Newsweek deserving of apology? Pentagon Confirms Koran Incidents

[Oski2005]

Does this mean the Pentagon is traitorous for confirming this since it could spark more mid east violence?


Pentagon Confirms Koran Incidents
'Mishandling' Cases Preceded Guidelines Established in 2003

By Josh White and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A01

Pentagon officials said yesterday that investigators have identified five incidents of military guards and an interrogator "mishandling" the Koran at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but characterized the episodes as minor and said most occurred before specific rules on the treatment of Muslim holy items were issued.

Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said investigators have looked into 13 specific allegations of Koran desecration at the prison dating to early 2002 and have determined eight of them to be unfounded, lacking credibility or the result of accidental touching of the holy book. Of the five cases of mishandling, three were "very likely" deliberate and two were "very likely accidental," he said. But Hood declined to provide details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Hood's comments marked the first time the Pentagon has confirmed mistreatment of the Muslim book at Guantanamo Bay. Captives and some military personnel there have made claims of Koran desecration, but in a statement last week, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita said the Defense Department had received no credible claims of such abuse. Nevertheless, he said, officials were reviewing the allegations.

Hood took pains to specifically deny a now-retracted report in Newsweek magazine's May 9 issue that said officials had confirmed a detainee's claim that a guard had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The White House, the Pentagon and others have linked that report to riots overseas that left 16 people dead.

The news conference came a day after the American Civil Liberties Union released summaries of memos from FBI agents at Guantanamo Bay that reported detainee allegations of Koran desecration. Hood played down the mistreatment as a vestige of Guantanamo Bay's early days and said it occurred without any systemic frequency.

He said most of the 13 cases involved accidental or inadvertent touching of the Koran by guards and interrogators -- such as someone bumping into the holy book, or one case in which an interrogator stacked two Korans on a television set.

The five confirmed cases of Koran mishandling involved four guards and one interrogator, Hood said. Six other "resolved" cases involved guards, and two involved interrogators, he said.

Hood said a soldier was reassigned after one recent accidental mishandling of the Koran, and another soldier faced an unspecified disciplinary action for an incident some time ago.

He added that there were also 15 cases in which detainees mishandled the Koran, including one who purposefully ripped pages out of his own book.

"I want to assure you that we are committed to respecting the cultural dignity of the Koran and the detainees' practice of faith," Hood said. "Every effort has been made to provide religious articles associated with the Islamic faith, accommodate prayers and religious periods, and provide culturally acceptable meals and practices."

Pentagon officials said investigators did not look into the claim that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet before the Newsweek article was published. While looking into the desecration claims after protests erupted overseas, investigators re-interviewed a detainee who had told FBI agents in July 2002 that guards had put a Koran in a toilet.

That interview, on May 14, with a prisoner the Pentagon identified this week as "an enemy combatant," led investigators to believe that the claim lacked credibility. The detainee said that he "wasn't beaten or abused, but that he had heard rumors that other detainees were," Hood said.

"We then proceeded to ask him about any incidences where he had seen the Koran defiled, desecrated or mishandled, and he allowed as how he hadn't, but he had heard . . . that guards at some other point in time had done this," Hood said yesterday. "He went on to describe to his interrogator that that was a problem that was only in the old camp."

Hood said "old camp" appeared to mean Camp X-Ray, the temporary cells where captives were held when Guantanamo Bay opened in January 2002. But he acknowledged that interrogators did not specifically ask the detainee this month whether a toilet had been involved, nor did they refer to the original statement the detainee gave to the FBI nearly three years ago.

Hood emphasized that most of the confirmed incidents occurred before standard procedures were put in place in January 2003 for proper handling of the Koran. A broader investigation by the U.S. Southern Command into allegations of abuse and mistreatment contained in memos written by FBI personnel stationed at Guantanamo Bay is continuing. Hood and Di Rita declined to address the larger probe.

According to U.S. Southern Command documents, officials at Guantanamo Bay were aware of the importance of the proper handling of the Koran in the facility's very first days. Responding to concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross in January 2002, command officials wrote that they needed to make sure that detainees were allowed time to pray and that they were given appropriate ways to store their Korans.

The "Koran must be kept neat and wrapped in something," according to a memo dated Jan. 21, 2002. "Can we get them a small green cloth to wrap it?"

The FBI documents released Wednesday by the ACLU contained summaries of a dozen interviews in which detainees said they had witnessed or heard about mistreatment of the Koran by guards or interrogators.

They also included new allegations of severe physical abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan.

The FBI records provide at least one example in which a detainee may have lied about mistreatment of the Koran. According to a summary of an interview with one prisoner, an uprising in July 2002 had started with a claim by another detainee that a guard had dropped a Koran.

"In actuality," the summary says, "the detainee dropped the Koran and then blamed the guard. Many other detainees reacted to this claim and this initiated the uprising."

The FBI documents do not indicate whether this version of events is accurate, although Pentagon officials have recounted a similar-sounding incident. FBI officials have declined to comment.

The ACLU also released more FBI documents yesterday, including a memo indicating that military interrogators posed as officials from the FBI and State Department while questioning detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

One memo, from November 2003, refers to "DOD interrogators at Guantanamo representing themselves to be officials of the FBI and U.S. State Department." A previously released version of the same document had revealed the FBI impersonations, but the reference to the State Department had been redacted.

State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher told reporters yesterday that he was unaware of the impersonation allegations. Another spokesman said the department does not employ interrogators or take part in interviews at Guantanamo Bay.

Another newly released document, dated January 2004, suggested that the FBI would "finally make an arrest" in connection with "interrogations in June 2003 when an FBI agent was impersonated." No such arrest has been publicly announced.

In several e-mails, FBI agents angrily complained about the impersonations and suggested that the ruse was aimed in part at avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse.

The earlier documents also included e-mails from FBI agents who said they had witnessed Guantanamo Bay detainees being shackled to the floor for days at a time, deprived of food and water and left to defecate on themselves.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601220.html

[basso]

Originally posted by Oski2005
[BHood took pains to specifically deny a now-retracted report in Newsweek magazine's May 9 issue that said officials had confirmed a detainee's claim that a guard had flushed a Koran down a toilet. [/B]

no, newsweek does not deserve an apology. they owe the country one.

[Invisible Fan]

Pentagon officials said investigators did not look into the claim that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet before the Newsweek article was published. While looking into the desecration claims after protests erupted overseas, investigators re-interviewed a detainee who had told FBI agents in July 2002 that guards had put a Koran in a toilet.

That interview, on May 14, with a prisoner the Pentagon identified this week as "an enemy combatant," led investigators to believe that the claim lacked credibility. The detainee said that he "wasn't beaten or abused, but that he had heard rumors that other detainees were," Hood said.

It doesn't look like Pentagon pushed the matter further after Newsweek's retraction. The witness doesn't sound credible anyways, and with that scant a detail, Newsweek article should never have been published in the first place.

It's unfortunate the Newsweek article will generate a larger reaction than this one that has corroborating sources.

[basso]

Originally posted by Invisible Fan
It doesn't look like Pentagon pushed the matter further after Newsweek's retraction. The witness doesn't sound credible anyways, and with that scant a detail, Newsweek article should never have been published in the first place.

It's unfortunate the Newsweek article will generate a larger reaction than this one that has corroborating sources.

what's unfortunate is that so many people, muslims, and those in this country and elsewhere who seek to besmirch the admin, will attach such importance to a bit of book defacement. sure, it's ostensibly the owrd of god, but i didn't see christians rioting over andre serrano's "piss christ", which was arguably a much greater blasphemy. it's time for the muslim world, and their apologists, to grow up and join the 21st century. civilized people don't kill because someone damaged a book.

[Invisible Fan]

Originally posted by basso
what's unfortunate is that so many people, muslims, and those in this country and elsewhere who seek to besmirch the admin, will attach such importance to a bit of book defacement. sure, it's ostensibly the owrd of god, but i didn't see christians rioting over andre serrano's "piss christ", which was arguably a much greater blasphemy. it's time for the muslim world, and their apologists, to grow up and join the 21st century. civilized people don't kill because someone damaged a book.

If the Koran didn't have a common value among Muslims, then the military interrogators implement's defacement as a coersion technique.

It'd be ridiculous to blame terrorism on Koran incidents alone. Maybe their "apologists" are questioning Bush who claims to want to win the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim people.

[tigermission1]

LOL! I always find it hilarious how each side proclaims the need for the other to "civilize".

Funny how everyone thinks the other side is the "uncivilized" one.:D

ahh, human beings are sooo similar, they just don't know it yet.:(

[tigermission1]

What the Pentagon is objecting to is on technical ground, and not the FACT that the Koran was desecrated by US personnel.

The Pentagon is objecting to the "flushing down the toilet" story, not the general accusation that guards desecrated the Koran.

But obviously the Newsweek story is a convenient way for the administration to divert attention from the real problem here.

But hey, who cares really? The PR damage has been done, regardless of who said what and who did what. The further damage to our image worldwide is the issue at heart of this whole thing. But I really don't think this Koran "scandal" was the straw that broke the camel's back, the camel's back has already been broken a long time ago.

