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This song was written during my second tour in Iraq as part of the surge in 2007, and recorded after I returned home. The story behind the video is
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The Mudville Gazette is written and produced by Greyhawk, the call sign of a real military guy currently serving somewhere in Iraq. Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components. Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house.

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« Shredding a Book | Main | Blinq »

May 15, 2005

Newsweek Strikes Again

Greyhawk

Adding fuel to the fire.

In the wake of the deaths and riots spawned by their first report Newsweek is reporting more incidents of Qur'an flushing (and attributing their first report to "a senior US Government official" - who's now backtracking).

At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantᮡmo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantᮡmo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet.

Try this experiment at your house: flush a book (any book of several hundred pages, minimum) down a toilet. Please report your results in comments here.

More from Newsweek:

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original periscope item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
Hats off to DeRita.

In the wake of the deaths and riots caused by their previous report, Newsweek exhibits what can only be described as criminal behavior with the concluding paragraphs of their current story, printing additional unproven claims of Qur'an-flushing:

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantᮡmo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt?when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003?was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantᮡmo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident.

The story closes on a hopeful note for reporters everywhere - an acknowledgement that the author knows full well what the result of his report might be:
Such stories may spark more trouble. Though decrepit and still run largely by warlords, Afghanistan was not considered by U.S. officials to be a candidate for serious anti-American riots. But Westerners, including those at NEWSWEEK, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence, especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith.
Stunning.

Update: I was willing to give Newsweek a pass on their earlier report - I didn't think anyone could have predicted the level of violence that resulted. But this time there's no excuse, and I readily admit I was wrong. Newsweek owed the world an apology, and instead gave it this.

I wonder if Dollar Rent a Car, Sprint, Hyundai, Exxon/Mobil, Franklin Templeton Investments, or any other sponsors of the above report know what they're supporting? I'd act quickly to protect the brand.

Previous Mudville coverage: Shredding a Book.
Also The Year in Pictures

Posted by Greyhawk at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) |