Pentagon admits Koran desecration

Now tell me, if the media prints a story, then later retracts it, because of governmental pressure, and afterwards it turns out to be true anyway, do we still have freedom of the press? I'm all for "punishing" falsehoods, as well as "stretched" truths, but this seems to go beyond that.
Recently a news magazine published a report describing a Koran being flushed in the toilet. It later retracted that story because of ? ......... pressure?....... It now turns out to have been a true story, with the U.S. government finally admitting it. So what gives here? censorship? or something else? your opinion?
My opinion is that the terrorists won on 9/11. the U.S. is no longer as free as it once was; not by a longshot. And to make matters worse laws, supposedly passed. to combat terrorism, are being used to circumvent our freedoms.
So, no matter the outcome in Afghanistan and Iraq and wherever Bush invades next, Americans have already lost something near and dear to them; something that took hundreds of years to perfect, their freedoms