I just hope the media stops talking about this, it's beyond pointless to keep bringing the story to the forefront over and over again, it has already been beaten to death, and the Pentagon is doing the country a disservice when they keep talking about it. So everyone just shut up and let this story die already :o

[FranchiseBlade]

The Newsweek story looks to be basically correct, now that we have the details from the non-troop supporting, American hating pentagon. But the thing is that their reporting still didn't live up to the journalistic standards it should have.

Is that as big of a story as what was done to the Koran? I don't know. In itself it isn't, but if that kind of reporting is systemic then everyone loses.

The Whitehouse, however, do end up looking like the bullies they are, and their attempt to deflect criticism by using Newsweek as a decoy doesn't seem to have worked out to well for them.

[tigermission1]

Oh dear, the story just won't die, and as a consequence of this, more people will die:rolleyes:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050604/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_bay_quran

U.S. Confirms Gitmo Soldier Kicked Quran

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon on Friday released new details about mishandling of the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behavior."

In other confirmed incidents, a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.

The findings, released after normal business hours Friday evening, are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba, that was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report — later retracted — that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantanamo Bay detainee's Quran down a toilet.

The story stirred worldwide controversy and the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.

Hood said in a written statement released Friday evening, along with the new details, that his investigation "revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Quran dating back almost 2 1/2 years."

A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Lawrence Di Rita, did not address the confirmed incidents of mishandling the Muslim holy book. Reached while traveling with Rumsfeld in Asia, Di Rita said that U.S. Southern Command policy calls for "serious, respectful and appropriate" handling of the Quran.

"The Hood inquiry would appear to affirm that policy," Di Rita said.

Hood said that of nine mishandling cases that were studied in detail by reviewing thousands of pages of written records, five were confirmed to have happened. He could not determine conclusively whether the four others took place.

In one of those four unconfirmed cases, a detainee in April 2003 complained to FBI and other interrogators that guards "constantly defile the Quran." The detainee alleged that in one instance a female military guard threw a Quran into a bag of wet towels to anger another detainee, and he also alleged that another guard said the Quran belonged in the toilet and that guards were ordered to do these things.

Hood said he found no other record of this detainee mentioning any Quran mishandling. The detainee has since been released.

In the most recent confirmed case, Hood said a detainee complained on March 25, 2005, of urine splashing on him and his Quran. An unidentified guard admitted at the time that "he was at fault," the Hood report said, although it did not say whether the act was deliberate. The guard's supervisor reprimanded him and assigned him to gate guard duty, where he had no contact with detainees for the remainder of his assignment at Guantanamo Bay.

As described in the Hood report, the guard had left his observation post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block. The incident was not further explained.

In another of the confirmed cases, a contract interrogator stepped on a detainee's Quran in July 2003 and then apologized. "The interrogator was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership," the Hood report said.

Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans. "These included using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran," Hood's report said. It offered no possible explanation for those alleged abuses.

In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18, 2005, allegedly ripped up his Quran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several of the guards witnessed this, Hood reported.

Last week, Hood disclosed that he had confirmed five cases of mishandling of the Quran, but he refused to provide details. Allegations of Quran desecration at Guantanamo Bay have led to anti-American passions in many Muslim nations, although Pentagon officials have insisted that the problems were relatively minor and that U.S. commanders have gone to great lengths to enable detainees to practice their religion in captivity.

Hood said last week that he found no credible evidence that a Quran was ever flushed down a toilet. He said a prisoner who was reported to have complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Quran in the toilet has since told Hood's investigators that he never witnessed any form of Quran desecration.

Other prisoners who were returned to their home countries after serving time at Guantanamo Bay as terror suspects have alleged Quran desecration by U.S. guards, and some have said a Quran was placed in a toilet.

There are about 540 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Both President Bush and Rumsfeld have denounced an Amnesty International report that called the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time."

The president told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday that the report by the human-rights group was "absurd."

On Wednesday, Rumsfeld called the characterization "reprehensible" and said the U.S. military had taken care to ensure that detainees were free to practice their religion. However, he also acknowledged that some detainees had been mistreated, even "grievously" at times.

[halfbreed]

Grow up. He kicked a book. If these were Christians and it was the Bible, no way it garners this kind of press.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by halfbreed
Grow up. He kicked a book. If these were Christians and it was the Bible, no way it garners this kind of press.

If the Bible was pissed on and kicked around by officials from a Muslim government? Oh, you bet your azz the media would be all over it. You kidding?

One thing I have learned over the years: Don't f*ck with other people's religions. Nothing good has ever come out of it.

Again, I just hope this damn story goes away, we don't need any more bloodshed for God's sake:rolleyes:

[halfbreed]

Originally posted by tigermission1
If the Bible was pissed on and kicked around by officials from a Muslim government? Oh, you bet your azz the media would be all over it. You kidding?

One thing I have learned over the years: Don't f*ck with other people's religions. Nothing good has ever come out of it.

Again, I just hope this damn story goes away, we don't need any more bloodshed for God's sake:rolleyes:

Do you honestly believe that? There's no way the media would be anywhere near such a story. I'm not saying you're ignorant for thinking otherwise because unless such a thing happened we couldn't be sure. I don't recall a media firestorm about the Gay Jesus doll that went on sale last year. Not exactly the same thing but it's still disrespecting a symbol of a particular religion.

And who said anything about bloodshed? I don't recall anyone being killed over this.

What I do know is that nobody is reporting anything about the prisoners abusing their OWN Korans.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/06/03/quran050603.html
(a shorter version of the earlier posted story, only from the CBC)

U.S. admits abuses to Qur'an in Guantanamo
Last Updated Fri, 03 Jun 2005 21:24:40 EDT
CBC News

The U.S. Pentagon confirmed Friday a list of abuses involving the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book, by American personnel at Guantanamo Bay, but said the incidents were relatively minor.

A car burns in the street as university students protest in the steets in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on May 12. (AP photo)

A story published in Newsweek last month accused an American serviceman of flushing a copy of the Qur'an down a toilet. That story was later retracted, but it touched off demonstrations around the world, including deadly protests in Afghanistan in which 17 died.

The latest confirmed abuses are contained in a report put together by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba.

They include: splashing urine on a prisoner and his Qur'an, stepping on and kicking the Qur'an, throwing water on it, and scratching an obscenity on the inside cover.

Although none of the abuses can be said to be as severe as the unfounded allegation, they still represent a list of incidents that will shock and horrify Muslims around the world who consider the Qur'an to be the word of God as dictated to and written down by the prophet Muhammad.

In a statement Hood said his investigation "revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Qur'an dating back almost two and a half years."

He said only five incidents could be confirmed during that time of American personnel mishandling the Qur'an. He said he found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qur'ans, including "attempting to flush a Qur'an down the toilet and urinating on the Qur'an."

The statement did not provide any explanation about why the detainees might have abused their own holy books.

There are believed to be more than 500 detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay. Most of them were captured in Afghanistan and are thought to have information about Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Some have been held for more than three years without being charged.

[Rocket River]

I remember PISSED CHRIST
getting alot of run
and alot of folx VERY pissed about it

Rocket River

[No Worries]

Anybody surprised if the WH demanded the Pentagon take back this story?

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by halfbreed
Grow up. He kicked a book. If these were Christians and it was the Bible, no way it garners this kind of press. Guess what. Christians and Muslims place a different emphasis on the physical books of their respective religions. To me this is far from the worst thing in the world. However I hope I'm not so egocentric as to think that the way I look at things is the only way others can look at things.

At this point though, that issue comes second. To me what comes first is the way the Whitehouse handled thei situation. We had the Whitehouse coming down so hard on the Newsweek and and acting like they just made something up. Then the whitehouse press secretary was basically telling a 'free' media what stories they could write, when he said that they should write positive stories about Iraq etc.

Now the whitehouse act of innocence and indignation proves to be unfounded. That is the real story IMHO.

[Trader_Jorge]

The terrorists do anything they can to get the liberals to bite on a story like this. They love it. The liberals' outrage over stuff like this simply erodes support for the war, which in turn gets Americans killed and causes the US to stray from its objective. It's the John Kerry model for losing a war, and the liberals just have not learned that it helps the other side. It's absurd. Frankly, it's treasonous. Particularly galling is the fact that the liberals believe they are occupying some sort of moral high ground or intellectually superior position by taking their stance. They aren't. They are being duped and manipulated by the terrorists. They are aiding and comforting the enemy in a time of war. That's what they are doing.

[glynch]

No proof yet that the Pentagon found that our jailers put the Koran in the toilet; the Pentagon just found that they pissed on it and kicked it. It is just other reasonably reliable sources that show they put the Koran in the toilet.

Great Joy for all is still well ih Bushland.

[arno_ed]

Originally posted by tigermission1
LOL! I always find it hilarious how each side proclaims the need for the other to "civilize".

