From the Sewer

Reporters from all over the globe today are setting up permanent base camps in toilets and sewers at Guantanamo, Cuba, and other prisons around the world desperately seeking evidence of Korans in those locations. Here's an update on their progress thus far.

1. Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak publishes Inside the Wire, a book about abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo. She gives coauthor credit to Eric Saar, a former military interpreter there. The book does not mention any incidents of Koran flushing, instead focusing on the use of female guards to embarrass the prisoners. However, this by no means shows that Koran abuse didn't occur. The publisher has already issued one correction/retraction to material it contains:

At pages 191-192, Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier?s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo by Erik Saar and Viveca Novak, erroneously states that civilian interrogators hired through an army contract with CACI were in Guantanamo Bay. The book also describes the activities of two contract interrogators. CACI has unequivocally stated that it had no involvement in any interrogation operations at Guantanamo and that it had no relationship whatsoever with the civilian contract interrogators involved in the use of the interrogation techniques discussed in the book. The Penguin Press and the Authors acknowledge and regret the error. In addition, The Penguin Press and the Authors are taking a number of corrective actions, including inserting erratum slips in Penguin?s remaining copies of the book, providing erratum slips to Penguin?s accounts for insertion into books that have already been shipped, and advising media organizations that will be interviewing the authors of the error. Future printings will be corrected to address the error.

2. Newsweek gets the ball rolling on Koran flushing. In a brief story that also provides a plug for Novak's book the magazine claims that a US government report will confirm that a Koran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo. As riots sweep the Islamic world resulting in deaths in Afghanistan Newsweek refuses to apologize and instead publishes additional claims of Koran flushing. Claiming to have a "source" who left them dangling, within days they change their minds and retract the story.

3. Other publications leap quickly to the defense of Newsweek, publishing as many unsupported claims of Koran flushing they can find. Mostly from former inmates from Guantanamo and other prisons. (Coincidentally, a captured al-Qaeda handbook instructs them to make such claims.) The Washington Post, however, provides what seems to be more credible evidence, claiming that Erik Saar "said in interviews and in his book that he never saw a Koran flushed in a toilet but that guards routinely ignored prisoners' sensitivities by tossing it on the ground while searching their cells." Within days they were forced to retract:

A May 18 article incorrectly stated that former Army translator Erik Saar said in previous media interviews that guards at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, routinely tossed Korans on the ground. Saar has said there were "chronic problems" with the way military guards handled the Koran and failures to follow military procedures for respectfully handling the Muslim holy book when guards inspected cells, but he did not say that guards routinely tossed copies of the book.

In his recent book "Inside the Wire," former Army interpreter Eric Saar noted that the issue of Korans at Camp Delta was so sensitive that only soldiers of the Muslim faith were allowed into cells at the onset of searches to handle them.