandably, the magazine yielded the point, even though the difference between regretting a story and retracting it is more than merely semantic. Newsweek was not being asked to take the position that because blasphemy is wrong, a report that it had taken place was derivatively wrong. The author of the story, Mr. Isikoff, might have been reminded of the skepticism with which he was met when, seven years ago, he said that the president of the United States was having sex with an intern.

The underlying difficulty derives from the fact that infamous people are capable of infamy -- that the U.S. military could include, in Guantanamo, a soldier or two who behaved not as they should, but as other U.S. soldiers did in Abu Ghraib two years ago.