Remember about two weeks ago when the administration was all in a huff about Newsweek’s story, detailing abuses of the Koran at Guantánamo, including flushing the Koran down the toilet? Righties went nuts, claiming that irresponsible journalism cost lives in riotous protests in Afghanistan. And never, never did we flush a Koran.
Well, turns out that the riots and the killings weren’t even about that Newsweek article. Now, late this evening, 7PM on the East Coast, well after the network news cycle winds down for the weekend, the Pentagon releases this information:
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, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; a guard’s urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran;
Hold it. “Urine came through an air vent”? There’s a classic case of passive writing! How about “a guard pissed through an air vent onto a prisoner and his Koran”? Urine doesn’t find its way through air vents on its own. Anyway, continue…
…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.
Nice of them to deep-six this report by releasing it late on a Friday. I’m sure newsweek is waiting by the phone for Scott McClellan’s apology.
Here’s how they explain the urine incident:
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.
Uh, right. How hard does the wind have to blow, or how close must you stand by the vent, for something like this to happen, especially in enough volume for someone to recognize they’re being peed upon?
But arguing over Koran desecration seems so trivial compared to the torture we know is being done in our name. Or the complete disregard for the Geneva Conventions and our own Constitution — all those prisoners of war, held incommunicado, no lawyers, no charges, indefinitely, all because the president chooses to call them “enemy combatants” and “detainees”. Hmm, if they’re “enemy combatants”, we must be at war, and if they’re “detained”, they must be prisoners, so why aren’t they “prisoners of war”?
Oh, right, because they don’t have fancy matching clothes and a flag. That’s why we get to waterboard them, mock execute them, electocute them, beat them, smear fake menstrual blood on them, smear shit on them, chain them for hours in painful positions, desecrate their holy book, sodomize them, and kill them.
They’re not “prisoners of war”, because then they’d get Geneva Convention protections. They’re not “criminal suspects”, because then they’d get lawyers and a trial. Hell, they’re not even animals, because then we’d be locked up for animal cruelty.
May George W. Bush and his whole crew rot in hell. No wait, I’m an atheist. May George W. Bush and his whole crew be impeached, tried for war crimes, and sentenced to life in federal prison where they’ll get infinitely better treatment than an Iraqi at Abu Ghraib.
