Newsweek Lied, People Died

Ticomaya wrote:

blatham wrote:

tico

Question for you this time: have the DoD lied to the Tillman family and to America regarding their son?

From the account I've heard, they seem to think so.

Is it your conception that such a reply gains you anything but disdain?

You continue to prove yourself an ideological hack, tico, afraid to speak truthfully or to apply your own values consistently whether those values are religious or legal.

You have become exactly as interesting to talk to as any wooden-headed puppet.

I was referring to "The City", not New York....

cjhsa wrote:

I was referring to "The City", not New York....

nyc is "the city"...

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

cjhsa wrote:

I was referring to "The City", not New York....

nyc is "the city"...

I got ya city right heah!

Thousands rally in Pakistan in new protests over Koran abuse report

ISLAMABAD, May 27 (AFP) - Thousands of Islamic hardliners launched fresh protests across Pakistan Friday after the United States admitted some guards at Guantanamo Bay had mishandled the Koran, witnesses and party officials said.

Armed and mounted police as well as anti-terrorist commandos watched over several thousand people, including a number of women, who gathered outside the parliament building in Islamabad in response to a call by Islamic parties.

Demonstrators waving anti-US placards and banners also vented their anger in southern Karachi and eastern Lahore, Pakistan's two largest cities, and many other towns around the Islamic republic of 150 million people.

The demonstrations came a day after visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca assured Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf the US would take action if anyone was found guilty of abusing the holy book.

"The US is indulging in desecration of the Koran as part of its anti-Islam policy," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of main Islamic fundamentalist party Jamaat-i-Islami and a senior member of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance of religious parties, told the rally in the capital.

Ahmed said an earlier bomb blast at a Muslim shrine near Islamabad earlier Friday which left at least 19 people dead was "exploded to divert attention from the protest against the United States and to trigger Sunni-Shiite violence."

Liaquat Baloch, deputy chief of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, said the alliance had also contacted Muslim organisations in 34 countries.

In neighbouring Indian-admninistered Kashmir, shops, schools and banks shut in a one-day strike called by Islamic parties, while several hundred Muslims protested outside the US embassy in Malaysia at the alleged abuse.

Back in Pakistan, some 2,000 protesters chanted anti-US slogans in Lahore while a crowd of 800 gathered in the southwestern city of Quetta where protesters trampled on a US flag, witnesses said.

Hundreds of Shiite Muslims gathered in politically volatile Karachi, shouting vitrolic abuse aimed at the United States and Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, who is a key ally in the what Washington calls its war on terror.

About 100 women clad in Muslim veils and waving placards took to the streets in Peshawar, the main town in deeply conservative North West Frontier Province. A large rally held in the city later was addressed by Pakistani opposition leader and Islamic radical Fazlur Rehman.

Similar demonstrations were held in the central Pakistani cities of Multan, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan, an where angry mob burnt American flags and effigies of President George W. Bush.

Protests erupted across Muslim world after a report in Newsweek magazine early this month that interrogators at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, threw a Koran in a toilet to rattle Muslim inmates.

In neighbouring Afghanistan, violence left 15 people dead.

The US-based magazine retracted the story last week after its source expressed doubts. However the US commander at Guantanamo, Brigadier General Jay Hood, said Thursday investigators had found at least five instances in which guards and interrogators at the base Cuba mishandled the Koran, although there was no "credible evidence" it was flushed in a toilet.

Inquiry finds some Koran 'mishandling'

By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON ?- The Pentagon said Thursday that it found five instances in which the Koran was "mishandled" by U.S. troops and interrogators at Guantanamo Bay but no evidence it was ever flushed down a toilet.
Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, head of a joint task force at the prison in Cuba for detainees in the war on terror, wouldn't provide details on the incidents. But he said the investigation hasn't found any serious violations.

"I want to assure you that we are committed to respecting the cultural dignity of the Koran and the detainees' practice of faith," the general said.

Hood said the investigation uncovered no evidence to support one of the most volatile allegations made by a detainee, namely, that a guard had flushed pages of the Koran down a toilet.

The investigation, which is not finished, investigated 13 separate incidents, Hood said. Among them were five episodes where guards or interrogators mishandled the Koran and eight cases where they accidentally touched it or stood over it, the general said.

Hood spoke to reporters at the Pentagon 12 days after launching an inquiry into alleged abuse of the Koran that was raised in an article in Newsweek. The story reported that interrogators flushed the Koran in order to rattle detainees.

The May 9 article was challenged as inaccurate by Pentagon officials and caused a deadly uproar in the Muslim world. Newsweek retracted the report after being unable to verify the incident.

Hood said investigators reviewed 31,000 documents and "found no credible evidence" to support the allegation. Since early 2002, the United States has housed some of the most dangerous fighters captured in the war on terrorism at Guantanamo.

