'Newsweek Got Gitmo Right' by Calgacus

[TacticalPeek]

May 16, 2005

Newsweek Got Gitmo Right
by Calgacus*

*Calgacus has been employed as a researcher in the national security field for 20 years

Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology.

One such incident (during which the Koran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.)

The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," Dec. 3, 2003). It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. 'It was a very bad situation for us,' said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. 'We cried so much and shouted, "Please do not do that to the Holy Koran."' (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.)


more
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5959

[expatriot]

1. I was JUST about to post this.... very good read. nt

[DulceDecorum]

3. What Newsweek is ACTUALLY saying.

May 23 issue
NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. But the NEWSWEEK report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics. Opponents of the Karzai government, including remnants of the deposed Taliban regime, have been looking for ways to exploit public discontent. The Afghan economy is weak, and the government (pressed by the United States) has alienated farmers by trying to eradicate their poppy crops, used to make heroin in the global drug trade. Afghan men are sometimes rounded up during ongoing U.S. military operations, and innocents can sit in jail for months. When they are released, many complain of abuse. President Karzai is still largely respected, but many Afghans regard him as too dependent on and too obsequious to the United States. With Karzai scheduled to come to Washington next week, this is a good time for his enemies to make trouble.

That does not quite explain, however, why the protest and rioting over Qur'an desecration spread throughout the Islamic region. After so many gruesome reports of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the vehemence of feeling around this case came as something of a surprise. Extremist agitators are at least partly to blame, but obviously the reports of Qur'anic desecration touch a particular nerve in the Islamic world. U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, are uneasily watching, and last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly remarked that any desecration of the Qur'an would not be "tolerated" by the United States. (As a legal matter, U.S. citizens are free to deface the Qur'an as an exercise of free speech, just as they are free to burn the American flag or tear up a Bible; but government employees can be punished for violating government rules.)
<snip>

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7857407/site/newsweek/

The Al Qaeda training manual?
Like the one that has the instructions as to make an atomic bomb?

But however it plays out, there remains the predictible reaction when a fake atom bomb recipe from 22 years ago has suddenly risen online to a second notoriety: laughter and relief.
http://alternet.org/story/11935

[Karenina]

5. Kick!

:kick:

[DulceDecorum]

2. The Koran is taken VERY seriously

May 4, 1999
KUWAIT (CNN) -- The leader of Kuwait dismissed Parliament on Tuesday, hours after legislators threatened to remove his Islamic Affairs minister for mistakes in 120,000 printed copies of the Koran.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9905/04/kuwait.parliament/

And that's just the CNN version of the story.

[illflem]

4. My feeling is Newsweek was deliberately

fed false intelligence by the administration that could later be proven wrong just to discredit the "liberal media".
This reeks exactly of Rathergate.

[Mass]

6. I disagree

I think they were fed what was the truth and then, when somebody saw how damaging that was, they were asked to change their story and agree.

Newsweek is as much a RW tool as Time or other media. What do you think they are, some sort of liberal spokeman???

In fact, they are even more dangerous than the Scaiffe media because people tend to believe them when they BS.

[LizW]

9. I think that's it

This story is out there and has been reported too many times for the Pentagon to now claim the incident(s) of Koran desecration did not happen.

What I believe is happening is that Newsweek is being pressured to change their story. The allegations that people are being killed specifically because of the Koran desecration are being made to heap pressure on Newsweek (and other news organizations) not to print information about American bad actions.

"Don't print that, you'll endanger our soldiers."

It's ridiculous. The Muslims did not hear this story for the first time in Newsweek! They knew what was happening as soon as people started being released from Guantanamo (which is why the U.S. fought to hold everyone there indefinitely, and only started releasing them when ordered to do so by the court.)

This is about the information that gets to the American people. What Bushco wants out there is this: Our soldiers would never do something so bad. The increased violence is not George Bush's fault, it's Newsweek's. The liberal media is so anxious to blame our soldiers, they will print lies, even if they get our soldiers killed.

This whole thing is about continued manipulation of American public opinion.

[Karenina]

11. This from Daily Kos:

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/5/15/211444/985

[enough already]

8. Exactly

This has got Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it. These pigs will stop at nothing to divert attention away from Bush's lies and falling poll numbers.

[ChiciB1]

7. The REAL Story Is Just ANOTHER

COVER-UP by this corrupt administration. ANYTIME, any negative news leaks out, THEY bring out the STORM TROUPER henchmen. Only time will tell just how much longer they will be able to keep the lid on.

Other news organizations (not in America) have done a faaaaar better job of reporting the truth and reality of the mess we have made in the Middle East. I do feel that the cauldron is reaching a boiling point and containment is going to be a "big problem" for these DICK-TATTERS running our country. What a shame that we no longer stand for Democracy here in America!

I'm ashamed for what has been done in our name. These are people's lives that we are dealing with and for some reason many of the CHRISTIAN followers simply ignore the obvious.

As I've said before, when THEIR Armageddon comes in the form of lack of food and housing only then will they HAVE to take a closer look. And even then, many will simply bury their head in the sand further... but SOME, hopefully enough will "see the light"!

I know, sounds overly optimistic, but this can't go on forever. Too many lies, too many LIES!

[expatriot]

10. morning kick to top nt

[madhat]

12. Of course it's right.

* said during his last press conference that they will use whatever means "legally" available to get information from prisoners.

Even taking him at his word about the term "legally," it is certainly true that desecrating the Koran is "legal."

Ergo, of course they used it as a method.

[Roland99]

13. RawStory is running that as a headline!

[illflem]

14. A-hole on C-SPAN this morning said

it's ok to piss on the Koran since they burn our flag.
Unfortunately I think this might be a common belief.