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This is in response to NewsWeek's false story of U.S. soldiers flushing 1,001 toilets down the toilet, and how the Koran was being mishandled and should be treated . I just read the article, and found it intresting.
http://www.sitnews.us/Columns/0605/0...y_murdock.html
Any non-biased report on this? That wreaks of favoritism, and I take anything like that with an extreme grain of salt.
It's not really anything most of us didn't know anyway, but thanks for bringing it to the attention to those here that seem so ignorant of anything but liberal dribble that they don't see what's going on in the world around them unless it's broadcast over Al-Jezeera.
The Koran-flushing story cost American lives--somebody should be held responsible for that.
I don't think there is anybody here like that, Sasquatch.
I don't know a whole lot about this, but whoever did this is a smurfing idiot.
Yeah, you could ignore the favoritism. And just read the large part that isn't.
Quote:
Associated Press reports, among others, document how militant Islamists (primarily Sunnis) treat Shiite shrines with all the deference the SS showed synagogues in the 1940s.
- June 1, 2005: A suicide bomber blasted the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a moderate cleric, at his eponymous mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He killed Kabul's police chief and 20 others, while wounding 50.
- January 20, 2005: A suicide bomber exploded inside the Ghocha Park Mosque in Sheberghan, injuring 21.
- January 16, 2005: An anti-personnel mine went off at the Sal Metra mosque in Urozgan province, wounding two worshippers.
- June 30, 2003: An earlier bombing at Fayaz's mosque injured 16.
To date, colleagues of the Gitmo Boys have killed 21 and wounded 89 in Afghan mosque bombings.
Iraq's picture is even bloodier:
- May 23, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque killed two and wounded 22, including 11 children.
- May 19, 2005: A bomb at a Saydiya mosque killed two and hurt five.
- April 22, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque disrupted Friday prayers, killing nine and wounding 26.
- March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber detonated himself during a funeral at a Mosul mosque, murdering 47 people and injuring at least 101.
- February 18, 2005: On Ashoura, Shiites' holiest day, homicide bombers attacked two Baghdad mosques, killing 25 and wounding 30.
- February 18, 2005: That day, a car bomb killed eight and hurt 10 at an Iskandariyah mosque.
- August 26, 2004: Mortar shells pummeled a Najaf mosque, leaving 27 dead and 63 injured.
- March 2, 2004: Homicide bombers, mortars, and hidden explosives at mosques in Baghdad and Karbala killed 181 and wounded 573 Ashoura worshippers.
- August 29, 2003: A car bomb outside a Najaf mosque killed 85 and injured 140.
Add the 386 killed and 970 injured in Iraq to the Afghan figures above: The terrorist pals of Guantanamo's al Qaeda and Taliban residents have butchered 407 Muslims and injured 1,059 more in these mosque attacks alone.
After crying for these murdered and maimed Muslims, weep for the Korans destroyed in this mayhem. At worst, a May 27 Pentagon probe revealed, U.S. personnel at Guantanamo mistreated Korans on 13 occasions, only five deliberately, notwithstanding Army requirements that soldiers "handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."
In one "atrocity," a Koran was stacked atop another Koran on a TV set. Interrogators twice "either touched or stood over" the Koran during questioning. Most regrettably, a soldier relieved himself outdoors last March 25. The breeze shifted towards a cellblock, and an adjacent air duct splattered his urine onto a detainee's nearby Koran and uniform. The soldier was reprimanded and reassigned to gate-guard duty. The detainee scored a new Koran and a fresh uniform.
Compare this to the Islamofascist explosions and fires that reduce Allah's words to ashes.
Muslim detainees mishandled the Koran 15 times, the Pentagon reports. One used his Koran as a pillow. Another tried to annoy guards by tearing up his Koran and stuffing its pages into - get this - a toilet.
Despite detainees' disrespect for these Korans - furnished by U.S. taxpayers, not the Book of the Month Club - America somehow remains this story's perceived villain.
It didn't cost anything Sas. All the protest and things over there were for other reasons. Also days after the story retraction it came out that there were aligations of mistreatment there from guards. The pentagon said that the flushing was unfounded and even the detainee agreed with that but other mishandelings from that same story were true.
From a source that's obviously biased? No, thank you. I'm not saying its BS, but when a source is that outwardly biased, I'd rather hold my opinions when their facts have been backed up by a non-partisan source.Quote:
Originally Posted by noname
Immediately after that story came out and was broadcast, insurgent activity--and thus the number of U.S. and Iraqi casualties--went up for a couple days. Now, if that's not obvious enough, most of the activities--as are most carried out by the insurgency and terrorists--were in response to that article, with a declared motive to be in response to that article. As in, "We're doing this because you flushed our Korans." Yes, it did cost lives.Quote:
Originally Posted by edczxcvbnm
TheAbominatrix--I would imagine it's too much to think of you to actually look up some of those instances, instead of perceiving bias and disregarding all of them. Though, not surprising.
nik0tine--As one of the more intelligent in comparison to others in this forum, I'm somewhat surprised you haven't seen some of the same things I have. But then again, not really.
