FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

[ybeayf]

Wed May 25, 5:15 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The release of the declassified document came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.

The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

“Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet,” the FBI agent wrote.

“The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things,” the FBI agent wrote.

Continued here.

 

[ybeayf]

And one more…

Afghan Riots Not Tied to Report on Quran Handling, General Says

Army investigating allegations of mishandling at Guantanamo Bay facility

By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.

According to initial reports, the situation in Jalalabad began on May 10 with peaceful student protests reacting to a report in Newsweek magazine that U.S. military interrogators questioning Muslim detainees at the Guantanamo detention center “had placed Quran s on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book.” By the following day the protests in the city had turned violent with reports of several individuals killed, dozens wounded, and widespread looting of government, diplomatic and nongovernmental assets.

However, Myers said an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report.

Continued here.

 

[Lisa_N]

The ‘Koran flushing’ report is old news and unsubstantiated. That a group of lunatic fanatics used this to stir up trouble is not unexpected.

Lisa N

 

[stumbler]

Ah, good ol’ Reuters. Nothing like a little twist of the knife in the headline, eh?

The FBI memo does NOT report Guantanamo guards flushing Koran. It reports a detainee’s accusation of same. But hey, it’s just a headline, right?

 

[wabrams]

Yeah, I guess you could say it was unsubstantiated. Just a lot of memo’s of accusations, former interrogators and chaplains, third parties, etc. saying it happened, but no hard evidence. Kinda reminds me of something else…oh what was it…oh yeah: WMD in Iraq! That’s it!

 

[Lilyofthevalley]

Oh dear, isn’t that simply idoctrinating these folks into Western Culture???
There was a crucifix in a jar of urine called art, there were feces smeared on the Virgin Mary in the name of art, and the American flag in the toilet in the name of art…so what’s the fuss???

 

[jlw]

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/Cartoons/05-19-2005.gif

Interesting standards, indeed.

 

[ybeayf]

The ‘Koran flushing’ report is old news and unsubstantiated. That a group of lunatic fanatics used this to stir up trouble is not unexpected.

This particular report was only released yesterday.

The FBI memo does NOT report Guantanamo guards flushing Koran. It reports a detainee’s accusation of same.

Personally, I find the detainee’s accusation more than credible.

 

[stumbler]

ybeayf:

Personally, I find the detainee’s accusation more than credible.

Personally, this doesn’t surprise me.

 

[jlw]

Has anyone ever tried to atctually flush a BOOK, let alone a magazine (hey, let’s try your latest issue of Newsweek!) down a toilet???

Gimme a freakin’ break.

At best, the guards did something to appear as if they were desecrating the Koran, wiped what appears to be “that-time-of-month” women’s blood (red ink) on the detainee. AT BEST.

More credible?? More credible for who? Those who WANT to believe it?? Those who WANT to use American over-sensitivity against itself?? Youbetcha.

 

[ybeayf]

Has anyone ever tried to atctually flush a BOOK, let alone a magazine (hey, let’s try your latest issue of Newsweek!) down a toilet???

If you tear pages out of a book, you can use them for all sorts of things – bog wipe, kleenex, rolling a doobie, etc. No problem to flush pages down a toilet. Furthermore, it is very common to see Qur’ans that are themselves very small – around the size of a Gideon Bible, or even smaller --and would lend themselves very nicely to being flushed down a toilet.

At best, the guards did something to appear as if they were desecrating the Koran, wiped what appears to be “that-time-of-month” women’s blood (red ink) on the detainee.

You don’t think it possible for the allegations to be true? If not, why not?

 

[jlw]

usdoj.gov/ag/trainingmanual.htm

To quote that al-Qaeda training manual:

Missions Required of the Military Organization:… 5)Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy…

IF AN INDICTMENT IS ISSUED AND THE TRIAL, BEGINS, THE BROTHER HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING: 1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge. 2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison. 3. Make arrangements for the brother’s defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother’s family or court-appointed. 4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.]

Whether it happened or not.

 

[jlw]

ybeayf:

If you tear pages out of a book, you can use them for all sorts of things – bog wipe, kleenex, rolling a doobie, etc. No problem to flush pages down a toilet. Furthermore, it is very common to see Qur’ans that are themselves very small – around the size of a Gideon Bible, or even smaller --and would lend themselves very nicely to being flushed down a toilet.

You don’t think it possible for the allegations to be true? If not, why not?

BIAS. I have a bias that I believe a 20yr old kid in uniform from Missouri or Wisconsin before I believe a member of al-Qaeda (whole training manual I quoted above).