Funny how everyone thinks the other side is the "uncivilized" one.:D

ahh, human beings are sooo similar, they just don't know it yet.:( this is one of the thing that make me very sad. Alot of People blame others for being different, and call them savages or uncivilized. Why can't people just accept that not everybody thinks the same:(. Like you said, we are all human, and very similar. But people cannot see it or do not want to see it. people want an enemy it makes them feel like they are part of a group. it is just pathetic, that people kill others just to be part of a group.
How on earth can protestants and catholics kill each other over religion? Just terrible

[Trader_Jorge]

Here is a question for the liberals:

Why do the liberals react with such fervor when the Koran is kicked or panties are put on the head of a terrorist, yet the libs never make mention of how the terrorists treat women as second class citizens and force them into sub-servient roles in the Muslim world?

Oh I must have forgotten, only the panties and Koran kicking helps them save face for losing the debate over the war...

[giddyup]

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
However I hope I'm not so egocentric as to think that the way I look at things is the only way others can look at things.

I really hate the way we are forced to participate in their martyrdom! Why can't they be more flexible? :D

[arno_ed]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
Here is a question for the liberals:

Why do the liberals react with such fervor when the Koran is kicked or panties are put on the head of a terrorist, yet the libs never make mention of how the terrorists treat women as second class citizens and force them into sub-servient roles in the Muslim world?

Oh I must have forgotten, only the panties and Koran kicking helps them save face for losing the debate over the war...
T_J i cannot even begin to have a discussion with you. You will never listen to the arguments I could give you.
not everything that happens is to bash Bush. tell me these two things:
Do you aprove of torturing people (when you think they can be terrorists)?
Do you feel that your culture is better then that of others?

[thegary]

If it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together

[thegary]

Originally posted by basso
andre serrano's "piss christ", which was arguably a much greater blasphemy.

Piss Christ


Andres Serrano, 1987
By Andrew Hudgins
Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2000, at 12:00 AM PT

If we did not know it was cow's blood and urine,
if we did not know that Serrano had for weeks
hoarded his urine in a plastic vat,
if we did not know the cross was gimcrack plastic,
we would assume it was too beautiful.
We would assume it was the resurrection,
glory, Christ transformed to light by light
because the blood and urine burn like a halo,
and light, as always, light makes it beautiful.

We are born between the urine and the feces,
Augustine says, and so was Christ, if there was a Christ,
skidding into this world as we do
on a tide of blood and urine. Blood, feces, urine�
what the fallen world is made of, and what we make.
He peed, ejaculated, shat, wept, bled�
bled under Pontius Pilate, and I assume
the mutilated god, the criminal
humiliated god, voided himself
on the cross and the blood and urine smeared his legs
and he ascended bodily unto heaven,
and on the third day he rose into glory, which
is what we see here, the Piss Christ in glowing blood:
the whole irreducible point of the faith,
God thrown in human waste, submerged and shining.

We have grown used to beauty without horror.

We have grown used to useless beauty.



http://img128.echo.cx/img128/2497/serrano2on.jpg

the blasphemy is that andres is a bad artist who got way too much publicity via helms et al. acts in and of themselves are not what carry the power, it's the ideas behind them. all the terrorists have is their ideas, they cannot not fight us mano a mano via conventional means. desecrating the koran fuels their ideas, gives them more ammo, that is the problem.

[gwayneco]

So, we have 5 cases where our troops "abused" the Koran, and 15 where those who supposedly find it sacred abused it. It looks like our troops are being more respectful than the detainees. Here's an idea. If the Muslim world is so worried that an American will "abuse" the Koran, how about just not giving them out to detainees?

[mateo]

After reading that Piss Christ poem, I am going into the streets with my buddies to chant and shoot guns into the air. Then I will accidentally kill some people, because thats why the Bible tells me to do.

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

[Trader_Jorge]

Originally posted by arno_ed
Do you aprove of torturing people (when you think they can be terrorists)?
Do you feel that your culture is better then that of others?

I fully support torturing terrorists.

I believe that democracy and freedom is superior to theocracy and oppression (which is what the Muslims do -- especially to women).

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
I fully support torturing terrorists.

I believe that democracy and freedom is superior to theocracy and oppression (which is what the Muslims do -- especially to women). You shouldn't over generalize Muslims. The largest Muslim nation in the world has had a female president. Can you say the same about the U.S.? You might be referring to some of the regimes in the middle east, though. But your overgeneralizations belies what many in the Islamic world are doing.

[AggieRocket]

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
You shouldn't over generalize Muslims. The largest Muslim nation in the world has had a female president. Can you say the same about the U.S.? You might be referring to some of the regimes in the middle east, though. But your overgeneralizations belies what many in the Islamic world are doing.

Actually, the 4 largest Muslim countries in the world have each had at least one female president or prime minister in the last 10 years.

[nyquil82]

so I take it that the pro-defacement crowd here thinks that burning a flag is just burning some cloth?

[Baqui99]

Bangladesh's PM is Khaleda Zia. Pakistan's PM in the 90's was Benazir Bhutto. I don't know too many 2nd class citizens who are elected as world leaders.

Bottom line, if we intend to "win the hearts and minds" of the Muslim world, we better show some f*cking respect. The radicals' hatred of the US is growing every day, and incidents like this just perpetuate the sterotype that the US is insensitive to other cultures.

[bigtexxx]

Originally posted by Baqui99
Bangladesh's PM is Khaleda Zia. Pakistan's PM in the 90's was Benazir Bhutto. I don't know too many 2nd class citizens who are elected as world leaders.

Bottom line, if we intend to "win the hearts and minds" of the Muslim world, we better show some f*cking respect. The radicals' hatred of the US is growing every day, and incidents like this just perpetuate the sterotype that the US is insensitive to other cultures.

I don't support defacing other religions' symbols, but to say that the US is not showing "f*cking respect" is simply an ignorant statement. What's even more ignorant is assuming that a few military peoples' actions are representative of the entire US (ie a few military people kicking Qu'rans). That's stupid. We're giving these low lifes their holy book, a prayer mat, calls to prayer and the direction of Mecca. In my view that's a hell of a lot more than they deserve. We're bending over backwards to accomodate their religious needs. To say that we're not showing "f*cking respect" is simply ignorant and stupid. Baqui give me a break.

We're playing right into the terrorists hands (see my other thread). With the American liberals' help, they are using this issue to turn people against us.

[halfbreed]

Originally posted by nyquil82
so I take it that the pro-defacement crowd here thinks that burning a flag is just burning some cloth?

Yea because there's a PRO-defacement crowd :rolleyes: . We're just saying that we don't see the big deal about it. We're not all gung ho shouting slogans calling for the abuse of the Koran we're just saying that it's not a huge deal.

[glynch]

I fully support torturing terrorists. TJ

This is getting silly.

I suppose you fully support others torturing terrorists on your behalf.

Tough talk from a guy who won't go vountarily to fight in a war he claims to believe in.

[halfbreed]

Originally posted by glynch
Tough talk from a guy who won't go vountarily to fight in a war he claims to believe in.

Just because you believe in a war doesn't mean that you have to volunteer to go fight it. That's just an ignorant viewpoint. I have the greatest respect for our soldiers but to say that someone is a hypocrite if they don't volunteer to fight is just plain stupid.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
Here is a question for the liberals:

Why do the liberals react with such fervor when the Koran is kicked or panties are put on the head of a terrorist, yet the libs never make mention of how the terrorists treat women as second class citizens and force them into sub-servient roles in the Muslim world?

Oh I must have forgotten, only the panties and Koran kicking helps them save face for losing the debate over the war...

Actually the "liberals" do, if you have heard of such "liberal" outfits as human rights organizations all over the world.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by mateo
After reading that Piss Christ poem, I am going into the streets with my buddies to chant and shoot guns into the air. Then I will accidentally kill some people, because thats why the Bible tells me to do.

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

Was the poem written by a Muslim? Or am I missing something? Did a Muslim piss on the Bible or call Jesus "gay"?

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by Baqui99
Bangladesh's PM is Khaleda Zia. Pakistan's PM in the 90's was Benazir Bhutto. I don't know too many 2nd class citizens who are elected as world leaders.

Bottom line, if we intend to "win the hearts and minds" of the Muslim world, we better show some f*cking respect. The radicals' hatred of the US is growing every day, and incidents like this just perpetuate the sterotype that the US is insensitive to other cultures.

Actually, it is not just "other" cultures, it is Muslims living in this VERY country who are Americans and serving in our military and teaching in our schools and are doctors and lawyers and government officials. Muslims ARE part of American society, the second largest religious group in America behind Christians. Their symbols and what they hold holy must be respected by the government, but not endorsed. All religious beliefs in this country must be respected by our government and not discriminated against, while at the same time not endorsed by the state.

The sad part is that many Americans don't understand that concept, they think that being a "Muslim" or a "Jew" means you are not a "real" American. Some people are unaware that Muslims and Jews are their neighbors, and not some "nationality" that can be pinned down to a specific state.

I think people like Trader_J are either unaware of this or just don't care about their fellow citizens, I wonder if he even considers "liberals" as fellow Americans or not.

