As temperatures rise regarding the Newsweek story in which the magazine quoted an anonymous source describing the desecration of a copy of the Koran, the Bush administration appear divided over both the impact that the brief item had on riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan and on the US image in the Muslim world, and on whether the allegation has, as the White House says, been discredited.

It's not unusual for officials of an administration to be at odds with one another over particular policies or events, although the current Bush administration maintain better message discipline than most.

In this instance, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita and White House press secretary Scott McClellan are contradicting the US commander in Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Army's Southern Command, and each other.

In a May 12 Department of Defense briefing, several days after rioting had broken out in Afghanistan and spread to Pakistan, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Richard Meyers said that General Karl Eikenberry believed the rioting was unrelated to the Newsweek article.

"It's the — it's the judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran — and I'll get to that in just a minute — but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's — that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't — he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

Eikenberry's judgement has since been discarded as both the Pentagon and the White House explicitly blame the rioting on the Newsweek item. DiRita is quoted by Newsweek as saying, when the magazine informed him that their source still stood behind his allegation but was no longer certain where he had seen it, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

Two days prior to the Meyers briefing, on May 10, DiRita responded to a question about the Newsweek item by saying that an investigation into the allegations was underway and would probably be completed in several weeks. But six days later, press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that he knew of no incidents where US personnel put Korans in toilets, and that "the Department of Defense said last week that they could find no credible evidence of it either. They have looked into it."