Saturday, June 04, 2005
Pissing in the Wind: A Late Night News Dump Reveals Koran "Mishandling" Details
Late Friday, the Pentagon released new details about five confirmed cases of Koran "mishandling" at Guantanamo Bay. The incidents included:
1. Urinating on a Koran
2. Throwing water balloons on a Koran
3. Kicking a Koran
4. Writing a two-word profanity on the inside cover of the Koran
Brig. General Jay Hood, commander of a Joint Task Force Guantanamo, issued the details after completing a three week investigation into alleged Koran mishandling incidents. From the Washington Post:
"Mishandling a Koran at Guantanamo Bay is a rare occurrence," Hood said in the statement. "Mishandling of a Koran here is never condoned. When one considers the many thousands of times detainees have been moved and cells have been searched since detention operations first began here in January 2002, I think one can only conclude that respect for detainee religious beliefs was embedded in the culture of [the task force] from the start."
The White House also issued a statement late Friday.
In a statement, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "our men and women in the military adhere to the highest standards, including when it comes to respecting and protecting religious freedom."
Human Rights proponents weighed in on the new details:
Detainees, human rights groups and some military personnel have complained about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. Tom Wilner, an attorney for 11 Kuwaiti nationals being held at the prison, said yesterday that the number and persistence of reports of Koran abuse from detainees indicate a much broader problem than indicated by the Hood inquiry.
"It's sort of amazing today that we define truth as only when the government confirms something happened," Wilner said. "I think there is no question that, especially in the early days of Guantanamo, there was a persistent pattern of physical abuse and religious discrimination, including desecration of the Koran. . . . But it hasn't been fully looked at."
Hood said there was no confirmed incident of a Koran being flushed down a toilet. Rather, rumors that an investigator had flushed a Koran down a toilet had swept through Gitmo "after a detainee dropped his Koran on the floor and other detainees blamed the mishandling on U.S. guards."
The Pentagon investigation, however, did uncover this confirmed incident of Koran "mishandling":
The most recent, and perhaps strangest, case of mishandling was documented on March 25, 2005, when a detainee complained to the guards that urine came through an air vent in his cell and "splashed on him and his Koran while he laid near the air vent." According to Hood's investigation, the guard who was responsible reported himself to his superiors and was reassigned to gate duty. The detainee was given a new uniform and Koran.
"The guard had left his observation area post and went outside to urinate," according to a summary of the incident. "He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the block."
OK, so let me get this straight: Scottie McClellan was shrieking hysterically for Newsweek to retract its "Koran in toilet" report because it was a falsehood that irreparably damaged U.S. relations with the Muslim world, but some guard at Gitmo actually pissed on a Koran and a prisoner in his cell through an air vent?
Seriously, a guard pissed on a prisoner and his Koran. Sure, the Pentagon says it was inadvertent, you know, cuz' the guard was just relieving himself outside of the prison when the "wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block." But who the hell believes that story? Bush? Rummy? Hood? Scottie? Hell, I bet even Tweety-Bird Matthews wouldn't believe that story. No, I don't know why a guard pissed on a prisoner and his Koran, but I do know the Pentagon story is bullshit. And the lawyer for the 11 Kuwaiti nationals being held at Gitmo, Tom Wilner, puts his finger on the problem with these Pentagon/Administration investigations of abuse at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram: "It's sort of amazing today that we define the truth as only when the government confirms something happened."
Right. In the week that former FBI man, Mark Felt, was revealed to be Deep Throat, it comes as an especially delicious irony that the Bush Administration defines truth as only what they confirm it to be. The reason Mark Felt leaked information to the Washington Post was because he knew criminal activity was happening at the highest levels of government and he couldn't go the president, the president's chief of staff, the president's counsel, the director of the FBI, or the attorney general of the United States because they were all implicated in the wrongdoing!!! No matter how revisionists like Chuck Colson, Pat Buchanan, or Peggy Noonan want to spin it, Mark Felt did what he did because he thought the men at the highest levels of government were irreparably harming the welfare of the United States.