But sadly, that has become the hallmark of conservatism in America: intolerance, ignorance, and blind patriotism. I used to be a conservative voter (I still am a traditional conservative on many issues), but now I've been completely alienated by the people who have taken over the conservative cause and have given it a bad name:o

[Trader_Jorge]

The US has bent over backwards to show these savages respect, and one little alleged slip-up and you've got liberals attempting to de-legitimize the entire US military's actions by saying that the servicemen are not respecting a religion. What a crock. Just lunacy from people who are looking for any way to make the US military look bad. I guess the libs just have egg on their face from losing a political debate and this is their way of fighting back -- by attacking the troops' actions. Look, no terrorist deserves an ounce of respect, be they Muslim or not. Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own. When you have millions of Muslims rooting for terror, then something has gone astray institutionally.

Oh, and to claim that a few countries have had a female PM and thereby justify Islam's treatment of women is a total joke. When women aren't allowed on the street and must wear a ridiculous face-to-toe covering, then something has just gone kooky wild wrong.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by bigtexxx
I don't support defacing other religions' symbols, but to say that the US is not showing "f*cking respect" is simply an ignorant statement. What's even more ignorant is assuming that a few military peoples' actions are representative of the entire US (ie a few military people kicking Qu'rans).

Agree. I don't think that actions of a few (including, sadly, our current government heads) should bring a bad name to Americans in general. That's unfair and just absurd.

We're playing right into the terrorists hands (see my other thread). With the American liberals' help, they are using this issue to turn people against us.

Sadly, my friend, that has been accomplished a loooooong time ago, the world is not waiting to hear stories like this to hate us, people can't stand us anymore, when they used to at least like us a bit, and if not like us at least be neutral about it and not hate us.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
Oh, and to claim that a few countries have had a female PM and thereby justify Islam's treatment of women is a total joke. When women aren't allowed on the street and must wear a ridiculous face-to-toe covering, then something has just gone kooky wild wrong.

Really? It is not a sign of political empowerment of women? That's a nice spin:rolleyes:

As for the "face-to-toe covering", LOL! That just tells me you know absolutely NOTHING about the Muslim world in general. You are wholly buying into the stereotype you see in the media/movies/on your TV screens.:D

Oh, and the simple fact that you "look down upon" Islam as a religion is not an insult, but rather a resounding approval;)

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by basso
no, newsweek does not deserve an apology. they owe the country one.

Its amazing how we hold Newsweek and Dan Rather to a much higher standard than we do the Admin, the Pentagon and the CIA.

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by bigtexxx
I don't support defacing other religions' symbols, but to say that the US is not showing "f*cking respect" is simply an ignorant statement. What's even more ignorant is assuming that a few military peoples' actions are representative of the entire US (ie a few military people kicking Qu'rans). That's stupid. We're giving these low lifes their holy book, a prayer mat, calls to prayer and the direction of Mecca. In my view that's a hell of a lot more than they deserve. We're bending over backwards to accomodate their religious needs. To say that we're not showing "f*cking respect" is simply ignorant and stupid. Baqui give me a break.

We're playing right into the terrorists hands (see my other thread). With the American liberals' help, they are using this issue to turn people against us.

Its amazing how many of the same people who were going apoplectic about the Newsweek story and going on and on about how Newsweek was irresponsible and should've known that one act of bad journalism would lead to deaths and trouble for the US are now writing off desecration of the Qu'ran as no big deal on the part of the US and that its the muslims fault for over reacting.

So lets get this straight.

When Newsweek mistakenly reports in one line of a half page story that Qu'ran has been flushed down the toilet and Muslims riot its Newsweek's fault and Newsweek are evil and treasonous.

When the Pentagon reports that yes there have been incidents of Qu'ran desecration its not that big of a deal and its the Muslims and liberals fault for taking it so seriously.

If anything needed a :rolleyes: this is it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of spin.

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by thegary
Piss Christ


Andres Serrano, 1987
By Andrew Hudgins
Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2000, at 12:00 AM PT

If we did not know it was cow's blood and urine,
if we did not know that Serrano had for weeks
hoarded his urine in a plastic vat,
if we did not know the cross was gimcrack plastic,
we would assume it was too beautiful.
We would assume it was the resurrection,
glory, Christ transformed to light by light
because the blood and urine burn like a halo,
and light, as always, light makes it beautiful.


Kinda makes me wonder if there would've been an outrage if it had been "Ginger Ale Christ"?

[pirc1]

Originally posted by Sishir Chang
Its amazing how many of the same people who were going apoplectic about the Newsweek story and going on and on about how Newsweek was irresponsible and should've known that one act of bad journalism would lead to deaths and trouble for the US are now writing off desecration of the Qu'ran as no big deal on the part of the US and that its the muslims fault for over reacting.

So lets get this straight.

When Newsweek mistakenly reports in one line of a half page story that Qu'ran has been flushed down the toilet and Muslims riot its Newsweek's fault and Newsweek are evil and treasonous.

When the Pentagon reports that yes there have been incidents of Qu'ran desecration its not that big of a deal and its the Muslims and liberals fault for taking it so seriously.

If anything needed a :rolleyes: this is it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of spin.

What did you expect from politics?;)

[wizardball]

We're giving these low lifes their holy book, a prayer mat, calls to prayer and the direction of Mecca. In my view that's a hell of a lot more than they deserve. We're bending over backwards to accomodate their religious needs. To say that we're not showing "f*cking respect" is simply ignorant and stupid. Baqui give me a break.

hey....its not like all these guys are proven to be terrorists...some of them are innocent....it is disgusting when people like you act like you know what’s going on..rather you are stirred with emotion..... its a fact that there are innocent people in there as well.....who are being tortured as well...as human beings(for those that may be innocent) they should be allowed to practice their beliefs...your arrogance is exactly why the world hates you people(the U.S Gov.)......you need to relax and think about you being in the shoes of an innocent person in jail....and how the family of that individual is coping with such a situation....there is probably hate against the U.S for taking away a father from a family...try to build a relationship with these people....anyway I think this is beyond your understanding so oh well....silly post by you though.

[gwayneco]

We might as well just give it up to the terrorists right now. With the liberal mindset that we see represented here, maybe the terrorists have already won.

From : http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004633.php

June 04, 2005
The Self-Indulgence Of The American Media And Leftist Establishment

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, dear readers, and friends, I submit to you that this week represents the nadir of responsible thought about the war on terror. We face Islamofascist lunatics who wish to establish Taliban-like tyrannies throughout the Middle East -- and eventually the world -- and who commit real atrocities in their efforts to bring those twisted dreams to fruition. We have seen their videos showing the beheadings of helpless hostages with dull knives, literally sawing off the heads of these victims while alive. They slaughter women and children as indiscriminately as possible. They even blow up Islamic mosques to kill Muslims at prayer.

Now we have had two weeks of debate over whether we have mistreated six hundred or so of these terrorists captured on the battlefield, out of uniform, bearing arms against us. What has been the focus of this controversy? Cattle prods and bullwhips for interrogation? Beatings? Naked pyramids and leashes?

No. It's whether or not we abused a book.

This has been front-page news for two or three weeks now, ever since Newsweek decided to run a poorly-sourced item about Gitmo guards flushing a Qu'ran down a toilet. Now we have the Pentagon report detailing five supposed events where guards mistreated copies of the Muslim scripture, and the media and the blogosphere have reacted like this is another My Lai.

Guess what, people? This is a book. It's not the Ark of the Covenant or Mohammed's horse or a splinter of the True Cross.

If American servicemen at Gitmo have beaten or tortured prisoners, we need to know about it and put a stop to it. However, all of this hue and cry over how we treat printed material -- and even the steps that the Pentagon put in place to treat it "respectfully", such as requiring gloves and such -- demonstrate a complete lack of perspective about who and what our enemy is. These are the same people that put grenades in dolls so that children get maimed and killed when they pick them up, a favorite Taliban tactic in Afghanistan. They fought for the same lunatic leaders who now kill Americans and Iraqis in the Sunni Triangle with carbombs and perhaps-not-volunteer suicide bombers.

They fought for the same people who ordered the massacre of 2900 American citizens on 9/11. And we have our panties in a twist over whether we may have hurt their feelings about how we treated ... a book.

If Saturday Night Live wrote a parody of American hypersensitivity in fighting a war on terror, I doubt they could create something more ridiculous than this. Can you imagine our grandparents having this kind of debate had an American guard pissed on Mein Kampf at a POW camp for German POWs?

Short of ensuring that the Gitmo prisoners belong there and get treated humanely -- three hots and a cot and no abuse -- I couldn't care less about their reading material. If they get Qu'rans, fine. If not, fine. If their Qu'rans get wet, kicked, dropped, laughed at, or ignored, let the military deal with the disciplinary issues, but it isn't newsworthy. Why should we give a damn about it? What happened to our sense of priorities?

