Societas Proud member of the reality-based community Thom Haslam, Editor societas writes about the Koran debacle.

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Societas Proud member of the reality-based community Thom Haslam, Editor societas writes about...

http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=114

Nice to know that NPR is only a weekend behind the bloggers; usually, the lag time seems closer to a week.

That being said, Societas also made mistakes. I initially treated the allegation as factual, for the first post on 12 Thursday May 2005; I corrected and qualified this, in response to General Richard Myers’ remarks, on 13 Friday May 2005.

I also on 13 May examined Myers’ rebuttal, the “log” defense. I stand by my 13 May criticism Why the General Richard Myers explanation won’t play, and assert again that Myers needs to investigate what occurred on the base not what was recorded in the interrogation logs.

Finally, I both fully stand by and reiterate the analysis presented in my final post for 13 May The GITMO-Quran controversy: Damage done, looking forward. I recommend it to you as far better than anything yet done by NPR.

Update 10:26 AM same day:
Raw Story provides some much needed context: Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts. These are the accounts that BBC acknowledges, NYT mentions in passing, and NPR ignores.
Update (2) 10:53 AM same day:
Memo to self: always read Juan Cole first thing in the morning. Cole’s Guantanamo Controversies: The Bible and the Koran provides excellent context and valuable links. Cole himself states:

As a professional historian, I would say we still do not have enough to be sure that the Koran desecration incident took place. We have enough to consider it plausible. Anyway, the important thing politically is that some Muslims have found it plausible, and their outrage cannot be effectively dealt with by simple denial.

Exactly right.