Why am I not surprised?

When is Scottie McMouthpiece going to apologize to Newsweek?

U.S. officials have substantiated five cases in which military guards or interrogators mishandled the Quran of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay....

In three of the five cases, the mishandling appears to have been deliberate. In the other two, it apparently was accidental.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon insists it has found "no credible evidence" to confirm a charge that a Qur'an was flushed in a toilet, now limiting the gripe against Newsweek to the form of the desecration, rather than the fact of it. If Newsweek stepped back from its story, the Pentagon is in full flight.

Of course, just days ago the brass was claiming it had no credible evidence of any desecration at all, so this still may not be the final word:

Pentagon officials said last week that they had not investigated claims of Koran desecration because they had not been presented with any specific or credible allegations of such activity.

But in addition to the claims of released detainees and their lawyers and the confidential reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, it now emerges thanks to documents pried out of the FBI by the ACLU,

[d]etainees told FBI interrogators as early as April 2002 that mistreatment of the Koran was widespread at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay....

So in the first several months of the camp's operation, the generals had multiple reports supplied by at least two separate sources - yet they refused to even investigate. So yes, this is unlikely to be the final word.

In fact, there is already more to this, since the DOD's understanding of what would be considered desecration is oddly limited: Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander at Gitmo, said

"We did identify 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Quran by Joint Task Force personnel. Ten of those were by a guard and three by interrogators." ...

Eight of the 13 alleged incidents of Quran mishandling that Hood has looked into were not substantiated. Six involved guards who either accidentally touched a Quran or "touched it within the scope of his duties" or did not touch it at all. ...

The other two cases in which the allegation was not substantiated involved interrogators who either touched or "stood over" a Quran during an interrogation, Hood said.

Now, consider that some Muslims, based on their understanding of their faith, go through a ritual cleansing before they will touch a Qur'an. Couldn't then a soldier, who surely had not been cleansed, touching it be considered a form of desecration? Even if we want to say that it was "within the scope of his duties" or in some way necessary, couldn't the military at least acknowledge that some prisoners could see it as offensive instead of dismissing it?

And what of "standing over" a Qur'an? Without knowing precise circumstances it's hard to be sure, but couldn't that have been seen as a deliberate insult, particularly since it happened during an interrogation? Can't the military at least see how the prisoner could have seen it that way?

There may well be a fair amount of eye of the beholder going on in the charges of desecration beyond those admitted to have been deliberate. The military's seeming inability to consider that possibility is disturbing - but, again and unhappily, not surprising.