The media and the Leftist establishments such as the ACLU and Amnesty International use crap like this to set up impossible standards of behavior, then pretend that we're no better than our enemies when we fail to perfectly meet them. That's why AI used the "gulag" comparison earlier this week, and why Michael Isikoff and Newsweek decided to break the story that rampant abuse of printed material occurred at Gitmo. It's a deliberate attempt to undermine support for a war they don't like, and pathetically, Americans seem to have fallen for the hype.

[gwayneco]

Originally posted by wizardball
hey....its not like all these guys are proven to be terrorists...some of them are innocent....it is disgusting when people like you act like you know what’s going on..rather you are stirred with emotion..... its a fact that there are innocent people in there as well.....who are being tortured as well...as human beings(for those that may be innocent) they should be allowed to practice their beliefs...your arrogance is exactly why the world hates you people(the U.S Gov.)......you need to relax and think about you being in the shoes of an innocent person in jail....and how the family of that individual is coping with such a situation....there is probably hate against the U.S for taking away a father from a family...try to build a relationship with these people....anyway I think this is beyond your understanding so oh well....silly post by you though.

Yeah, they're all just need a hug!

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by gwayneco
We might as well just give it up to the terrorists right now. With the liberal mindset that we see represented here, maybe the terrorists have already won.


This is the problem with asymetric warfare and why the US is vulnerable to it. Our enemies cannot beat us militarily so they seek to beat us psychologically. We're already handicapped from the start because we're goliath and they're David when it comes to size and strength. So while the little guy might act cruel and petty when the big guy acts cruel its that much magnified because the big guy has so many obvious advantages.

Think about it this way if Earl Boykins hit Shaq with an elbow he's not going to get criticised as much as if Shaq hits Boykins with an elbow.

We're Shaq. Further we're not only the biggest in the Muslim mind to even moderate Muslims we're Shaq with Ron Artest's attitude. We're loud, vulgar, arrogant and overbearing. Whether that's fair that's the image we're saddled with.

So when terrorists act like murderous deviants its almost expected since they're the little guy and aren't expected to be bound by civilized rules. OTOH though when we act that way we're the ogre beating up on the small guy.

As GW Bush has said this is a battle of hearts and mind because we will never be able to kill, occupy or jail all of our enemies. Unfortunately being Goliath we're at a natural disadvantage and if we're going to win hearts and minds we have to behave with far greater restraint than our enemies because perception of us will never be equal.

Another thing is that torture hasn't been shown to be a very successful method of getting information. More often the one being interrogated will fess up to anything just to get the torture to stop or will shade their answers to get the torture to stop. That might generate good propaganda but is terrible for factual intelligence. During WWII the best German interrogator figured out that if you treat prisoners kindly and with respect (and get them drunk) they provide better intel. What happens is that the person being interrogated is prepared for harsh treatment because that's what they've been told and is unprepared for kindness. Also humans being social creatures are psychologically wired to want to help out those who are kind to them.

So as a practical matter while torturing terrorists might be good for vindication it might not be the best way to have them tell us where Osama bin Ladin is. On top of that if we torture them psychologically by desecrating the Qu'ran how does that help us if it creates more enemies in the process.

[gwayneco]

I agree with all of that. But if we are expecting perfection and angelic behavior from every soldier, we might as well French out of any efforts to fight terrorists. And when supposedly reputable people are comparing Gitmo to Soviet Gulags in which millions died, perhaps the west has already lost.

[Texas Stoke]

what part of that holy books teaches these fools that all non-believers are second class humans or that they should be killed?

thats the part i'd wipe my ass with.

[gwayneco]

Originally posted by Texas Stoke
what part of that holy books teaches these fools that all non-believers are second class humans or that they should be killed?

thats the part i'd wipe my ass with.

The reporting on this by the MSM and the apparent glee that it engenders from liberals is enough to make me go out and buy a Kuran just so I can "desecrate" the damn thing myself.

[SamFisher]

Poor Gweenerdog. How do you go through life dealing with the horrors of liberals cramping your style all the time? It must be hard being a live music fan to be confronted with the evil spectre of countercultural intimidation.

Maybe you should investigate seppuku.

[gwayneco]

Originally posted by SamFisher
Poor Gweenerdog. How do you go through life dealing with the horrors of liberals cramping your style all the time? It must be hard being a live music fan to be confronted with the evil spectre of countercultural intimidation.

Maybe you should investigate seppuku.

Very nice.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by gwayneco
The reporting on this by the MSM and the apparent glee that it engenders from liberals is enough to make me go out and buy a Kuran just so I can "desecrate" the damn thing myself.

If it makes you feel better, by all means!

[gwayneco]

Originally posted by tigermission1
If it makes you feel better, by all means!

No, it wouldn't make me feel better, nor do I have any intention of doing it. I was just blowing off steam.

[mateo]

Was the poem written by a Muslim? Or am I missing something? Did a Muslim piss on the Bible or call Jesus "gay"?

Did anyone verify that the idiot guards that messed with the Koran were indeed Christians? What if they were atheists? At least if they were Wicca we could throw them into a lake and see if they sink (unlike very small rocks)

Why does it have to be "Christian America" versus the "Muslim Middle East"? Pretty narrow-minded, if you ask me. My sister is Buddhist. My two aunts and stepmother are all Jewish. My dad could give a rats ass about religion. My grandfather left the Catholic church in 1945 because he needed a divorce. And I am pretty sure that no one in my family wants to convert any Muslims to Christianity. Not to mention my Iranian buddy from Vanderbilt who has yet to strap any bombs to himself and try to kill me or "freedom." Effin stereotypes suck.

[Ottomaton]

Questions for thought.

#1. For the right -

A. At what point does the concept of free press and the idea that knowledge for the electorate is fundamental for the electorate to make an informed choice become so important that it overrides the argument that knowledge may cause more anger among the enemy.

Some of the arguments here in this regard are remarkably evocative of the external arguments used by the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia in their philosophical justification for press control.

#2. For the left -

At what point does somebody else’s intolerance become such an issue that it affects your ability to be tolerant yourself? In other worlds, where is the place at which you would stop bending to accommodate another's sensibilities?

#3. For both sides -

It seems to some degree that the argument fundamentally deals with the standards we hold for ourselves and the reaction to our own transgressions vs. the standards we hold for others and reaction to transgressions that they may make. I have a feeling that if one charted the outrage at this issue vs. outrage at the defacement of christianity or the flag issue above, it would resolve itself into a fairly linear inversely dependent relationship. Anybody disagree?

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
The US has bent over backwards to show these savages respect, and one little alleged slip-up and you've got liberals attempting to de-legitimize the entire US military's actions by saying that the servicemen are not respecting a religion. What a crock. Just lunacy from people who are looking for any way to make the US military look bad. I guess the libs just have egg on their face from losing a political debate and this is their way of fighting back -- by attacking the troops' actions. Look, no terrorist deserves an ounce of respect, be they Muslim or not. Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own. When you have millions of Muslims rooting for terror, then something has gone astray institutionally.

Oh, and to claim that a few countries have had a female PM and thereby justify Islam's treatment of women is a total joke. When women aren't allowed on the street and must wear a ridiculous face-to-toe covering, then something has just gone kooky wild wrong.

It isn't just a few countries. It happens to be the countries with the largest muslim populations in the world. It must suck when facts get in the way of your ignorant generalizations.

As far as what the 'savages' deserve let's remember that nearly one half of those detained here have been done so despite the fact that they are later deemed to not be a threat.

The rest about attacking the troops is hilarious. This report comes from the Pentagon. Are they the new liberal bastion of all things anti-U.S. military?

[Baqui99]

Hakeem the Dream isn't pleased with the treatment of Muslims...

http://www.basket-plus.com/images/Olajuwon-islam.jpg

[Baqui99]

Originally posted by bigtexxx
I don't support defacing other religions' symbols, but to say that the US is not showing "f*cking respect" is simply an ignorant statement. What's even more ignorant is assuming that a few military peoples' actions are representative of the entire US (ie a few military people kicking Qu'rans). That's stupid. We're giving these low lifes their holy book, a prayer mat, calls to prayer and the direction of Mecca. In my view that's a hell of a lot more than they deserve. We're bending over backwards to accomodate their religious needs. To say that we're not showing "f*cking respect" is simply ignorant and stupid. Baqui give me a break.

We're playing right into the terrorists hands (see my other thread). With the American liberals' help, they are using this issue to turn people against us.

You're misinterpreting my statement. In general, I think the US is doing a terrific job. It's these few asshats that are screwing everything up. A few bad apples, unfortunately, is all it takes. When it comes down to it, we need more accountability against the people who are disrespecting Islam.

To call this a "liberal vs. conservative" issue is ignoring the fact of the matter. We screwed up. Take ownership, take accountability, and acknowledge the problem. Don't blame the goddamn liberals.

[No Worries]

It's the John Kerry model for losing a war

GWB is secretly taking his orders from John Kerry? You heard it first here at the Clutch BBS.

[No Worries]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
Why do the liberals react with such fervor when the Koran is kicked or panties are put on the head of a terrorist, yet the libs never make mention of how the terrorists treat women as second class citizens and force them into sub-servient roles in the Muslim world?
TJ, it is interesting to see you get in touch with your Muslim, feminine side.

