Thoughts on "the story"

Updated I think the reason Newsweek felt comfortable publishing the now-notorious item about desecrations of the Qur'an by troops at Guantanamo even though it was based on a single source (not an "anonymous" source; he may be anonymous to us but he was a "longtime reliable source" for reporter Mike Isikoff, Newsweek says) is that, as a good number of others have mentioned, the accusation was hardly new. Charges of incidents of desecration had been made repeatedly by released detainees from Gitmo, including cases of it being stepped on, kicked, urinated on, and thrown in the buckets used as toilets. One incident, in March 2002, lead to a hunger strike by the inmates and an apology by a senior officer at the camp. (That was confirmed by a former detainee and "a former interrogator at Guantanamo," said the New York Times for May 1, 2003 - as well as by two more former detainees in separate interviews with two additional newspapers.)

What was new here was the indication that a formal Pentagon report was to admit to such cases of desecration. Yes, the Pentagon had denied them previously, but it had also denied other charges of abuse before being obliged to admit to them, so that likely didn't seem much of a barrier to publication - especially because Newsweek sent a copy of the story to a senior Pentagon official for review, who raised no red flags about anything that was eventually published. Newsweek's editors likely felt they had good reason to think they had a legitimate minor-league scoop. (It was not treated as a major story, as you would think it would have been if the accusations themselves were thought strikingly new. In fact, it wasn't even a separate story, just an item in "Periscope.")

And as for the "retraction" or "backing off" by the source, in the wake of the outcry he told Isikoff that

he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.

Reaffirming the accuracy of charges of desecration strikes me as a very limited sort of retraction.

And now it emerges in a Reuters report from yesterday that

[t]he International Committee of the Red Cross told the Pentagon "multiple" times in 2002 and early 2003 prisoners at the base in Cuba alleged U.S. officials showed "disrespect" for the Muslim holy book, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman.

"The U.S. government took corrective measures and those allegations have not resurfaced," Schorno said.

That last sentence is very significant because despite the official evasions and denials, it lends a good deal of legitimacy to the charges.

A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

But if there are complaints, "corrective measures" are taken, and the complaints stop, it is quite reasonable to conclude that the complaints were for good cause, not for political effect. In fact,

[i]n January 2003, the U.S. military issued guidelines to personnel at the base that included the order: "Ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet or dirty/wet areas."

"The guidelines didn't come out of nowhere. You don't get such orders unless there's some problem, concern or controversy," said a U.S. official who asked not to be named.

Precisely. And it was just about the time that those guidelines were issued that, by the ICRC's account, the complaints about desecration ceased.

All of which leads me to conclude that the charges were true.

That makes the response by the WHS* and their partners in the right-wing noise machine all the more outrageous. For example, Secretary of State Can'tbe Right called the story "appalling" and Defense Department mouthpiece Lawrence DiRita, who called Isikoff a "son of a bitch," specifically blamed the story for the deaths in the rioting. In a State Department press release, Bryan Whitman, also of the War Machine, called Newsweek "irresponsible" and, ominously, claimed it had done "damage ... to this nation."

But, chirped BS'er-in-Chief Scottie McParrot, while the report had indeed done "lasting damage to our image," Newsweek could "help repair the damage" it did by wearing sackcloth and ashes, confessing its sins and crying piteously for forgiveness, and bragging on how just fabulously the US treats prisoners. (Insisting all the while, of course, that he was not in any way trying to pressure the magazine, oh no heaven forbid the thought.)

The odd thing is, the Pentagon doesn't think the riots that broke out in the wake of the report really had much of anything to do with it.

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 a State Department press release.

And, curiously enough, the denunciations come despite the fact that the feds really can't seem to make up their minds if the accusations of desecration could be true or not.

Whitman, for example, said the charge is "demonstrably false" and the Pentagon has insisted there is "no credible evidence" to back it up. But

Myers said the U.S. military has assigned Army General Bantz Craddock to investigate allegations about the handling of the Quran at Guantanamo. ...

Craddock and his team have examined the prisoner interrogation logs and Myers said "they cannot confirm yet" that there ever was a case of a U.S. interrogator flushing a Quran down the toilet.

Which means, at least, that they are still investigating - so there must have been some sort of "credible evidence," or why do it? And that in turn means the charge is not "demonstrably false." Meanwhile,

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said in an interview May 15 on CNN's "Late Edition" news show "if it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible,"

clearly leaving open the possibility of there being such truth.

So the blustering, red-faced outrage is not about a false charge and it's not about a story causing riots. So what is it about? Bluntly, it's about Donald Rumpled saying the situation proves that "people need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do."

I guess now that John Burntfarm is no longer Attorney General, someone had to take up the Ministry of Thinly-Veiled Threats.

Updated with a correction: It was the story's source, not Isikoff, who Lawrence DiRita called an SOB. Also, what he said was "demonstrably false" was the story itself because, he said, the SouthCom report to which it referred didn't consider the issue of possible desecrations of the Qur'an. If true, that would make him technically correct - but I would still label this an attempt at distraction via scripted outrage, focusing on a detail of the story in order to justify an attack on the media while dodging the issue of the charges of desecration.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths