Okay, as my wife, who knows him, points out, Mark Whittaker of Newsweek might find his job in jeopardy becaue of the story from which Newsweek is now backing away about the Quran being ripped up and flushed down the toilet. The military says it investigated and that did not happen.
But that is not the issue, and that is not the question that needs to be asked.
Go below the fold for my theory, and it’s only my theory.
The book author who is the source may be recounting something else, and something that would be almost as bad. Bear with me.
The female guard did NOT smear the prisoner with menstrual blood. Instead She pretended it was menstrual blood. Thus were you to ask the army if she smeared him with mestrual blood to defile him the answer would be that they had investigated, but she had not. But the act she did had exactly the same psychological effect, and defilement is what you want the prisoner to think, so it does not matter how you achieve it, so long as the thought is there.
Let us return to the Quran. Have a guard tell the prisoner that this is a Quran, start ripping out pages and flushing them down the toilet. Does it really matter that in fact the guard did not actually defile a Quran? Is this not identical to the female guard and the “menstrual blood” incident?
I acknowledge that I am speculating. But it would be very interesting to me, given the patterns of interrogation which we have already seen, to have someone ask directly of the military authorities if guards ripped up something other than a Quran while telling the prisoners that it was a Quran. And I would guess that for the Muslim world it would not matter whether or not it was in fact a Quran — that such — even in simulation – was used as an interrogation technique to break the will fo the prisoners would be considered unconscionable.
Let me state my position — if my guess is correct, I think who ever did such action and whoever authroized such action should be brought up on criminal charges. If this -even in simulation — is considered acceptable behavior, thatn the violent reactions so far are the least of our worries.
and does anyone know anything more than that to which I refer?
This is an important subject, and far too often we do not ask the right questions, so that those doing improper or even worse things skate by with what are non-denial denials. We cannot afford that on this.
I wrote about it down yonder in the stories.
I think it’s true, and I think the big issue is that Newsweek is back-pedaling instead of sticking to their guns, and all because some rightwing yokel bloggers are blasting them.
(I’m just posting this everywhere today. It feels right.)
I’d not thought of that, but you are correct… whether it was a real Quran or they just thought it was, it’s pretty much the same thing. But it not being real does allow the military deniability. You should email Whittaker (or his editors) and ask which question they asked.
In my opinion, it would be unlikely that US gunmen would feel any compunction about desecrating a Koran. Americans have developed quite a reputation for their views on Islam and Muslims.
Though damning by faint praise, apparently there was some compunction about using actual menstrual fluid, though that may have been just a practical and incidental issue of non-availability.
Regarding the story itself, it is not new, this has been known about and reported on in the eastern press for some time, and in the Washington Post as early as 2003.
The US says now that it did not happen, but I believe it has not always been quite so definite. This happens quite a lot.
Details of this or that atrocity are “leaked” in order to terrorize the target population, this is viewed as a needed measure in the crusade lands themselves, infrastructure is destroyed and tales of horror do not spread as rapidly. The crusaders want those still at large to fear the brutality and degradation that awaits them, believing that this will cause them to submit meekly to whatever their new masters may command.
As time has gone on, there are increasing numbers of survivors who are able to recount their experiences with US techniques of policy implementation, so that now there are few people in at risk nations who are unaware of these practices.
On the whole, it would seem that the US’s goal of stamping out anti-American sentiment has not yet been achieved.
I dunno… the question of availability is perhaps more to the point in the case of Korans (can the military supply chain really round up a sufficient number of real Korans to account for the multiple desecration reports?). Also, the low-ranking inquisitors on site may have been pretending to use “real” Korans or real blood in order to meet their objectives while still covering their asses. So all in all, teacherken’s hypothesis seems plausible to me.
Not that it matters, of course. The henchpersons (with the tacit and undoubtedly fully deniable approval of the higher-ups) wanted people to believe they were polluting faithful Muslims and desecrating the Koran. And whaddeya know… it worked.
Immediately upon seizing the first victims for the popular Guantanamo pilot project, they made quite a show of bringing in loads of Korans, all over CNN about how each victim would have one, as well as what they referred to as “comfort items,” toothbrushes, flip flops, towels, which they showed in the cages.