[Sir Jackie Chiles]

Originally posted by Ottomaton
Questions for thought.

#1. For the right -

A. At what point does the concept of free press and the idea that knowledge for the electorate is fundamental for the electorate to make an informed choice become so important that it overrides the argument that knowledge may cause more anger among the enemy.

Some of the arguments here in this regard are remarkably evocative of the external arguments used by the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia in their philosophical justification for press control.

#2. For the left -

At what point does somebody else’s intolerance become such an issue that it affects your ability to be tolerant yourself? In other worlds, where is the place at which you would stop bending to accommodate another's sensibilities?


Very good questions, especially no. 2. I think a lot of people from the left have not thought about this enough.

[No Worries]

We might as well just give it up to the terrorists right now. With the liberal mindset that we see represented here, maybe the terrorists have already won.

You forgot Sweden.

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by Ottomaton
Questions for thought.

#1. For the right -

A. At what point does the concept of free press and the idea that knowledge for the electorate is fundamental for the electorate to make an informed choice become so important that it overrides the argument that knowledge may cause more anger among the enemy.

Some of the arguments here in this regard are remarkably evocative of the external arguments used by the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia in their philosophical justification for press control.

#2. For the left -

At what point does somebody else’s intolerance become such an issue that it affects your ability to be tolerant yourself? In other worlds, where is the place at which you would stop bending to accommodate another's sensibilities?

#3. For both sides -

It seems to some degree that the argument fundamentally deals with the standards we hold for ourselves and the reaction to our own transgressions vs. the standards we hold for others and reaction to transgressions that they may make. I have a feeling that if one charted the outrage at this issue vs. outrage at the defacement of christianity or the flag issue above, it would resolve itself into a fairly linear inversely dependent relationship. Anybody disagree?

Good questions.

1. Totally agree on the first one. A free press is critical to a functioning democracy even if that does occasionally cause problems.

2. People are free to have their prejudices and I for one think even KKK members should be able to parade around in their pointy hats railing about Zionists conspiracies. The issue here though is that we're in a war to win hearts and minds. Outright prejudice and towards Muslims isn't going to accomplish that.

Should Islam reform itself and become more moderate? Of course they should but at the same time we have to deal with the situation that we're given with that Muslims are very touchy about their holy books and as long as we're trying to win them over we need to respect that.

3. Yes this does have to do with the standards we hold and what we expect from others but more than that this is about being serious with the idea that we are trying to win the battle by winning over the attitudes of Muslims.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by No Worries
TJ, it is interesting to see you get in touch with your Muslim, feminine side.

LOL!:D

[AggieRocket]

Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
The US has bent over backwards to show these savages respect, and one little alleged slip-up and you've got liberals attempting to de-legitimize the entire US military's actions by saying that the servicemen are not respecting a religion. What a crock. Just lunacy from people who are looking for any way to make the US military look bad. I guess the libs just have egg on their face from losing a political debate and this is their way of fighting back -- by attacking the troops' actions. Look, no terrorist deserves an ounce of respect, be they Muslim or not. Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own. When you have millions of Muslims rooting for terror, then something has gone astray institutionally.

Oh, and to claim that a few countries have had a female PM and thereby justify Islam's treatment of women is a total joke. When women aren't allowed on the street and must wear a ridiculous face-to-toe covering, then something has just gone kooky wild wrong.

Do you see the irony between these 2 statements?
one little alleged slip-up and you've got liberals attempting to de-legitimize the entire US military's actions by saying that the servicemen are not respecting a religion. What a crock.
and
Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own.

In the first bolded statement, we are told that liberals are degrading the entire U.S. military on the basis of a few bad apples.

In the second statement, T_J takes the liberty of telling us that Muslims need to clean up their act. Not the few bad apples, but Muslims as a whole.

On a side note, if I understand it correctly, the only country where women aren't allowed on the street without a burqa is Saudi Arabia. In the other countries where people wear burqas, they do it out of choice, which is okay last time I checked. Saudi constitutes approximately 1% of the Islamic world in terms of population, which means that 99% of the Islamic world permits it legally. An interesting fact is that Turkey bans Islamic clothing in governmental institutions, and Turkey has more Muslims than Saudi. So we can translate that to say that more people in the Islamic world are prohibited from burqas than are compelled.

[Uprising]

Originally posted by basso
no, newsweek does not deserve an apology. they owe the country one.

amen.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by AggieRocket
Do you see the irony between these 2 statements?
one little alleged slip-up and you've got liberals attempting to de-legitimize the entire US military's actions by saying that the servicemen are not respecting a religion. What a crock.
and
Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own.

In the first bolded statement, we are told that liberals are degrading the entire U.S. military on the basis of a few bad apples.

In the second statement, T_J takes the liberty of telling us that Muslims need to clean up their act. Not the few bad apples, but Muslims as a whole.

On a side note, if I understand it correctly, the only country where women aren't allowed on the street without a burqa is Saudi Arabia. In the other countries where people wear burqas, they do it out of choice, which is okay last time I checked. Saudi constitutes approximately 1% of the Islamic world in terms of population, which means that 99% of the Islamic world permits it legally. An interesting fact is that Turkey bans Islamic clothing in governmental institutions, and Turkey has more Muslims than Saudi. So we can translate that to say that more people in the Islamic world are prohibited from burqas than are compelled.

Hey, AggieRocket, you must be new in the D&D if you don't know that TJ doesn't let facts get in the way of Muslim or Liberal bashing:).

I love to wake up every morning to a Muslim bashing thread/post, it makes me feel like all is well in America and the D&D...

[wizardball]

its funny that there are about 1.1BILLION Muslims in the world today without categorizing the different sects.... and it took the United States to figure out that it is a violent religion…..the “good guys” against the “evil” religion….its soo childish……if anything I see the united states as a tyrant nation …..i don’t believe there is large world organization called Al-Queida….its all a tactic used by the United States to gain an advantage(get to attack iraq and maybe Iran/Syria and bring a little stabilizing power in the region) from a negative”(9/11)..

[halfbreed]

Originally posted by wizardball
its funny that there are about 1.1BILLION Muslims in the world today without categorizing the different sects.... and it took the United States to figure out that it is a violent religion…..the “good guys” against the “evil” religion….its soo childish……if anything I see the united states as a tyrant nation …..i don’t believe there is large world organization called Al-Queida….its all a tactic used by the United States to gain an advantage(get to attack iraq and maybe Iran/Syria and bring a little stabilizing power in the region) from a negative”(9/11)..

Apparently punctuation and correct spelling are the tools of a tyrant nation.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by wizardball
I see the united states as a tyrant nation …..i don’t believe there is large world organization called Al-Queida….its all a tactic used by the United States to gain an advantage(get to attack iraq and maybe Iran/Syria and bring a little stabilizing power in the region) from a negative”(9/11)..

Sorry, but this deserves a good ol' :rolleyes:

[giddyup]

Originally posted by AggieRocket
In the second statement, T_J takes the liberty of telling us that Muslims need to clean up their act. Not the few bad apples, but Muslims as a whole.
Check above, but I believe he said <b>terrorists</b> not Muslims.

Actually, it is described both ways: the two sides of T_J!!:D

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by giddyup
Check above, but I believe he said <b>terrorists</b> not Muslims.

Actually, it is described both ways: the two sides of T_J!!:D TJ did say Muslims. Here it is

Maybe the Muslims ought to take it upon themselves to clean up their act (and the act of those that share their religion), otherwise they really shouldn't be offended when others look down on the behavior of their own.

[giddyup]

Here is T_J's first post on this subject:

"Originally posted by Trader_Jorge
Here is a question for the liberals:

Why do the liberals react with such fervor when the Koran is kicked or panties are put on the head of a terrorist, yet the libs never make mention of how the terrorists treat women as second class citizens and force them into sub-servient roles in the Muslim world?

Oh I must have forgotten, only the panties and Koran kicking helps them save face for losing the debate over the war...

He later generalized it to Muslims but I believe in the context of the rest of the post (which was not quoted) he is speaking of Muslims who root for the terrorists but don't themselves commit acts of terror.

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by giddyup
Here is T_J's first post on this subject:

"

He later generalized it to Muslims but I believe in the context of the rest of the post (which was not quoted) he is speaking of Muslims who root for the terrorists but don't themselves commit acts of terror. In the context of his overall tone in this thread it was muslims in general. He even attempted to blow off the fact that the 4 nations with the largest muslim populations in the world had all had female heads of state. He tried to brush that off by saying 'a few countries' in order to makes his bigotted generalization sound founded.

If TJ did only mean those few muslims then he should have been more careful, considering he has strived so hard to justify a negative incorrect stereo-type in this thread already.

[tigermission1]

Leave T_J alone guys, he can't help it.

It is OK T_J, I know where you coming from man, I have met a few people like you in the past.

[Sishir Chang]

Crikey!

Y'all are deconstructing TJ's posts?

This can come to no good end..

[RocketMan Tex]

Originally posted by Sishir Chang
Crikey!