Shall we step back for a moment and stop lambasting Newsweek and crying out about evil terrorist unpatriotic liberals for a moment?
The article in Newsweek that caused this was tiny. It wasn't expected to cause this much damage. It was one of the senior reporters, what probably happened was he got a little sloppy on the reporting or misconstrued what the witness had said. Pretty easy to do, no big deal. What happened was it was used as a rallying point for more violence.
It's really not that hard to do, if you write as many stories as that person has you're bound to slip up, especially if its a less important one that's going to just be a little sidebar or whatever. If the witnesses say something like that, you write it down. If the witnesses back down later, you're kinda screwed. If you find it so "contemptible", why don't you go out and persue journalism? I'm sure we could use more people who care passionately about bringing unbiased news to the world and getting paid crap for it.
Awfully hypocritical, as you immediatly disregard anything you perceive as liberal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasquatch
The article is quite clearly biased. I dont care which side it's biased towards, I simply care that it's biased and would rather get it from a non-partisan source.
And you'd imagine right. If someone wants my opinion on something, I'll take it from the sources provided. Simple as that. I'm not going to sit and dig through things for anything but my own knowledge, because I'm not here to nitpick and argue over every bit of evidence provided.
Thanks for generalizing me, though.
A senior reporter who got sloppy? Reporting that U.S. troops are flushing Korans down toilets, that's not being sloppy. That's one major smurf-up. The journalist most likely was liberal--as most journalists are--who didn't like Bush and pursued a fictional story because it made Republicans look bad. It's happened before (i.e. "Memogate", and most recently the "memo" that was supposedly sent between Bush and Blair), it'll happen again. But that's not the issue here--the issue is the cost of this article in human life and loss. How many people were killed or injured because some haji heard this on Al-Jezeera and got pissed enough to go kill some infidels?
TheAbominatrix: First off, it's not whether or not you or I perceive anything as biased, it's how much of it we dismiss because of its perceived bias. There's a difference--when I hear about something I know is biased, I at least compare it to what I already know, look up a couple more things, learn a bit about it. I don't just decide "this is bias" and shove it aside, because nearly everything, though mainly biased, does contain some fact. If you think you're too smart to consider the facts in that article--such as all those attacks by Muslims on Muslims--then you are not only quite the contrary, but apparently arrogant enough to think that nothing is true without being a part of "your sources", of which it looks like there are none save your own mind. Saying "I know better" is one thing--saying "I know I know better, and I don't want to know anything different" is another. And by the way, you weren't being generalized--see, for that to happen, you'd have to be grouped with some other people, and this just concerns you. Nice try, though.
Oh, so reporters are above getting sloppy every once in awhile? Come on. They're human, like you are. Don't tell me you've never gotten sloppy doing something you've been doing for years on end.Quote:
A senior reporter who got sloppy? Reporting that U.S. troops are flushing Korans down toilets, that's not being sloppy. That's one major smurf-up. The journalist most likely was liberal--as most journalists are--who didn't like Bush and pursued a fictional story because it made Republicans look bad. It's happened before (i.e. "Memogate", and most recently the "memo" that was supposedly sent between Bush and Blair), it'll happen again. But that's not the issue here--the issue is the cost of this article in human life and loss. How many people were killed or injured because some haji heard this on Al-Jezeera and got pissed enough to go kill some infidels?
I don't doubt that abuse of the Koran was happening, it's been done before and it will be done again. It's an interrogation method, and it can work fairly well too.
You assume much. The journalist was likely liberal and out to screw Bush. Nevermind that Newsweek has a reputation to uphold. Nevermind that Newsweek exists to make a profit just as much as it does to inform, and an intentionally misinformative story that could be so easily found out would be extremely detrimental to Newsweek business. Nevermind that the article was small and probably unimportant in the reporter's eyes, especially in light of other assignments said reporter probably has. Oh no, the reporter is obviously serving a liberal agenda to discredit Bush and try to get people killed. That must be it.
And really, do you think they need something like this to incite the masses into killing heathens? They have plenty of ammunition, they just chose to latch on to this. I'm sure there are many, many things that could be used to incite such violence, this one just happened to fall into their laps is all.
