AFP file photo
Above: A Muslim detainee at the United States' Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp in Cuba holds a copy of the Koran. Muslims are incensed by reports that U.S. interrogators at the concentration camp desecrated copies of the book that is holy to Muslims in front of Muslim detainees, including flushing a copy of the book down a toilet. Below: Afghani students in Kabul chant anti-American slogans today and Afghani students in Jalalabad burn George W. Bush in effigy yesterday, and Afghani students in Kabul and Pakistani protesters in Islamabad burn American flags today.
 
 
Reuters and AFP photos
U.S.-Muslim relations down the toilet
I'm not Muslim. I'm not Christian or Jewish. I don't claim a gang for God.
I don't consider copies of the Koran or the Jewish bible or the Christian bible or copies of any other scripture to be sacred. I consider them to be objects and to revere them is, to me, tantamount to worshipping objects. I believe in spirituality, which is about what's within, not what's without, and that precludes worshipping objects.
But I generally don't believe in antagonizing or offending those who call themselves Muslim or Jewish or Christian (with the exception, of course, of the psycho-"Christians" in the United States who, if they had their way, would destroy the entire fucking planet...).
So I have a hard time understanding why U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp in Cuba apparently thought it was a bright idea to desecrate the Koran in front of Muslim detainees, including flushing at least one copy of it down a toilet. ("Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence," notes Reuters.)
Three people who were protesting the incredibly stupidly disrespectful actions of U.S. stormtroopers at Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp were killed today in Afghanistan, where student protesters shouted "Death to America!" in Kabul. Four protesters were killed yesterday in Jalalabad, reports Reuters. Muslims in Pakistan also have been protesting.
(Wait -- didn't we "liberate" Afghanistan from the Taliban? How come they don't love us? And isn't Pakistan our ally in the "war on terror"?)
"We have heard from our Muslim friends around the world about their concerns on this matter. We understand and we share their concerns," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I am asking that all our friends around the world reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterize our intentions."
"Mischaracterize our intentions"?
How in the fuck do you "mischaracterize" the United States' Nazi-like treatment of Muslim detainees -- including homicide -- at Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp (where the United States still detains more than 500 Muslims, many of them Afghanis) and elsewhere?
How do you "mischaracterize" such things as a collar and a leash around an Iraqi detainee's neck, U.S. soldiers giving the thumbs up over an Iraqi detainee's corpse and the Koran being flushed down a toilet?
How do you "micharacterize" the United States' slaughter of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis in the "war on terror" since 2001?
Those Americans who put other Americans at risk by behaving in such astoundingly disrespectful and irresponsible ways toward Muslims and Muslim nations are traitors. That goes for the "small" stuff, such as flushing the Koran down a toilet in front of a Muslim, to the huge stuff, such as launching an illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialistic invasion and occupation of a sovereign Muslim nation, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and subsequent civil war. From the idiot who flushed the Koran down a toilet to George W. Bush -- traitors all.
Update (Sunday, May 15, 2005): Newsweek, which originally reported that a U.S. interrogator flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet, now says that maybe the incident happened and maybe it didn't. Too late, though: Sixteen people have died during anti-American protests over the reported U.S. desecration of the Koran, and Afghan clerics are talking about declaring a holy war against the United States (remember that we "liberated" Afghanistan from the Taliban after Sept. 11, 2001, and therefore the Afghanis are supposed to love us to death).
Anyway, here is the Reuters story on Newsweek's backpedaling:
Newsweek magazine said [today] it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
[Today], Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
"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," Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands [tomorrow].
The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But Newsweek said the source later told the magazine he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.
Whitaker told Reuters that Newsweek did not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. "As to whether anything like this happened, we just don't know," he said in an interview. "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either."
The acknowledgment by the magazine came amid heightened scrutiny of the U.S. media, which has seen a rash of news organizations fire reporters and admit that stories were fabricated or plagiarized.
The Pentagon told the magazine the report was wrong last Friday, saying it had investigated earlier allegations of Koran desecration from detainees and found them "not credible."
Newsweek reported that Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita reacted angrily when the magazine asked about the source's continued assertion that he had read about the Koran incident in an investigative report. "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" DiRita told Newsweek.
The May 9 report, which appeared as a brief item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry in the magazine's "Periscope" section, had a huge international impact, sparking the protests from Muslims who consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.
Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Newsweek, which said opponents of the Afghan government including remnants of the Taliban had used its report to fan unrest in the country, said it was not contemplating disciplinary action against staff.
"This was reported very carefully, with great sensitivity and concern, and we'll continue to report on it," said Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. "We have tried to be transparent about exactly what happened, and we leave it to the readers to judge us."
U.S. officials opened an investigation but maintained that members of the Guantanamo security force were sensitive to the religious beliefs and practices of the detainees in U.S. custody.
U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley earlier [today] stressed the report had not been confirmed. "If it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible," Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Newsweek's Whitaker said that when the magazine first heard of the Koran allegation from its source, staff approached two Defense Department officials. One declined to comment, while the other challenged a different aspect of the May 9 story but did not dispute the Koran charge.
The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees."
"We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item," Whitaker said.
"Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited," he wrote.
So there you have it: Maybe the flushing happened and maybe it didn't. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it did, given what we did at Abu Ghraib prison for which we have photographic evidence, and I certainly wouldn't take the fucking Pentagon's word for whether or not the flushing or other acts of desecration of the Koran happened.
This is yet another international public relations nightmare for the Pentagon and for the Bush regime -- do you think that they wouldn't cover this up if they could? They couldn't cover up the Abu Ghraib prison scandal because images of the abuse, torture and homicide of Iraqi detainees at the hands of U.S. military personnel already had been leaked to the media and the media were showing the images. Look at how hard the Pentagon and the Bush regime minimized and ignored the Abu Ghraib prison scandal when a plethora of images proving the scandal were made public -- and now think of how the Pentagon and the Bush regime would spin a burgeoning scandal for which there was no photographic evidence.
After my government blatantly illegally lied to me about its reasons for launching its invasion of Iraq in March 2003, I don't take anything that my government tells me as gospel.
8:42:09 PM 
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