Y'all are deconstructing TJ's posts?

This can come to no good end..

He's reading this, giggling mightily.

[gwayneco]

From James Lileks
http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/index.html


The latest example of the US Army’s Koran Humiliation Initiative has that headline-grabbing word: URINE. You’d think Private Anderson swaggered over, unholstered Private Johnson and let loose a pounding stream of tangy intentional desecration on the book as it was clutched to the sobbing breast of the terrorist. (Sorry, detainee.) Of course, what really happened was slightly less horrible; someone took a leak outside the cells, and the gentle Caribbean breeze carried a jot of pee through a ventilation grill, where it lit upon the Koran.

As the WaPo story notes: “The Sergeant of the guard . . . ensure the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Qu’ran.”

Life in the Gulag of our times. Bastards probably didn’t take all the pins out of the uniform. As for the allegation of flushing, the Pentagon inquiry “determined that no such incident took place. The probe did find, however –“

And here we get to the pith of the gist: Newsweek’s allegations were fake but accurate. “The probe did find, however that rumors of such an event swirled around the facility in the summer of 2002 after a detainee dropped his Qu’ran on the floor and other detainees blamed that on U.S. guards.”

Well, then. They made him drop it! Special Jew Mind Beams at work, no doubt. Say no more. No, let’s: “The story changed as detainees passed it along, escalating to rumors that U.S. troops ripped pages out of the book and then flushed it.”

So rumors escalated into more rumors. Remake page one. We continue: “But the investigation’s results also are contrary to the recent claims of top Pentagon officials that there were no credible accounts of Qur’an mishandling. The first case, in February 2002, arose when a detainee complained that guards at Camp X-ray kicked the Qur’an of a detainee in a neighboring cell. Though interrogators and guards noted the incident at the time, there was no further investigation.”

Three and a half years ago, a guard kicked a Qur’an. It’s a front page story today. Well, who am I to question the news judgment of the Post? Obviously it matters. One then must ask: is flushing worse than kicking? Flushing, after all, requires some amount of premeditation. One has to decide to flush a book. Kicking a book may be done in the heat of anger – say, when you’re interviewing someone fighting for a movement that wanted little girls to stay indoors all their lives dressed in hot sacks until the merry day when they were married off at 14 to some middle-aged guy with a nice job in the Remnants of Buddhism Demolition Division. If the guy might have info on what Al Qaeda was up to next – you know, the group from which the terro (SORRY!) detainee was plucked a mere five months after the Twin Towers thundered down, you might be tempted to shed all your civilized inhibitions and kick a book.

We continue: “Other confirmed reports included a two-word obscenity being written in the inside cover of the Qur’an, though investigators were unable to determine who wrote the phrase and concluded it was possible that the complaining detainee – who was conversant in English – may have defaced his own book.”

To squeeze it down: the investigation contradicted Pentagon reports that there were no credible accounts of Qur’an mishandling because there was a confirmed report of a naughty word written in the book, possibly by the book’s owner.

Got it? Front page summation in my paper: “Guards at Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba kicked, stepped on and splashed urine on the Qur’an, in some cases intentionally but also by accident, the Pentagon reporter. Detainees were also found to have abused it.”

Kicked, stepped on, and splashed urine. Splashed. The word suggests that someone waddled over with a brimming pot of urine and gave the vat a heave-ho, just to motivate the detainee. Stories like these must be told, of course, if only to show what the media finds important, and remind us how good things are going. I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:

What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?

"Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists' holy texts at a detention center."

Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –

"No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves."

Oh. So we lost, then.

Don't get me wrong. I want us to do the right thing. I don't think there should be a policy that permits interrogators to treat the Qur'an like it was, oh, a Bible discovered in the Saudi airport customs line. But when it comes to the revelations of these Gitmo tales, I cannot care as much as they would like me to care. I cannot. Not to say we should treat the Qur’an with casual disrespect. But if an infidel touches the book with the wrong hand and people react like a two-year-old whose peas are touching the mashed potatoes, well, I understand why this matters, but when measured against the sins of headchoppery and carbombs, it pales to an evanescent translucence. Odd how the story isn’t about the rules and the precautions and the spine-cracking efforts to bend over backwards to make sure infidels get out the tongs when approaching the sacred book of the terrori – sorry, the detainees - Sorry, the murderous gynophobic gay-hating fundamentalist theocratic cultural imperialists. No, the story is the infinitesimal number of times in which the rules were breached over the course of years. It’s like doing a story about Wal-Mart’s employment practices, and following a story about forced overtime with an expose on expired non-dairy creamers in the breakroom. By hammering the tale for three weeks the MSM manages to dilute the impact of the beloved Abu Grabass scandal; pyramidal prisoners, wafting pee – all the same, all front page news. Of course, it’s all a seamless whole if your intention is to remind people of the three basic preconceptions of reporting on a war conducted by anyone whose initials aren’t JFK: the Pentagon lies, the troops are dullards and brutes, and Nixon is a criminal.

If Al Qaeda blew up a Bible depository in Malaysia tomorrow, it would be page A-16. If forty-six were killed in riots in Pakistan because of a rumor that US forces had pantomimed “The Satanic Verses” in a North Carolina PX, it would be on page A-12. When they’re nuts, it’s not news. When we’re found guilty of wind-assisted desecration, it’s A-1. You may draw your own conclusions from that. In any case, it’s had the expected result: (h/t LGF)

The Official Spokesman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ambassador Atta El-Manan Bakhit, has stated that the confession by the southern command of the United States army on the occurrence of cases of desecration of the Holy Qur’an in Guantanamo prison was a confirmation of the practices that had been reported in the papers and strongly condemned by the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

He said that this disgraceful conduct of those soldiers reveal their blatant hatred and disdain for the religion of millions of Muslims all over the world and throws into doubt the nature of the instructions given to the American soldiers on religious values and principles of tolerance.

He added that these unequivocally rejected practices could only lead to an incitement of religious feelings and a deepening of the gulf of difference and intolerance between the Muslim world and the United States of America.

The OIC Spokesman urged the United States Government to live up to its responsibilities and not be lenient with the perpetrators of the desecration. He also demanded that those responsible for this despicable crime should be brought to justice immediately and that urgent measures should be taken to calm the tension in the Muslim world and ensure that such detestable acts are not repeated in the future.

Hey, Newsweek: call up Tommy Franks and ask for the banner they put on the ship Bush visited. You know the one. Mission Accomplished.

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by gwayneco
From James Lileks
http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/index.html




Don't get me wrong. I want us to do the right thing. I don't think there should be a policy that permits interrogators to treat the Qur'an like it was, oh, a Bible discovered in the Saudi airport customs line.

By hammering the tale for three weeks the MSM manages to dilute the impact of the beloved Abu Grabass scandal; pyramidal prisoners, wafting pee – all the same, all front page news. Of course, it’s all a seamless whole if your intention is to remind people of the three basic preconceptions of reporting on a war conducted by anyone whose initials aren’t JFK: the Pentagon lies, the troops are dullards and brutes, and Nixon is a criminal.

If Al Qaeda blew up a Bible depository in Malaysia tomorrow, it would be page A-16. If forty-six were killed in riots in Pakistan because of a rumor that US forces had pantomimed “The Satanic Verses” in a North Carolina PX, it would be on page A-12. When they’re nuts, it’s not news. When we’re found guilty of wind-assisted desecration, it’s A-1. You may draw your own conclusions from that. In any case, it’s had the expected result: (h/t LGF)



This was a great article. It was hilarious. This poor guy is very bitter. The funny thing about it is that he's getting worked up and has little grasp on the facts. First of all his perspective, like too many others, is us vs. Islam judging by some of the bits I've left in.

Then he goes on to try and only play up the most minor offenses at AG, and he totally ignores the other instances in AFghanistan. Because in those prisoners who had not been found guilty, and in at least one case were believed to not be terrorists were murdered. Somehow in his rant of bitterness he manages to ignore those facts.

All in all it was a great laugh, thanks.

[giddyup]

How many Bibles sitting atop or in desk drawers were incinerated on 9/11? Anybody? Well, Qu 'rans for that matter....

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by giddyup
How many Bibles sitting atop or in desk drawers were incinerated on 9/11? Anybody? Well, Qu 'rans for that matter.... Did you get the memo? It isn't about Christians vs. Muslims. It isn't a case of saying something was done to the bible therefore it is ok to treat the Koran badly. First of all the two books are held in a different light by the respective religions, but it shouldn't really matter since it isn't a contest.

[giddyup]

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
Did you get the memo? It isn't about Christians vs. Muslims. It isn't a case of saying something was done to the bible therefore it is ok to treat the Koran badly. First of all the two books are held in a different light by the respective religions, but it shouldn't really matter since it isn't a contest.
The point is the hypocrisy about the firestorm created about the few occasions about either slight or gross mis-handling of the Qu 'ran. These Muslms whose Qu 'rans are being mis-handled are evil, malicious, malevolent terrorists. Even a bunch of Muslims will agree to that. If the Qu ran motivates them, a little manipulation of the Qu 'ran might rattle them.