Actually, Michael Isikoff is a staunch conservative who wrote a number of pieces smearing, amongst others, John Kerry and Michael Moore. So "the guy had it in for Bush" is a clear piece of B.S.
It's clear the Koran was desecrated. It might not have been flushed down a toilet, but it was definitely desecrated. Desecration of religious texts is common in the military; as Juan Cole reports, military trainees are often subjected to witnessing the desecration of the Bible. And blaming Newsweek for riots in Uzbekistan, instead of *gasp!* events in Uzbekistan, seems to me to violate Occham's Razor.
edit: here's more on the Bible stuff.Quote:
A reader with military experience in this area wrote me his own experience, with the Bible being trashed in a similar way. I was able to google this reader in such a way as to compare autobiographical statements and dates (stripped from the below) to the Web record, and they all check out. Even the history of attitudes, as revealed in letters to the editor, are confirmatory. So I'm sure of the authenticity of these comments.
Quote:
"I'm a former US [military officer], and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school--Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.
The course I attended . . . [had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI [counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc for those running the camp.
One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around, etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school.
I have no doubt the stories about trashing the Koran are true.
I'm sure you must also realize that Gitmo must be being used as a "laboratory" for all these psychological manipulation techniques by the CI guys. Absolutely sickening . . .
1. My gut feeling tells me that the SERE camps were 'laboratories' and part of the training program for military counter-intelligence and interrogator personnel. I heard this anecdotally as far as the training goes, but have not dug into it. This is pretty much common sense.
2. Looking at Gitmo in the 'big picture', you have to wonder why it is still in operation though they know so many are innocent of major charges. A look through history at the various 'experimentation' programs of the DOD gives a ready answer. The camp provides a major opportunity to expose a population to various psychological control techniques. Look at some of the stuff that has become public, and this becomes even more apparent. Especially the sensory deprivation--not only sleep, but there are the photos of inmates in gas masks or sight/hearing/smell deprivation setups. There has already been voluminous research into sensory deprivation, and it seems this is another good opportunity for more. One note is that sensory deprivation is used to some degree in military basic training and to a greater sense in the advanced training courses--Rangers, SEALS, etc. All part of the 'breakdown' process before recruits are 'remade'.
3. This incident with the bible trashing. Camp was [in the late 1990s]. It was towards the end of the camp experience, which was 2-3 days of captivity. We were penned in concrete cell blocks about 4' x 4' x 4'--told to kneel, but allowed to squat or sit. There was no door, just a flap that could be let down if it was too cold outside (which it was--actually light snow fell). Each trainee was interrogated to some extent, all experienced some physical interrogation such as pushing, shoving, getting slammed against a wall (usually a large metal sheet set up so that it would not seriously injure trainees) with some actually water-boarded (not me).
The bible trashing was done by one of the top-ranked leaders of the camp, who was always giving us speeches--sort of 'making it real' so to speak, because it is a pretty contrived environment. But by the end it almost seemed real. Guards spoke English with a Russian accent, wore Russian-looking uniforms. So the bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling--we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally--how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech. Then he kicked over the soup pot, and threw us back in the cells. Big climax. And psychologically it was crushing and heartbreaking, and then we were left isolated to contemplate this.
And all of these moods and thoughts were created in this fake camp--just imagine how it is for these guys at Gitmo.
As I said, I'm not questioning the facts. What I'm saying is, when a document is biased, I take the facts presented with a huge grain of salt. II'd rather have the facts backed up by a non-paritsan source. That site is quite clearly biased, and annoyingly so. I don't know if the facts are right or wrong, but I'd be more ready to accept them if they were from a reporter who could keep their biases to themselves. In the same way that I dont take what Hunter Thompson writes as fact, because he's so clearly biased, and if I care enough about the issue I'll go look up the facts and compare them to other sources. However, given that I'm not up on the issue, I dont care to take the time to go and look it up. I asked if a non-partisan source could be presented, but of course that's just me being a liberal jack ass and all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasquatch
And that is generalizing, actually. You may wanna look up a definition. Or I'll using another word. Assuming. Though I doubt it's acceptable for you to refrain from assuming things about me. But anyway, it's getting horridly off-topic, so feel free to get the last word in here.
yes, it's been corroborated that while the specific source of the information in the Koran-flushing story was not correct, other sources confirm that the story is true. Newsweek wasn't as thorough as it could have been, but it was still correct.
Why don't you blame the nutcases doing the desecration, or for that matter the nutcases in charge of our government, rather than blaming the media that reports the disgusting truth? I guess that doesn't fit into your fantasy world.
What reliable sources could back up this story?
Nobody blames media that reports truth.
no, you just say they made it up when you don't agree.