And here we are again, 33 years or so later. We have an administration that has led us to war on false pretexts, an administration that cooked the intelligence books in order to sell the war to a gullible American public, an administration that has failed to capture the true terrorist enemy, Osama bin Laden, while bogging the U.S. military down in an increasingly futile effort to "secure democracy in Iraq", an administration that has allowed weapons dumps in Iraq to be stripped by terrorists and insurgents while 1670 American military personnel have been killed in the conflict, an administration that has condoned and enabled torture and abuse in its "War on Terror", an administration that has a fleet of 26 planes to send "terror suspects" to countries like Egypt and Syria where they can be tortured, abused, and murdered by foreign intelligence services, and an administration that has fought a free, independent press at every turn and consolidated power in the executive branch by terrifying its congressional toadies into doing whatever it says.
And Arthur Schlessinger called the Nixon Administration the "Imperial Presidency"? Holy Christ, can you think of a more imperious fuck than George W. Bush, who thinks he's taking dictation directly from God, who thinks he knows everything there is to know about everything (even though the stupid bastard doesn't read anything except the Bible and Ayn Rand), who has no compunction about lying, cheating, stealing, threatening, or murdering people to get his way on everything?
These bastards running the show right now make Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, et al. look like the small-time, petty crooks they really were. Only Kissinger thought really big in the old days (secret bombing campaigns, nighttime invasions into other countries, assassinations, etc.) and he'd fit right in with Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice as they have used the 9/11 attacks as a convenient excuse to consolidate presidential power, remake the Middle East into a neo-con dreamland, gut Constitutional freedoms in the name of a "War on Terror" and transform America from being a beacon of hope and freedom in the world to a symbol of torture, repression, and death.
As long as we allow the Pentagon and the Bush Administration to investigate themselves, we will not get at any objective truth. What we need is subpoena power for an independent investigatory body that doesn't report to anyone in the administration.
What we need is a special prosecutor like Archibald Cox to look into these matters. What we need is a judge like John Sirica to hear the facts about these matters . What we need is Sam Ervin to head a committee to investigate these matters.
What we especially need is an insider to spill the secrets the way Mark Felt did and some intrepid reporters like Bernstein and Woodward who are willing to cover the story energetically, aggressively, and independently.
Unfortunately, we will get none of these things in the very near future. Instead we will get more whitewashes by the Bush Administration and the Pentagon as they release reports that exonerate themselves for any wrongdoing while scapegoating low-level people like Lyndie England for the crimes that have come from the top.
1. Urinating on a Koran
2. Throwing water balloons on a Koran
3. Kicking a Koran
4. Writing a two-word profanity on the inside cover of the Koran
Brig. General Jay Hood, commander of a Joint Task Force Guantanamo, issued the details after completing a three week investigation into alleged Koran mishandling incidents. From the Washington Post:
"Mishandling a Koran at Guantanamo Bay is a rare occurrence," Hood said in the statement. "Mishandling of a Koran here is never condoned. When one considers the many thousands of times detainees have been moved and cells have been searched since detention operations first began here in January 2002, I think one can only conclude that respect for detainee religious beliefs was embedded in the culture of [the task force] from the start."
The White House also issued a statement late Friday.
In a statement, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "our men and women in the military adhere to the highest standards, including when it comes to respecting and protecting religious freedom."
Human Rights proponents weighed in on the new details:
Detainees, human rights groups and some military personnel have complained about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. Tom Wilner, an attorney for 11 Kuwaiti nationals being held at the prison, said yesterday that the number and persistence of reports of Koran abuse from detainees indicate a much broader problem than indicated by the Hood inquiry.
"It's sort of amazing today that we define truth as only when the government confirms something happened," Wilner said. "I think there is no question that, especially in the early days of Guantanamo, there was a persistent pattern of physical abuse and religious discrimination, including desecration of the Koran. . . . But it hasn't been fully looked at."
Hood said there was no confirmed incident of a Koran being flushed down a toilet. Rather, rumors that an investigator had flushed a Koran down a toilet had swept through Gitmo "after a detainee dropped his Koran on the floor and other detainees blamed the mishandling on U.S. guards."
The Pentagon investigation, however, did uncover this confirmed incident of Koran "mishandling":
The most recent, and perhaps strangest, case of mishandling was documented on March 25, 2005, when a detainee complained to the guards that urine came through an air vent in his cell and "splashed on him and his Koran while he laid near the air vent." According to Hood's investigation, the guard who was responsible reported himself to his superiors and was reassigned to gate duty. The detainee was given a new uniform and Koran.
