"It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer and journalist in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday. "No one will accept it."

Can we expect Senator Ted Kennedy to lead the path for Democrats to raise an eyebrow of skepticism? Should this happen, it will represent an even greater shame than the behavior of Democrats (led by Ted Kennedy) after Abu Ghraib. Democrats were--in their own way--happy about Abu Ghraib, as it gave them ammunition against the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq (this is evident in their commemoration of the anniversary of the leaking of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal).

No doubt, Democrats want to believe the faked Newsweek story is true, as they are adamantly against the imprisonment of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, just as they want to believe every story (true or untrue) that portrays the United States and/or the Bush Administration as evil or wrong.

How long before the Democrats hop on board with the skeptical clerics? How long before they echo the sentiments of Sayed Elyas Sedaqat, the head of a cultural group in the city of Jalalabad, who surmised that "possibly, the American government put pressure on the magazine to issue the retraction to avoid the anger of Muslims." Sounds like a job for one Ted Kennedy to take that line and replace "American government" with "Bush Administration," and go on national television lambasting President Bush. It's all a matter of time.