The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely accidental.
Let's understand what mishandling means. Under the rules the Pentagon later instituted at Guantanamo, proper handling of the Koran means using two hands and wearing gloves when touching it. Which means that if any guard held the Koran with one hand or had neglected to put on gloves, this would be considered mishandling.
On the scale of human crimes, where, say, 10 is the killing of 2,973 innocent people in one day and 0 is jaywalking, this ranks as perhaps a 0.01.
Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this? Is there any other country that would give a prisoner precisely the religious text that that prisoner and those affiliated with him invoke to justify the slaughter of innocents? If the prisoners had to have reading material, I would have given them the book "Portraits 9/11/01" -- vignettes of the lives of those massacred on Sept. 11.
He goes on...
Why this abjectness on our part? On the very day the braying mob in Pakistan demonstrated over the false Koran report in Newsweek, a suicide bomber blew up an Islamic shrine in Islamabad, destroying not just innocent men, women and children, but undoubtedly many Korans as well. Not a word of condemnation. No demonstrations.
Even greater hypocrisy is to be found here at home. Civil libertarians, who have been dogged in making sure that FBI-collected Guantanamo allegations are released to the world, seem exquisitely sensitive to mistreatment of the Koran. A rather selective scrupulousness. When an American puts a crucifix in a jar of urine and places it in a museum, civil libertarians rise immediately to defend it as free speech. And when someone makes a painting of the Virgin Mary, smears it with elephant dung and adorns it with porn, not only is that free speech, it is art -- deserving of taxpayer funding and an ACLU brief supporting the Brooklyn Museum when the mayor freezes its taxpayer subsidy.
Does the Koran deserve special respect? Of course it does. As do the Bibles destroyed by the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the Torahs blown up in various synagogues from Tunisia to Turkey.
So...we have people who are more concerned about someone dropping a book than killing hundreds of innocent Muslims? The Islamic religious extremists (terrorists) kill innocent civilians (9/11, beheadings, bombing mosques, suicide bombings, etc.), yet WE are the 'evil empire' and the 'gulag contenders'? Because one of our soldiers may have dropped a copy of the Koran while being spit upon or urinated on by a detainee? Get real.
And the recent report by Amnesty International is a hoot. From a quote in the Pakistan Daily Times, Irene Khan, the head of Amnesty International, says,
Our answer is simple: if that is so (that the allegations are unfounded), open up these detention centres. Allow us and others to visit them.
I don't think comparing Gitmo to a gulag is going to help your case, Irene. Can you imagine Amnesty International 'inspectors' wandering around Gitmo, wringing their hands over the torture of detainees--forced to live in small cells with no cable television (worse yet, we could force them to watch FoxNews!!!)
I see an emerging pattern here...
a. Someone hears an allegation, made by a known enemy of the U.S. (or its current administration).
b. They go public with that allegation, without an iota of fact-checking.
c. The administration states that the allegation is false and unfounded.
c. The left immediately demand that the administration PROVE that the allegation is unfounded.
d. Over time, everyone forgets that the allegation was untrue...
I heard people on a NPR talk show a few weeks ago, who absolutely believe that our soliders DID flush a Koran down the toilet and that the government is covering it up.
Sound familiar? I suppose next we will hear that Elvis has hijacked a truck full of Korans and is destroying them with laser beam weapons captured from aliens detained at Area 51. C'mon Rumsfeld, PROVE it isn't true.
Better yet, let's ask the anti-war people to PROVE that there were absolutely NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war. That oughtta keep them busy for awhile. In the meanwhile, they should get out of the way. We have a war to win.
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