Among those interviewed for Hood's investigation was a detainee who had told the FBI in 2002 that he had been beaten and had heard stories that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet. During an interview with investigators this month, Hood said, the detainee admitted he had not been beaten at the detention camp and had heard only rumors that guards had flushed a Koran. The detainee told investigators he was not aware of any case where guards or interrogators had defiled or desecrated the Koran, Hood said.

Hood said four of the five cases of Koran mishandling occurred before January 2003, before written guidelines on how to treat the sacred Muslim text. Three of the five cases, Hood said, appeared to be deliberate mishandling while two were "very likely accidental," he said.

Two people face punishment, Hood said.

Most of the incidents, Hood said, occurred in the first year and a half that the prison was open. The United States began sending people captured in Afghanistan to the base in early 2002.

Since - according to the headline here - Newsweek lied and people died, what will be the one of a new thread: "Brigadier General Jay Hood Lied and ..." ?

Sorry for the confusion.

(And I'm glad to be at least in some cases the origin for your amusement - I wont charge you for that, no panic! :wink: )

You mean, a lawer does something without charging for it?

I was referring to "The City", not New York....

May 27, 2005, 8:09 a.m.
Not-So-Bad Gitmo
There's an alternative report.

While Newsweek has retracted its deadly tall tale about interrogators shoving the Koran down a toilet to rattle Guantanamo detainees, the magazine's "flush to judgment" fits what Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald calls the prevailing "torture narrative." Possibly harmless Muslims languish without trial in U.S. custody. America's soul dies a little as each GI's sucker-punch shatters one more Arab's jaw. Yadda, yadda, yadda.


"You people are no better than and no different than the Nazi concentration camp guards," a Red Cross representative said in April at a U.S. detention facility in Iraq, according to a Pentagon source quoted in a May 23 Wall Street Journal editorial. Amnesty International Wednesday called Gitmo "the Gulag of our times."

Journalists and Bushophobes should stop crying for these Islamo-fascists long enough to read a largely overlooked Pentagon document on Guantanamo detainees. They appear pampered, chatty, and lethal.

"Americans are very kind people," one English-challenged detainee said in the March 4 paper. "If people say there is mistreatment in Cuba with the detainees, those type speaking are wrong, they treat us like a Muslim not a detainee."

"I'm in good health and have good facilities of eating, drinking, living, and playing," remarked another. "The food is good, the bedrooms are clean and the health care is very good."

In a February 16 Gitmo dispatch, an American Forces Press Service report described the treatment of Camp Delta's roughly 520 detainees from about 40 nations. Troublemakers wear prison-style orange jumpsuits and mainly are confined to rudimentary accommodations. But those who follow camp rules wear white outfits and exercise seven to nine hours daily, often playing soccer and volleyball. In quieter moments, "chess, checkers and playing cards are the most requested items," Rhem wrote. As for reading, "A security official explained Agatha Christie books in Arabic are very popular and that camp officials are working to get copies of Harry Potter books in Arabic."

Detainees eat culturally sensitive meals and follow arrows painted on dorm floors to face Mecca. "Prayer calls are broadcast over loudspeakers five times a day," Rhem added.

Such conditions may have loosened tongues. The report ?- drearily titled "JTF-GITMO Information on Detainees" ?- explains that interrogating these men "has expanded our understanding of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and continues to prove valuable." Among these findings:

Detainees "provide useful information on locations of training compounds and safe houses, terrain features, travel patterns and routes used for smuggling people and equipment, as well as for identifying potential supporters and opponents." U.S. questioning has "expanded our understanding of the extent of their presence in Europe [and] the United States…"

"Detainees provide information that helps sort out legitimate financial activity from illegitimate terrorist financing operations," the report says.

One detainee "identified a complex detonation system…that had been used in the Chechen conflict, and now is being used on IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] in Iraq, helping U.S. forces to combat this lethal weapon."

Despite this apparent cooperation, enemy combatants remain viciously anti-American and dedicated to mayhem, even after release.

"I will arrange for the kidnapping and execution of US citizens living in Saudi Arabia," one detainee threatened, if freed. "They will have their heads cut off."

"There is no need to ask for forgiveness for killing a Jew," another said. "Israel should not exist and be removed from Palestine."

One detainee reportedly warned that "upon his release from GTMO, he would use the Internet to search for the names and faces of MPs so that he could kill them."

Among 167 detainees freed from Guantanamo, the Pentagon has identified "about 12" who have resumed terrorist operations. Last October, two Chinese engineers were kidnapped in Pakistan. "Former detainee Abdullah Mahsud, their reputed leader, ordered the kidnapping," the report states.

"Another released detainee assassinated an Afghan judge," the document continues. "Several former GTMO detainees have been killed in combat with U.S. soldiers and Coalition forces."

So, a number of Osama bin Laden's buddies find Gitmo relatively comfortable. They provide intelligence that helps U.S. and European soldiers, spies, and cops keep themselves and us alive. Meanwhile, many detainees ache to get out, so they can kill Americans.

That's the Pentagon's story, anyway. They have yet to retract it.