David Corn (The Nation): Pentagon Caught In Fib about Koran-gate?

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Dated Friday May 20

Pentagon Caught In Fib about Koran-gate?
By David Corn

Here's a posting I put up on the HuffingtonPost site. It may not be as juicy as Robert Evans' celebration of a menage a trois. But I do hope that this issue--the chief Pentagon spokesperson misleading the public about allegations concerning the desecration and mistreatement of the Koran at Gitmo--will get some attention:

The Bush administration really knows how to exploit a tragedy and deflect attention in order to duck responsibility. After Newsweek retracted its ten-sentence Koran-in-a-john item, Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, claimed that the Pentagon had never received any "credible allegations" about "the willful desecration of the Koran as a component of interrogations" at Guantanamo. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Di Rita said that after the Pentagon had checked logs and found "several instances...that suggested that detainees have, for whatever reason, torn pages from the Koran." But these log reports, he added, were not corroborated . . . .

And he repeated his main point: "We have received no credible and specific allegations" of Koran desecration or Koran mistreatment conducted by US personnel at Gitmo.

How then does Di Rita explain the International Committee of the Red Cross' claim--which became news yesterday and today--that in 2002 and 2003 it told the Pentagon multiple times that prisoners in Guantanamo had said that US officials there showed disrespect for the Koran.

Read more.

This isn't going away. Even if a particular source is discredited, it doesn't mean that the story is false.

In the case of "Rathergate", while the specific document on which CBS News relied turned out to be a forgery, the facts remain that Mr. Bush ducked into the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, that he was able to get his slot because of his family's powerful connections, and he did not honorably fulfill his obligations. Likewise, even if Newsweek's source is unreliable, it doesn't mean that there is not other information that supports the story that US interrogators at Guantanamo desecrated the Koran.

As White House spun the forged National Guard document to suggest that Mr. Bush's service record was honorable, it is now attempting to spin Newsweek's reliance on a discredited source to suggest that there is no torture or humiliation of prisoners at Guantanamo or elsewhere in the neocons' worldwide network of gulags.

We know there is torture and humiliating treatment at these facilities. We know that Gonzales memos, using legalistic gymnastics, approved them. And we know it is a crime against humanity.

This matter needs to be investigated and the criminals at the highest levels need to be punished.

[Triana]

1. This matter needs to be investigated ...

... and the criminals at the highest levels need to be punished.

Period.

However, unless 'we the people' absolutely INSIST that this is brought to the fore, it won't happen.

A constant barrage of phone calls and letters about this and about the Downing St. Memos needs to go to every freakin news outlet we can find, and to every congressman and senator on the Hill. And these articles need to be put everywhere on the internet they can be placed.

Some way needs to be found to kick them (the politicians and the goddamned media) where it HURTS and I mean $$$$$$$$$$. I don't know how but until or unless we have their testicles in a vice, we will get nowhere with this because the foxes are guarding the henhouse and Americans are far, far too complacent about this crap.

[bullimiami]

2. is this true?

""In the case of "Rathergate", while the specific document on which CBS News relied turned out to be a forgery,""


because I didnt think so. afaik they were never proven to be anything, they just couldnt prove they were authentic.

or did I miss that information.

[librechik]

3. no, they were specifically unable to prove the document was forged

or not.

[wallwriter]

4. Is anyone else horrified by the transparent repeated tactic

of discrediting the press? Yeah, I know you are, but I just had to say it that way, because most of the American public isn't. It would be an amazing tactic were it not so horrifying. They simultaneously get to duck responsibility for grotesque crimes and blame the whole thing on their critics. Stalin would be proud.