More about Newsweek and Islam

Bruce Thornton writes today (in an article I highly recommend reading in full) about what was on Palestinian TV last week:

[I]n last Friday's sermon televised on Palestinian Authority television the paid employee of the PA described the Jews as an AIDS-like virus responsible for all the world's evils, blamed their economic sabotage of Germany for the Holocaust, and predicted the future triumph of Islam over America, a time when "everything will be relieved of the Jews, even the stones and trees."

I certainly wish that U.S. publications like Newsweek would report what the Islamic world is really about instead of ignoring it and only finding fault with America.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that what Newsweek reported two weeks ago wasn’t true, or that Newsweek didn’t have a right to publish it.

Now let’s look at the actual paragraph that supposedly caused all of the riots and killing:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee's hair and sat on the detainee's lap. (New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee's face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

The paragraph is misleading because it implies that U.S. investigators “confirmed” that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. But it does say this information came from “sources,” which is newspeak for “there’s no way to truly know if this is true or not.” I wish that the MSM would use more exact language in the way they report this stuff instead of presenting it so that the average reader, or even the sophisticated one, gets the impression that it’s 100% true.

Everyone is now in CYA mode, so we may never know if someone at Guantanamo “flushed a Qur’an down a toilet.” And don’t give me “but a book won’t go down a toilet,” because the obvious meaning of the statement is that the book was either dumped into the toilet, or that pages were torn out and flushed down the toilet.

Just because the Pentagon says “oh no, nothing like this would have ever happened,” doesn’t mean I believe those denials. For reasons explained in a previous post, I am sure that military authorities are lying to us about who was really responsible at Abu Ghraib and are making scapegoats out of unfortunate low level soldiers.

Is it possible to successfully fight a war against shadowy guerilla organizations without using interrogation methods that seem uncivilized to the typical liberal Westerner living a comfy life in spoiled luxury? Probably not.

I could care the less if some soldier flushed a few pages of some book down a toilet, but it does bother me that, if it did happen, our government would probably try to cover it up.

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I also agree with the sentiments of this NY Sun editorial (found via this parody article).

Comments

[Michael H.]

Hi Half Sigma
I read the article by Bruce Thorton and, while I am not an expert on Islam, I felt that some of what he was saying didn't ring true. For example, I know that the crusaders we the heavies in the crusades. Europe was invading the middle east. From what I've read and heard, these crusaders were enormously ruthless. In fact, the big mistake in the movie Kingdom of Heaven was to downplay the heroism of the defending army. The movie portray a large moslem army defeating a smaller crusading army. It was the other way around.
Also, Mr. Thorton talks about a 14 century jihad against the Jews. I know for a fact that the current problems between moslem and jews dates to 1945 and the decision by England to transport Jews to Palestine. Before that, there really wasn't that much conflict between Moslem and Jew. For example, the Jews entered Europe via Spain when the Moslems conquered Spain. They flourished there until 1492 when the Christians took over and started the Inquistion.
I'm not saying that Moslems have been model citizens through history, but it is important to get the history right. I think the real story is that Islam has become much more ill at ease with themselves and the world in the last 60 years. Previously, most moslems rarely had to deal with non-moslems and they did not feel threatened. The last 60 years have revealed to the Islamic world that Islam has not delivered the military power or the consumer standard of living that they would have expected, and it bothers them.
When Jews were powerless, they didn't threaten Islam. Now that Jews control Israel(Palestine) and rule over the Palestinians, that really bothers them.
Moslems have no doubt that Islam is the greatest religion. However, the believers in the "greatest religion" are obviously not the most successful people on Earth. It bothers them.