Darn MSM gets it right again

[norbert]

So, the Koran was mishandled, and Newsweek was right after all.
Maybe the mainstream media isn’t trying to destroy Western civilization. Maybe they’re just trying to report the news.

 

[space_ghost]

norbert:

So, the Koran was mishandled, and Newsweek was right after all.
Maybe the mainstream media isn’t trying to destroy Western civilization. Maybe they’re just trying to report the news.

…give them time… they will be spinning the yarn of how it was justified… not the sacriledge, but the lying to the american people, and the “anything the DOD does is justifiable” crowd will be bashing those that question the justice of it all, or should i say injustice…

Peace:thumbsup:

 

[gilliam]

norbert:

So, the Koran was mishandled, and Newsweek was right after all.
Maybe the mainstream media isn’t trying to destroy Western civilization. Maybe they’re just trying to report the news.

More information on the net:

Buried down in the AP story about Quran abuses at Gitmo, we learn:[Hood] said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans. “These included using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran,” Hood’s report said. It offered no possible explanation for those alleged abuses. In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18, 2005, allegedly ripped up his Quran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several of the guards witnessed this, Hood reported.

The WaPo headline over the AP story instead reads: “U.S. Confirms Gitmo Soldier Kicked Quran.” But the article provides no further details of that single incident, instead reporting on one instance of a contract interrogator, not a soldier, stepping on a Quran and then apologizing. The contract interrogator was later fired. In other cases, the story notes, “a guard’s urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.”…
***Don’t trust the MSM reports. Read the Pentagon’s investigative findings for yourself here. See also the Pentagon news release, which puts things in proper perspective and the text of US military regs on handling the Koran. All in PDF.

Bona fide abusers should be, and from all reports appear to have been, investigated and punished accordingly. But as Charles Krauthammer writes powerfully in his column from earlier today, “the self-flagellation has gone far enough.” Krauthammer’s last words:

Does the Koran deserve special respect? Of course it does. As do the Bibles destroyed by the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the Torahs blown up in various synagogues from Tunisia to Turkey. Should the United States apologize? If there were mishandlings of the Koran, we should say so and express regret. And that should be in the context of our remarkably humane and tolerant treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners, and in the context of a global war on terrorism (for example, the campaign in Afghanistan) conducted with a discrimination and a concern for civilian safety rarely seen in the annals of warfare.

Then we should get over it, stop whimpering and start defending ourselves.

Amen.

Read More »

 

[gilliam]

Update: Here’s an interesting e-mail that just arrived…Your article describing the treatment of detainees and their access to books other than the Koran is accurate. The detainees also have their own medical facility and an exercise yard where they run, play soccer and engage in other physical activities. I know these things because I was a guard there from Dec. 2002 to Sept. 2003. I was in a National Guard infantry unit assigned to man the towers inside and the checkpoints around Camp Delta. I have seen these things firsthand.

I will never forget seeing an MP waiting at Guantanamo Bay Naval Hospital after being splattered by a detainees bodily fluids. You never hear about these incidents in the media and you never hear about MP’s having to be tested for hepatitis and other infections due to these incidents.

Gitmo, like most detention facilities, will never approach any state of perfection. However, from what I have observed, most injuries to detainees were self-inflicted, such as attempted suicides.

That notwithstanding, the general atmosphere is not threatening. I cannot count the number of times a detainee would look up at me in one of the towers and give me a friendly smile and wave.

Prior to our units deployment to Gitmo we were trained to look for any sign of abuse toward the detainees and report it immediately. We were given cards with specific steps to take if such an event occured. This card became an inspectable item that we had to carry in our uniform shirt pocket when on duty.

This was all done to drive home to us the idea that we were there to do three specific things. We were to keep out unathorized personnel, prevent the escape of detainees, and ensure the safety of the detainees.

The correspondent also notes:

1.The international media makes regular visits (almost every week when I was stationed there). 2. The IRC is there all the time. They don’t just make occasional visits. 3. The FBI is there all the time. Not just to make inspections.

Some gulag.

Update II: Miracles do happen. CNN gets a headline right: Detainees, not soldiers, flushed Quran

Read More »

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[space_ghost]

…i rest my case:thumbsup:

 

[gilliam]

space ghost:

…i rest my case:thumbsup:

One can only hope

More on the urine report:

We have the odd incident of urine flying through a grate.

As described in the Hood report, the guard had left his observation post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block. The incident was not further explained.

Read the Pentagon’s investigative findings for yourself here. See also the Pentagon news release, which puts things in proper perspective and the text of US military regs on handling the Koran.

 

[mlchance]

norbert:

So, the Koran was mishandled, and Newsweek was right after all.

Newsweek alleged that Gitmo interrogators flushed a Koran down a toilet in front of detainees. That is a very specific allegation for which there was never any credible evidence. In fact, the source of the allegation has since recanted. No investigation has confirmed any U.S. personnel flushing a Koran.

So, then, it is quite obvious that Newsweek was wrong and remains wrong about the report that magazine has since retracted.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Mom_of_one]

There’s always more to a story than what we are told.

 

[space_ghost]

gilliam:

One can only hope

More on the urine report:

We have the odd incident of urine flying through a grate.

As described in the Hood report, the guard had left his observation post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block. The incident was not further explained.

Read the Pentagon’s investigative findings for yourself here. See also the Pentagon news release, which puts things in proper perspective and the text of US military regs on handling the Koran.

…keep beating the drum… someone might hear… better yet, you might even convince someone…

Peace:thumbsup:

 

[Fitz]

norbert:

So, the Koran was mishandled, and Newsweek was right after all.
Maybe the mainstream media isn’t trying to destroy Western civilization. Maybe they’re just trying to report the news.

The detainees mishandled the Koran. The other reports are questionable. It is not our policy to mishandle the Koran. What more can be said about this? No one wants the Koran mishandled. Why do the detainees participate in this behavior? Perhaps they are trying to use the advide in their training manuals that lead them to cause this type of disturbance to claim that they are being mishandled as well as the Koran. Never mind that they are being held due to their activites. Why would you believe them over our soldiers?