A url-http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050525/ap_on_re_us/guantanamo_quran]declassified FBI memo says so.
“Their behavior is bad,” one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent in July 2002. “About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet.”
Pentagon, naturally, has no comment yet.
Troy
Newsweek’s claims are actually old news. The released British prisoners said that the prison guards regularly dropped their Korans “accidentally” into the buckets that they were using as toilets.
Yeah, what they actually got wrong was that the report they mentioned wasn’t actually about the Qur’an toilet thing.
(I think)
Obviously this is all a Liberal Media conspiracy to make the US look bad.
And obviously anyone who says they ought to do better about checking their sources is a right-wing Bush apologist.
Considering that news about such things has been around for a while, I think it’s a moot point whether Newsweek used a bad source. Yes they screwed up, but the sort of thing they reported is happening. I consider their fault to be considerably less that all the papers that let such beastly conduct go by without comment.
If on the other hand they were fabricating such things out of thin air and the allegations weren’t true at the core, then I would be all over them like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately torture, assasination, and war crimes seem to have become common place tools in the US arsenal (which the US doesn’t even bother to hide), and when Newsweek does a “me too” report about something that’s been reported for years it’s easy to believe – not because people are easily fooled or want to believe, but because worse things have already been shown to be true. It’s the same way that a former convict gets much less benefit of the doubt than someone with a clean slate.
Well, they obviously aren’t qualified to be a member of the administration.
See my quote in the other thread about how this criticism only gets leveled at people critcizing power.
OK, let’s get this out of the way:
I think the reasonable position, for us, is to assume it’s not the Koran getting flushed down a toilet that’s pissing people off. That’s just the last straw…anyone not stuck on Fox has a pretty good handle on the notion things are starting to come apart all over the Middle East and in Afghanistan. A delayed reaction to Iraq but, inevitably, the predictable reaction. And it’s just starting…
Look all I’m saying is that if person A does something stupid, we can’t ignore it simply because person B, who is higher up the food chain, did the same stupid thing or worse. I mean if you can find anyone who has successfully deflected attention away from Bush’s fuckups on this forum, please show me the thread because I can’t remember it.
Once again, completely untrue, as the detainee mentioned in the FBI memo personally confirms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6
Once again, completely untrue, as the detainee mentioned in the FBI memo personally confirms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6[/quote]
That Newsweek possibly made a report from a bad source is a terrible distraction from the real and credible reports of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo on an almost weekly basis. Its like pointing out the one standing tree in a forest of stumps.
Once again, completely untrue, as the detainee mentioned in the FBI memo personally confirms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6[/quote]
That Newsweek possibly made a report from a bad source is a terrible distraction from the real and credible reports of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo on an almost weekly basis. Its like pointing out the one standing tree in a forest of stumps.[/quote]
If you want to debate whether or not the justifications and existence of torture, that’s a whole separate topic/thread. The point of this one is that Newsweek negligently reported an inflammatory, false story that damaged the U.S. and incited violence and murder. Do you think that was o.k.?
Once again, completely untrue, as the detainee mentioned in the FBI memo personally confirms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6[/quote]
Unless the detainee in question is publically identified and retracts while safe from further US custody (and where in the world can that be true now, huh?) this retraction doesn’t have a whole lot of credibility.
That’s not a reasonable position, actually. The Koran itself, to Muslims, is essentially like Jesus Christ to Christians (not an image, but the actual “son of god”). While we might view “burning the bible”, for instance, as a symbolic protest against christian fundamentalists, doing the same thing with the Koran is considered the highest form of blasphemy, punishable by death in several Muslim countries.
Sure. However, the fact we’re seeing Islam-wide protests over this tends to make me think there’s more to it. If we weren’t famous for mistreating detainees and if we hadn’t locked up folks without hearing, charges or representation and if we hadn’t invaded Iraq - I tend to think the response would be a tad bit more muted if it even happened at all.
Don’t you?
Once again, completely untrue, as the detainee mentioned in the FBI memo personally confirms:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6[/quote]
That Newsweek possibly made a report from a bad source is a terrible distraction from the real and credible reports of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo on an almost weekly basis. Its like pointing out the one standing tree in a forest of stumps.[/quote]
If you want to debate whether or not the justifications and existence of torture, that’s a whole separate topic/thread. The point of this one is that Newsweek negligently reported an inflammatory, false story that damaged the U.S. and incited violence and murder. Do you think that was o.k.?[/quote]
I disagree, if violence was indeed a direct result of the Newsweek story, which is debatable from what I’ve read, the root cause is still the abuse of prisoners, whether the details in this case are correct or not. Newsweek should obviously be chastized for a mistake, but at this point they’ve acknowledged it and apologized. Mistakes are going to happen in reporting, and that’s a two way street. That transgression, in light of the endless reports of abuse seems to me making mountains out of mole hills. You can say “this thread is about this specific incident” all you want, but I think that’s a bit disingenuous. I think there is a bigger picture to this, and as I said, media accuracy is a two way street. Go look up the crazy work Judith Miller did for Bush in the very pages of the New York Times. If you’re really interested in what’s “damaging the U.S.” I think you need to broaden your scope a bit.
I don’t think directly attributable causality fits within Desslock’s mindset on this topic. It’s all the fault of the liberal press’ aiding and abetting of the enemy.