[LA Times] Improper Handling of Koran Confirmed

[praxiz]

It's finally getting some proper coverage. Also see:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1504147


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Improper Handling of Koran Confirmed
By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — A military investigation has found that U.S. troops mishandled Korans of Muslim prisoners five times at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but found "no credible evidence" to support a detainee's claim that a holy book was flushed down a toilet, the prison's commander said Thursday.

snip

Pentagon officials said international furor over an allegation published in Newsweek that a guard had flushed a Koran down a toilet prompted them to brief reporters about the interim findings. The magazine report about the treatment of the Koran was widely blamed for touching off deadly riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Newsweek retracted the report one week after publishing it.

snip

The guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," the detainee alleged, according to the FBI report. "The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things."

snip

Hood declined to discuss specific incidents of alleged Koran desecration before completing the investigation. He also refused to detail how the two people were punished except to say that one had been reassigned.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo27may27,1,7444952.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[praxiz]

1. Notice how ..

.. they now say Newsweek was "blamed" for the riots, no longer "responsibe".

A subtle change in the rhetoric, but it goes to show the newspapers KNOW the riots wasn't Newsweeks fault.

[Miss Chybil]

2. How does one go about finding credible evidence a book was flushed

down a toilet? I assume it didn't actually go down the hole and I suppose months, or years, later one could search high and low for a water damaged Koran and conclude upon not finding one, it never existed. But, why doesn't this same theory work on weapons of mass destruction, I wonder?

[jimshoes]

3. I'm willing to bet

that the pentagon is playing the semantics game with these faux denials. In the following statement; "A military investigation has found that U.S. troops mishandled Korans of Muslim prisoners five times at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but found "no credible evidence" to support a detainee's claim that a holy book was flushed down a toilet, the prison's commander said Thursday."

The first thing that one asks is how do you determine what is credible? Then you must ask, why they put the qualifier; "that U.S. troops mishandled Korans...", which begs the question, are they claiming only U.S. troops had contact with the detainees during interrogations, interviews, fact finding sessions, or whatever terminology the military uses for these actions and not private interrogators/inquisitors or even CIA, NSA or some other government organization who really did "flush" a Muslim Holy Book.

And taking it one step further, does the term "flush" narrow the parameters of the "denial" if taken by its literal definition that a book was actually physically flushed down a commode or merely thrown in a container that is used to collect human excrement? They don't say. And lastly the final little twist to this exercise in word parsing, is they have taken it upon themselves to define "a holy book", or at least in the eyes of the prison commander, it seems, who appears to be the final arbiter of what constitutes "a holy book".

I'm sure there's more wiggle room built in to this "denial", but will anyone take them to task about it?