"The guard had left his observation area post and went outside to urinate," according to a summary of the incident. "He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the block."
OK, so let me get this straight: Scottie McClellan was shrieking hysterically for Newsweek to retract its "Koran in toilet" report because it was a falsehood that irreparably damaged U.S. relations with the Muslim world, but some guard at Gitmo actually pissed on a Koran and a prisoner in his cell through an air vent?
Seriously, a guard pissed on a prisoner and his Koran. Sure, the Pentagon says it was inadvertent, you know, cuz' the guard was just relieving himself outside of the prison when the "wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block." But who the hell believes that story? Bush? Rummy? Hood? Scottie? Hell, I bet even Tweety-Bird Matthews wouldn't believe that story. No, I don't know why a guard pissed on a prisoner and his Koran, but I do know the Pentagon story is bullshit. And the lawyer for the 11 Kuwaiti nationals being held at Gitmo, Tom Wilner, puts his finger on the problem with these Pentagon/Administration investigations of abuse at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram: "It's sort of amazing today that we define the truth as only when the government confirms something happened."
Right. In the week that former FBI man, Mark Felt, was revealed to be Deep Throat, it comes as an especially delicious irony that the Bush Administration defines truth as only what they confirm it to be. The reason Mark Felt leaked information to the Washington Post was because he knew criminal activity was happening at the highest levels of government and he couldn't go the president, the president's chief of staff, the president's counsel, the director of the FBI, or the attorney general of the United States because they were all implicated in the wrongdoing!!! No matter how revisionists like Chuck Colson, Pat Buchanan, or Peggy Noonan want to spin it, Mark Felt did what he did because he thought the men at the highest levels of government were irreparably harming the welfare of the United States.
And here we are again, 33 years or so later. We have an administration that has led us to war on false pretexts, an administration that cooked the intelligence books in order to sell the war to a gullible American public, an administration that has failed to capture the true terrorist enemy, Osama bin Laden, while bogging the U.S. military down in an increasingly futile effort to "secure democracy in Iraq", an administration that has allowed weapons dumps in Iraq to be stripped by terrorists and insurgents while 1670 American military personnel have been killed in the conflict, an administration that has condoned and enabled torture and abuse in its "War on Terror", an administration that has a fleet of 26 planes to send "terror suspects" to countries like Egypt and Syria where they can be tortured, abused, and murdered by foreign intelligence services, and an administration that has fought a free, independent press at every turn and consolidated power in the executive branch by terrifying its congressional toadies into doing whatever it says.
And Arthur Schlessinger called the Nixon Administration the "Imperial Presidency"? Holy Christ, can you think of a more imperious fuck than George W. Bush, who thinks he's taking dictation directly from God, who thinks he knows everything there is to know about everything (even though the stupid bastard doesn't read anything except the Bible and Ayn Rand), who has no compunction about lying, cheating, stealing, threatening, or murdering people to get his way on everything?
These bastards running the show right now make Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, et al. look like the small-time, petty crooks they really were. Only Kissinger thought really big in the old days (secret bombing campaigns, nighttime invasions into other countries, assassinations, etc.) and he'd fit right in with Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice as they have used the 9/11 attacks as a convenient excuse to consolidate presidential power, remake the Middle East into a neo-con dreamland, gut Constitutional freedoms in the name of a "War on Terror" and transform America from being a beacon of hope and freedom in the world to a symbol of torture, repression, and death.
As long as we allow the Pentagon and the Bush Administration to investigate themselves, we will not get at any objective truth. What we need is subpoena power for an independent investigatory body that doesn't report to anyone in the administration.
What we need is a special prosecutor like Archibald Cox to look into these matters. What we need is a judge like John Sirica to hear the facts about these matters . What we need is Sam Ervin to head a committee to investigate these matters.
What we especially need is an insider to spill the secrets the way Mark Felt did and some intrepid reporters like Bernstein and Woodward who are willing to cover the story energetically, aggressively, and independently.
Unfortunately, we will get none of these things in the very near future. Instead we will get more whitewashes by the Bush Administration and the Pentagon as they release reports that exonerate themselves for any wrongdoing while scapegoating low-level people like Lyndie England for the crimes that have come from the top.