THERE. I said it. But will you admit your BIAS???

 

[ybeayf]

Very cute. Ready-made excuse to get out of any sort of allegations of mistreatment. How do we know that manual is even authentic? In any case, it does nothing to disprove the current allegations.

 

[ybeayf]

BIAS. I have a bias that I believe a 20yr old kid in uniform from Missouri or Wisconsin before I believe a member of al-Qaeda (whole training manual I quoted above).

THERE. I said it. But will you admit your BIAS???

Yes indeedy. Let me hereby state that I will believe a hallucination induced by inhaling too many fumes from my latest trip to the lavatory before I’ll believe the current administration. If the White House said the sky was blue, I’d look out the window, and if the Pentagon said 1 + 1 = 2, I’d punch it into my calculator just to be sure.

 

[jlw]

ybeayf:

Very cute. Ready-made excuse to get out of any sort of allegations of mistreatment. How do we know that manual is even authentic? In any case, it does nothing to disprove the current allegations.

Does nothing to PROVE it either!!!

So this is journalism??? They teach this in J-school now?? Float a rumor, make the accused prove a negative???

How do we know that manual is even authentic? SWITCH “manual” with the words “detainee claim” and how would *you *answer that??

 

[ybeayf]

So this is journalism??? They teach this in J-school now?? Float a rumor, make the accused prove a negative???

If the allegation is a one-off, I’m with you. If the allegations have been made for two years now, by multiple people, reported in multiple places, and are even mentioned in the government’s own memos, I’d like to see some negative-provin’ goin’ on.

How do we know that manual is even authentic? SWITCH “manual” with the words “detainee claim” and how would you answer that??

I have no doubt that the detainees really made those claims.

 

[jlw]

And what is TORTURE really??? Complaining about appears to be Koran flushing does a great disservice to ACTUAL TORTURE.

This sums up my thoughts quite nicely.

Glen Reynolds at www.instapundit.com

May 17, 2005

ANDREW SULLIVAN seems to think that I should be blogging more about Abu Ghraib, and less about the Newsweek scandal. Well, I think he should be blogging more (er, at least some) about the worse-than-Tiananmen massacre in Uzbekistan, and perhaps a bit less about gay marriage. But so what? What people blog about is none of my business. Andrew seems to feel differently, and beyond that seems to have endorsed the “fake but accurate” defense of *Newsweek’*s reporting.

I do confess that I think that winning the war is much more important than Abu Ghraib, and that viewing the entire war – and the entire American military – through the prism of Abu Ghraib is as unfair as judging all Muslims by the acts of terrorists. Andrew has chosen the role of emoter-in-chief on these subjects, and he’s welcome to it, though he would be more convincing in that part if he didn’t count wrapping people in the Israeli flag as torture.

But while I think that what happened at Abu Ghraib was bad, and that it should be punished, and that Koran-flushing (if it had happened) would have been bad, though not torturous, I don’t think it’s terribly important compared to the war as a whole, and I think that it takes a peculiar perspective to make it emblematic of the war, and of the American military, which seems to be where Andrew is going these days, at least to judge – as he invites us to – by the volume of posts. Every war has its Abu Ghraibs – and, usually, its Dresdens and its Atlantas, which this war has lacked, not because America didn’t have the ability, but because it possessed a decency and restraint that gets small credit. When Andrew was a champion of the war on terror, writing about martial spirit and fifth columns composed of the "decadent left," did he believe that nothing like Abu Ghraib would happen, when such things (and much worse) happen in prisons across America (and everywhere else) on a daily basis? If so, he was writing out of an appalling ignorance.

As Mickey Kaus has noted, Andrew can be excitable. A while back he apologized to me for some of his criticisms during the election, and more recently he has apologized to his readers for his waffling and defeatism on the war last spring. Perhaps he’ll apologize for this at some point in the future. But, I confess, I find the question of what Andrew thinks less pressing than I used to.

 

[LtTony]

While I don’t belive the Koran thing, I also think that we must remember that we have placed a tremendous amount of pressure and responsibility on some very young people. Kids, who have to grow up very, very fast under the worst of circumstances. Expected to perform a demanding task with possibly lesss-than-optimum training.

Bottom line: It is a war, after all. There is probably no systemic problem, but we need to keep an eye on the youngsters.

Jim

 

[Lilyofthevalley]

Very cute. Ready-made excuse to get out of any sort of allegations of mistreatment. How do we know that manual is even authentic? In any case, it does nothing to disprove the current allegations.
It’s ART! Taking religious items and degrading them, is considered ART in this day and age.