Oops, my bad. Sorry about the riots and fatalities.

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker is apologizing to everyone in sight for his magazine's disgraceful conduct.

Newsweek's "inaccurate" (because "fabricated" is such an ugly word, I guess) story, which declared that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had desecrated the Koran, triggered riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in which at least 17 people died and scores more were injured.

From this morning's New York Times (registration required, Bugmenot works.)

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, wrote in the issue of the magazine that goes on sale at newsstands today. In an accompanying article, the magazine wrote that its reporters had relied on an American government official, whom it has not identified, who had incomplete knowledge of the situation.

But Mr. Whitaker said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know what the ultimate facts are."

The information at issue is a sentence in a short "Periscope" item on May 9 about a planned United States Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at the detention facility in Guantánamo. It said that American military investigators had found evidence in an internal report that during the interrogation of detainees, American guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet as a way of trying to provoke the detainees into talking.

Pentagon officials said that no such information was included in the internal report and responded to Newsweek's apology with unusual anger.

I'm feeling some unusual anger myself this morning.

Here's the Official Party Line, in an article in the Washington Post (parent company of Newsweek; registration required, Bugmenot works.)

Whitaker said last night that "whatever facts we got wrong, we apologize for. I've expressed regret for the loss of life and the violence that put American troops in harm's way. I'm getting a lot of angry e-mail about that, and I understand it."

Update, Monday evening: Newsweek has issued a full retraction of the Koran-flushing story (link: BBC News.)