Newsweek Lied, People Died

JTT wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

Ubiquitous?

The reports of the IRC are the accounts of the terrorists I'm referring to. Who do you think reported to the Red Cross?

You could float an aircraft carrier thru the holes in your arguments, Tico.

Why don't you try and do so?

[quote]Could you check and see for me how many of these Red Cross sources have been convicted of being terorists?

AMMAN, JORDAN -- Laura Bush is showing her independent side and contradicting the White House.

Newsweek magazine should not be solely blamed for deadly protests in the Middle East, the First Lady said Friday. And her husband should have been interrupted to be told about an airplane scare that sent her rushing to an underground bunker.

Bush's candid remarks -- at the outset of a trip to the Middle East -- showed anew her willingness to step out more boldly in her husband's second term. Usually deferential to her husband and rarely controversial, she has veered off the White House message only rarely in the past.

But there was no mistaking that her views were at odds with White House officials as she chatted with reporters while flying across the Atlantic.

The White House has defended the decision not to stop President Bush on a bike ride last week to tell him of an emergency evacuation at the Capitol and the White House. The scare was triggered by a small plane flying into restricted airspace. The president was not informed until he finished his ride in Maryland, about 50 minutes after the evacuation began.

"I think he should have been interrupted," the First Lady said, hastening to add, "but I'm not going to second-guess the Secret Service that were with him."

Asked about her comment, presidential spokesman Trent Duffy said, "I think the president and the First Lady have both said they have full confidence in the Secret Service. He feels that the protocols were followed."

The First Lady said she hoped her trip would help improve the U.S. image in the Arab world after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the now-retracted Newsweek report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book.

Bush said Newsweek can't be held solely responsible for the rioters' violence. "You can't excuse what they did because of the mistake -- you know, you can't blame it all on Newsweek," she said.

Bush: Photos won't inspire insurgents

President Bush said he didn't think the images would energize the insurgents, thought to be led by Sunni Arabs who were favored under Saddam's regime but largely excluded from the new Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
"I don't think a photo inspires murderers," Bush said. "These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric."

Later, however, White House press spokesman Trent Duffy said the photos could be perceived by members of the insurgency in much the same way as revelations of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Karzai 'Shocked' Over U.S. Abuse Report

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 21, 2005
Filed at 8:26 a.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's president on Saturday demanded ''very, very strong'' action by the United States against any military personnel found to be abusing prisoners, after a newspaper report alleged maltreatment of detainees at the main U.S. base here.

President Hamid Karzai said he will bring up the issue when he meets American leaders during a four-day visit to the United States starting Saturday.

The abuse allegations were in a New York Times report Friday that cited a 2,000-page confidential file on the Army's criminal investigation into the deaths of two Afghans at the Bagram base north of the capital, Kabul, in December 2002.

''It has shocked me totally. We condemn it. We want the U.S. government to take very, very strong action to take away people like that working with their forces in Afghanistan,'' he told reporters before leaving Kabul. ''Definitely ... I will see about that when I am in the United States.''

But he added that the actions of those responsible for the abuse should not be seen as reflective of all Americans.

''The people of the United States are very kind people,'' he said. ''It is only one or two individuals who are bad and such individuals are found in any military in any society everywhere, including Afghanistan.''

The U.S. military, responding to the allegations, defended its treatment of detainees, saying it would not tolerate maltreatment.

Bush was briefed by senior aides Friday morning about the photos' existence, and "strongly supports the aggressive and thorough investigation that is already under way" that seeks to find who took them, White House press spokesman Trent Duffy said.

The White House (search) declined to say what decisions news organizations should make about disseminating the photos. "That's your job," he said.

With the inquiry ongoing, he also would not comment on how the pictures may affect the U.S. image abroad. But the president downplayed the importance of the photos in stirring up the Iraqi insurgency.

"I think the insurgency is inspired by their desire to stop the march of freedom," Bush said...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Rumsfeld was informed of the photos' publication and told that the matter is being "aggressively" investigated by U.S. officials in Iraq.

"We take seriously our responsibility to ensure the safety and security of all detainees," a Pentagon statement released Friday read.

Yes Tico you are behaving like a prat and posting like a neocon apologist. "My political party, and its military deeds, right or wrong" is a disgraceful misuse and perversion of your intellect.

This morning monkeys flew out of my butt. It was pleasurable, and the monkeys seemed to enjoy it as well.

The BS on this board never ceases to amaze.

Dozens Have Alleged Koran's Mishandling

Complaints by inmates in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba emerged early. In 2003, the Pentagon set a sensitivity policy after trouble at Guantanamo.

So much talk about the killing over there in Afghanistan, about how "Newsweek Lied and People Died." But honestly, have these people taken the find to check out who did this killing that they're so up in arms about? Well, OK, it was Muslims.

Our Muslims.

Most of the dead -- the killings that have sparked also the hysteria back here in the U.S. -- are people shot and killed by troops or police loyal to the government of Hamid Karzai, our ally!

Let's review the mythology of the Afghan riots that were caused by Newsweek. Remember, facts are stubborn things. It was Ronald Reagan himself who said so.

1. Most of the deaths were caused by pro-U.S. Afghan forces, firing bullets at rioting protestors. Here's "the scoop" from an early Newsday (Not Newsweek, heaven forbid!) account, one of the best:

Afghan police and troops, who have been hastily trained, seemed uncertain what to do, witnesses said. At times they stood by, but eventually they fired on the crowd, witnesses told journalists there, killing four people and injuring dozens more.

2. As alluded to above, Afghan troops are poorly trained, as noted in this Times of London report and elsewhere. Had the United States continued to make Afghanistan the main focus of the war on terror after 2002, few doubt that more money and more emphasis would have been placed on such training -- but instead billions of dollars were diverted to Iraq.

Here's what Carlotta Gall of The New York Times told NPR on May 12 (from Nexis, no link) after "the Newsweek riots":

I think it's true in that the police don't have much training in riot control, and what they do is fire in the air to try and disperse the crowds and that doesn't always end up very successfully. And, in fact, yesterday we had a lot of people, over 60, injured, many of them, I think, from flying bullets. It's not the ideal way of crowd control, and the police are just acting in any way they can.

3. While we agree that the Newsweek report (and we won't re-hash here the debate over its accuracy) played a role in sparking the riots, so did many other things that had nothing to do with the Newsweek article, including intrusive nighttime raids by American forces and U.S. plans to locate bases in the Muslim nation.

Again, from the Newsday story:

In any case, the violence in Jalalabad was a warning that the U.S.-led effort to stabilize Afghanistan is facing a largely hidden well of public anger, Afghan and Western analysts said. "This is not simply about Qurans," said Alain de Bures, the Jalalabad-based director of Madera, a European aid agency working to rebuild agriculture in eastern Afghanistan. "This was an explosion of anger by people who are, frankly, fed up with the behavior of American troops."

By DAVID S. CLOUD and CARLOTTA GALL
Published: May 22, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 21 - United States officials warned this month in an internal memo that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership."

Darko Zeljkovic for The New York Times
Two Afghan workers scraped opium paste from a field of poppies near Kandahar. The U.S.-backed poppy-eradication program has had little effect.
A cable sent on May 13 from the United States Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said that provincial officials and village elders had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Mr. Karzai, had done little to overcome that resistance...

A copy of the three-page cable, which was addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was shown to The New York Times by an American official alarmed at the slow pace of poppy eradication.