[Mb-civic] Don't Blame Newsweek

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0517-34.htm
Published on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by Working for Change
Don't Blame Newsweek
Despite sloppiness, Newsweek didn't fabricate Koran story
by Molly Ivins
 
As Riley used to say on an ancient television sitcom, "This is a revoltin' 
development." There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to 
blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan 
and other Islamic countries.

Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans 
abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for 
quite some time. The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, 
when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen 
released from Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner said he had been 
physically beaten but did not consider that as bad as the psychological 
torture, which he described extensively. Jamal al-Harith, a computer 
programmer from Manchester, said 70 percent of the inmates had 
gone on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. The 
strike was ended by force-feeding.

Then came the report, widely covered in American media last 
December, by the International Red Cross concerning torture at Gitmo. 
I wrote at the time: "In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, why are 
people representing our government, paid by us, writing filth on the 
Korans of helpless prisoners? Is this American? Is this Christian? 
What are our moral values? Where are the clergymen on this? Speak 
up, speak out."

The reports kept coming: Dec. 30, 2004, "Released Moroccan 
Guantanamo Detainee Tells Islamist Paper of His Ordeal," reported 
the Financial Times. "They watched you each time you went to the 
toilet; the American soldiers used to tear up copies of Koran and throw 
them in the toilet. ..." said the released prisoner.

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of 
London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in 
U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several 
government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees 
have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has 
tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in 
U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture 
has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites 
all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, 
Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular 
internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons 
geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, 
women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes 
in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to 
abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated 
in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross 
inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about 
what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation 
techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for 
hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were 
repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days 
on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the 
head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had 
tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims 
were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the 
opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the 
abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the 
humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation 
Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who 
spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by 
"guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a 
pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the 
camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. 
Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's 
apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the 
Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the 
public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

So where does all this leave us? With a story that is not only true, but 
previously reported numerous times. So let's drop the "Lynch 
Newsweek" bull. Seventeen people have died in these riots. They 
didn't die because of anything Newsweek did -- the riots were caused 
by what our government has done.

Get your minds around it. Our country is guilty of torture. To quote 
myself once more: "What are you going to do about this? It's your 
country, your money, your government. You own this country, you run 
it, you are the board of directors. They are doing this in your name. 
The people we elected to public office do what you want them to. 
Perhaps you should get in touch with them."

© 2005 Working for Change



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   ---   George Orwell


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