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I’ve been meaning to make a thread on this, so I’m glad someone stepped up to the plate on it. In general, the guy who wrote this, Isikoff, called his reliable source who said he had seen the Koran in the toilet bit in the upcoming report. Isikoff ran it by 2 other Pentagon source, whom did not refute the charge. So Isikoff went ahead and published it, saying a White House source told him. Then he calls the source back and the source says that maybe it was in some other documents and not in the report itself. As a consequence, Isikoff couldn’t verify the source saying it was in the original report cited, so he had to retract it. Then, of course, Newsweek came out in their apology:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7937042/site/newsweek/
To me this looks more like an overly hurried retraction in order to save themselves from the Right Wing Noise Machine’s attack like on CBS’s memogate fiasco. And if I tighten my tin foil hat a bit more, it also seems Isikoff’s reliable source in the Pentagon suddenly had a hazy memory where exactly he saw this comment about the Koran in the toilet AFTER it was published out and the Right Wing Machine put out an immediate blitzkrieg on them.
But truth be told, I’m not crazy about Isikoff’s journalistic standards to begin with. The guy has a pretty tainted past with his “reliable” sources in the whole Clinton/Monica scene a few years back, which of course the Right Wing Media gave nothing but high praises for the fuck’s distortions and lies:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200505180001
So he may have been a distorting fuck all along. Who knows.
But what I do know, however, is that these charges and allegations about the Koran being desecrated are nothing new:
| quote: | The Denver Post, January 9
HEADLINE: Nightmare of Guantanamo.... U.S. prison camp in Cuba has become legal black hole, reporter says:
"They were punched, slapped, denied sleep, had seen other prisoners sexually humiliated, hooded and forced to watch copies of the Koran being flushed down toilets. Eventually the pressure proved too much - they gave false confessions that the British intelligence service, MI5, later showed to be untrue. Upon their return to the United Kingdom they were released without being charged."
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Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), January 3, 2005
HEADLINE: Koran prayer torture claim
LONDON -- A British detainee claims he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay for reciting the Koran when talking was banned.
Moazzam Begg told lawyers he was tortured using the strappado, in which a prisoner is suspended from a bar with handcuffs, Britain's Observer newspaper said.
Mr Begg alleged he had been shaven several times against his will and a guard had said on one such occasion: "This is the part that really gets to you Muslims isn't it?""
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Financial Times (London, England), Oct 28, 2004
HEADLINE: Four Britons held at Guantanamo sue US government
In August Mr Ahmed, Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal issued a 115-page dossier accusing the US of abuse, including allegations that they were beaten and had their Korans thrown into toilets.
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USA TODAY, October 18, 2004
HEADLINE: Spy case was a 'life-altering experience' for airman
Al Halabi says he did not witness any treatment of prisoners that has now been called into question as abusive. But he says he saw things at Guantanamo that disturbed him. He says guards would purposely mishandle the Koran "just to see the detainees' reaction."
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Daily News (New York), August 5, 2004
HEADLINE: ABUSED AT GITMO, FREED BRITS CHARGE
"They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it," Asif Iqbal wrote.
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The Independent (London), August 5, 2004
HEADLINE: FATHER CALLS FOR SON'S RELEASE AFTER CAMP DELTA TORTURE CLAIMS BEGG DEMANDS SON'S RELEASE AFTER TORTURE CLAIMS AT CAMP DELTA TORTURE
In the report, released in New York, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - the so-called Tipton Three - said one inmate was threatened after being shown a video in which hooded inmates were forced to sodomise each other. Guards allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets, while others were injected with drugs, it was claimed.
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The San Francisco Chronicle, JUNE 20, 2004
HEADLINE: THE FILE: PRISON ABUSE;
Prisoners have been forced to strip naked -- nudity is a violation of Muslim principles; forced to commit actual or simulated sex acts; prevented from sleeping; threatened with dogs; hooded; given electric shocks; beaten with fists, chains, boots and other objects; forced to maintain painful positions for hours; kept in frigid isolation rooms; subjected to loud music, strobe lights and diets of bread and water; urinated on and prevented from praying or reading the Koran.
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The Observer, May 16, 2004
HEADLINE: Inside Guantanamo Bay
'THEY HAD already searched me and my cell twice that day, gone through my stuff, touched my Koran, felt my body around my private parts. And now they wanted to do it again, just to provoke me, but I said no, because if you submit to everything you turn into a zombie.
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The Guardian (London) - Final Edition, May 14, 2004
HEADLINE: Guantanamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
According to a source, who has interviewed them in secret since their release, they were initially too ashamed to talk about it, and are only now starting to give details. The source said: "They are embarrassed about talking about it because they feel humiliated. We have had an account that their religion was used against them, that a copy of the Koran was brought in front of them and pages torn out."
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The Observer, March 14, 2004
HEADLINE: World Exclusive: Inside Guantanamo: How we survived jail hell
As Muslims, they were shocked when in repeated 'shakedown' searches of the sleeping tents, copies of the Koran would be trampled on by soldiers and, on one occasion, thrown into a toilet bucket. Throughout their stay at Kandahar the guards carried out head-counts every hour at night to keep the prisoners awake.
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The Washington Post, March 26, 2003
HEADLINE: Returning Afghans Talk of Guantanamo; Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment
The men, the largest single group of Afghans to be released after months of detainment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave varying accounts of how American forces treated them during interrogation and detainment. Some displayed medical records showing extensive care by American military doctors, while others complained that American soldiers insulted Islam by sitting on the Koran or dumping their sacred text into a toilet to taunt them.
http://www.craigslist.com/pen/pol/73978707.html |
And most recently:
| quote: | Dozens Have Alleged Koran's Mishandling
Complaints by inmates in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba emerged early. In 2003, the Pentagon set a sensitivity policy after trouble at Guantanamo.
By Richard A. Serrano and John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writers
May 22, 2005
WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials reacted with outrage to a Newsweek report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, and the magazine retracted the story last week. But allegations of disrespectful treatment of Islam's holy book are far from rare.
An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and U.S. military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Koran, not only at Guantanamo, but also at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Pentagon is conducting an internal investigation of reported abuses at the naval base in Cuba, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. The administration has refused to say what the inquiry, still weeks from completion, has found so far.
But two years ago, amid allegations of desecration and hunger strikes by inmates, the Army instituted elaborate procedures for sensitive treatment of the Koran at the prison camp. Once the new procedures were in place, complaints there stopped, said the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors conditions in prisons and detention facilities.
The allegations, both at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, contain detailed descriptions of what Muslim prisoners said was mishandling of the Koran — sometimes in a deliberately provocative manner………
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...-home-headlines |
The biggest problem I have really is when the White House and the Right Wing Mouthpieces attempt to spread their propaganda that this 1 story was the cause of all the recent killings and riots across the globe, which according to both the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers as well as Afghan President Karzai, this assertion is patently untrue:
| quote: | GEN. MYERS: It's the -- it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.
http://www.dod.gov/transcripts/2005...secdef2761.html |
But I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less from the White House and it’s mouthpiece propaganda artists, should we?
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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Nathan Fake - Outhouse (Valentino Kanzyani Remix) 