We don't regard sacrificial death as they do, but it's okay for them to disregard our lives but not for us to disregard their holy book?

FB, I truly wish that a war could be fought with a neat little set of rules where no one got hurt and no one's feelings got trampled, but I haven't seen one yet.

Maybe if we made you Supreme Overlord of the Realm with all-encompassing powers it would happen? Hell, it would happen if any of us ascended to that omnipotent throne... but that ain't gonna happen.

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by giddyup
The point is the hypocrisy about the firestorm created about the few occasions about either slight or gross mis-handling of the Qu 'ran. These Muslms whose Qu 'rans are being mis-handled are evil, malicious, malevolent terrorists. Even a bunch of Muslims will agree to that. If the Qu ran motivates them, a little manipulation of the Qu 'ran might rattle them.

We don't regard sacrificial death as they do, but it's okay for them to disregard our lives but not for us to disregard their holy book?

FB, I truly wish that a war could be fought with a neat little set of rules where no one got hurt and no one's feelings got trampled, but I haven't seen one yet.

Maybe if we made you Supreme Overlord of the Realm with all-encompassing powers it would happen? Hell, it would happen if any of us ascended to that omnipotent throne... but that ain't gonna happen.

How do you know the muslims who's holy books are being defaced are evil? Statistically there is almost a 1 in 2 chance that the person isn't a threat, but is still being held indefinitely with no chance to defend themselves. They often aren't told why they are being held and can't see a lawyer. And hearly half the time they aren't even deemed to be a threat.

The rule book has been in place and wars have been fought under that rule book. Yes the rules are sometimes broken, and any time that happens the person who broke the rules should be punished. It isn't a hard concept.

Now, I understand that most of the time people aren't defacing Islamic holy materials, and they are allowed to have them, and time to practice their religion. That is a good thing. But when incidents like this happen we shouldn't just say, "well it was only 1 in 100 we should just ignore it, and anyone who doesn't ignore it isn't supporting our military."

Most of the time airlines go out of their way to make flights safe. They bend over backwards. But if a mechanic accidentally forgets something and the plane crashes and people die, should we just ignore it because 99.9% of the pilots and airlines aren't making those kinds of mistakes?

That is what people are asking to happen here. When somebody makes a mistake, it isn't unpatriotic to be upset about it, and want something done to correct it. The rule of accountability shouldn't go out of the door because things are tough in a time of war. People in war time have jobs to do. When they don't do them correctly they should face the consequences. I'm not at all criticizing the folks who are doing their job correctly, but to ignore problems that do happen is insanity.

[giddyup]

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
Now, I understand that most of the time people aren't defacing Islamic holy materials, and they are allowed to have them, and time to practice their religion. That is a good thing. But when incidents like this happen we shouldn't just say, "well it was only 1 in 100 we should just ignore it, and anyone who doesn't ignore it isn't supporting our military."

Most of the time airlines go out of their way to make flights safe. They bend over backwards. But if a mechanic accidentally forgets something and the plane crashes and people die, should we just ignore it because 99.9% of the pilots and airlines aren't making those kinds of mistakes?

That is what people are asking to happen here. When somebody makes a mistake, it isn't unpatriotic to be upset about it, and want something done to correct it. The rule of accountability shouldn't go out of the door because things are tough in a time of war. People in war time have jobs to do. When they don't do them correctly they should face the consequences. I'm not at all criticizing the folks who are doing their job correctly, but to ignore problems that do happen is insanity.
It's three different things to:

1. Ignore a problem
2. Attend to the problem proportionally
and
3. Hyperbolize the problem in such a way that more people will die just because the "problem" got publicized

[Rockets2K]

Originally posted by Sishir Chang
Crikey!

Y'all are deconstructing TJ's posts?

This can come to no good end..

and I thought I had seen everything in here. :eek:

come on folks....no need to get all up in arms about TJ's posts....when you saw the thread title, you KNEW what he was gonna say...didnt you?

I did

I'm sure someone could write a program that could pass for TJ easily....throw in random statements about not supporting the troops...random insults to liberals...a couple of lines devoted to telling us how bad the Muslims are.....and a few swipes at the liberal media...and wala!...a Tj post.

Its really quite easy....

RMT is right....TJ is sitting back...and having himself one helluva laugh over the responses he has generated...works every time dont it Conquistador?

[andymoon]

Originally posted by giddyup
It's three different things to:

1. Ignore a problem


Unfortunately, what we see supporters of this administration doing is 1, 1, and only 1.

[tigermission1]

Originally posted by giddyup
How many Bibles sitting atop or in desk drawers were incinerated on 9/11? Anybody? Well, Qu 'rans for that matter....

Screw the Bibles and the Korans, in 9/11 real human beings were massacred, and that is more holy than any book.

From an article I read wayyyy back a few months after 9/11 took place, at least 400 Muslims were killed in the world trade center, they were people just like everyone else who were conducting business there and trying to make a living.

These terrorists don't care about that, they see them as mere "collatoral damage" that is acceptable in order to accomplish a larger, more important goal, whatever that it.

They are mass-murderers and criminals hiding behind religious rhetoric to attempt and justify their actions. But that doesn't erase the fact that they are merely a bunch of mass-murderers.

[Sishir Chang]

So rumors escalated into more rumors. Remake page one. We continue: “But the investigation’s results also are contrary to the recent claims of top Pentagon officials that there were no credible accounts of Qur’an mishandling.

So rumor and uncredible evidence are enough to wage a war on but not enough for Newsweek to publish a short piece on..:(

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by Rockets2K
I'm sure someone could write a program that could pass for TJ easily....throw in random statements about not supporting the troops...random insults to liberals...a couple of lines devoted to telling us how bad the Muslims are.....and a few swipes at the liberal media...and wala!...a Tj post.


How do we know TJ isn't a program?

[Rockets2K]

Originally posted by Sishir Chang
How do we know TJ isn't a program?


umm....if he is...he does a fine job of appearing human to the naked eye...

;)

[giddyup]

Originally posted by andymoon
Unfortunately, what we see supporters of this administration doing is 1, 1, and only 1.
That's just silly. Most of these "controversies" were already dealt with and are getting publicized much after the fact. That publicity is getting other people killed. What's that you used to talk about: The Ostrich Brigde?

[Sishir Chang]

Originally posted by Rockets2K
umm....if he is...he does a fine job of appearing human to the naked eye...

;)

That is what you think Mr. Anderson.

[andymoon]

Originally posted by giddyup
That's just silly. Most of these "controversies" were already dealt with and are getting publicized much after the fact. That publicity is getting other people killed. What's that you used to talk about: The Ostrich Brigde?

If by "dealt with," you mean "swept under the rug and hidden from the public eye," then you are spot on.

Nobody was "dealing with" the problems with interrogation, defacement of religion, or instances of torture and murder. Those of us who claimed that such things were taking place were berated, shouted down, and called all manner of names until these events were confirmed. Now we are being accused of "getting other people killed" by reporting the truth about what is going on. I wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible until now.

I say that if the truth is getting people killed, the people to blame are the ones who committed the acts (defacement, torture, murder) and the superiors who allowed the acts to happen and continue. Of course, in your world that would mean placing some blame on someone appointed by Bush so I guess that just isn't possible.

Ostrich Brigade indeed.

[Rockets2K]

LEt me attempt to be ontopic for once...

I wanna try to get this straight...

Newsweek was bad for reporting aspects of this story?

and the Pentagon is bad for confirming some of the Newsweek report?

and the damned liberal media is bad for reporting the Pentagon's report?

So.....we should never discuss anything unless it is glorfifying Big Brother?


Im so confused...I think Ill go lay down...
wake me up in time for the 5 Minute Hate.

[FranchiseBlade]

Originally posted by Rockets2K
LEt me attempt to be ontopic for once...

I wanna try to get this straight...

Newsweek was bad for reporting aspects of this story?

and the Pentagon is bad for confirming some of the Newsweek report?

and the damned liberal media is bad for reporting the Pentagon's report?

So.....we should never discuss anything unless it is glorfifying Big Brother?


Im so confused...I think Ill go lay down...
wake me up in time for the 5 Minute Hate. It sounds like you are on your way to being a good patriotic American, at last.:D

[giddyup]

Originally posted by andymoon
If by "dealt with," you mean "swept under the rug and hidden from the public eye," then you are spot on.

Nobody was "dealing with" the problems with interrogation, defacement of religion, or instances of torture and murder. Those of us who claimed that such things were taking place were berated, shouted down, and called all manner of names until these events were confirmed. Now we are being accused of "getting other people killed" by reporting the truth about what is going on. I wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible until now.

I say that if the truth is getting people killed, the people to blame are the ones who committed the acts (defacement, torture, murder) and the superiors who allowed the acts to happen and continue. Of course, in your world that would mean placing some blame on someone appointed by Bush so I guess that just isn't possible.

Ostrich Brigade indeed.
Damn andy, I didn't know that you were the reporter that broke this story.... Where are you going to put your Pulitzer Prize?