# A new low, all around. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 25, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525 "2005-05-25T23:45:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/21 "2005-05-26T13:36:10Z")
**ETF:** \* That depends on what sports you had in mind. \* Any sport that has a lot of passionately devoted fans who idolize their big stars the same way that Pakistani cricket fans revere Imran Khan. I think I tried to pick celebrities from football and baseball? ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/22 "2005-05-26T13:37:14Z")
> [@betenoir](#): > > But did they? From what I’ve read, they said they were wrong for running an articles with allegations from a single uncorroberated (and rather shaky) source. They were wrong for not living up to basic journalistic standards and getting corroberation first. They themselves never said they got the facts wrong. That’ll teach me to read my own copy of Newsweek! I thought I had heard them retract it. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/23 "2005-05-26T15:25:26Z")
> [@](#): > > “Unfortunately, one thing we’ve learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements,” said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. :rolleyes: What **John Mace** said. There’s nothing new here. The detainees regularly accuse the guards of abuse whereever they are held. That the ACLU believes this nonsense is no surprise. However, Newsweek needs to actually have proof of something before they print it if they want to be taken seriously as a news organization. They did not, thus the retraction. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/24 "2005-05-26T15:38:11Z")
Also, thanks to a captured Al Qaeda training manual we know that the terrorists plan on falsely accusing abuse. It’s amazing that anybody would take such allegations seriously without evidence to back them up. [From CNN](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/15/newsweek.quran/index.html) > [@](#): > > “If you read the al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels,” Army Col. Brad Blackner told Newsweek. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/25 "2005-05-26T15:42:24Z")
Hmmmm. So what, exactly, **Deeb**? None of it ever happened, its all just made up stuff by ex-detainees and those traitors at the ACLU? I think we are all fairly well convinced that a bunch of really bad stuff happened at Abu Ghraib, unless the US Army is in cahoots with the ACLU. And that soldier who testified as to what he saw, he’s making it all up as well? Are we to believe that there is a geographical factor at work, that stuff can happen in Iraq but cannot happen in Cuba? You know what I’d like to believe? I’d like to believe its all bullshit, some guys stole a bunch of US uniforms and are engaged in a cunning plot to discredit our nation and besmirch our honor. I’d even be pleased to believe that the ACLU and Amnesty International and the Int. Red Cross made it all up. But that’s a rather extravagant proposition, don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/26 "2005-05-26T15:48:38Z")
The clever bastards are even trained to appear to be severely bruised and mostly dead and lying in ice while gullible guards pose with “thumbs up” over them. ---
**Author:** ![glilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/48db29/32.png) [@glilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glilly)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/27 "2005-05-26T15:57:53Z")
I pit the Pentagon for restricting interregators’ consitutional right to deface and flush Korans in front of prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/28 "2005-05-26T16:14:33Z")
> [@Hentor the Barbarian](#): > > The clever bastards are even trained to appear to be severely bruised and mostly dead and lying in ice while gullible guards pose with “thumbs up” over them. Inscruitable are the ways of the East, no? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/29 "2005-05-26T16:24:14Z")
**Debaser:** _Also, thanks to a captured Al Qaeda training manual we know that the terrorists plan on falsely accusing abuse._ But remember, these allegations of abuse are coming from former Gitmo detainees **who have been released**. In other words, our government has decided that these guys are **not** terrorists. And therefore we have no reason to assume that they’ve been reading any al-Qaeda training manuals, or in any other way plotting to undermine or discredit the US by telling lies about how the US treated them in detention. So why should we automatically disbelieve their stories? Or are you suggesting that the Army and the Administration are so incompetent that, after months and years of imprisonment and interrogation, they’re turning loose prisoners who actually **are** terrorists? Hmm, not a pleasant thought. **Debaser:** _It’s amazing that anybody would take such allegations seriously without evidence to back them up._ Well, I thought the reported findings of the inquiry into allegations of abuse at Guantanamo seemed pretty reliable. According to a [New York Times article](http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=93932) (reprint, no reg. req’d), > [@](#): > > A high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information, senior military and Pentagon officials say. […] > > But that detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, also said in a series of interviews with The New York Times that detainees sometimes prevailed over the authorities after protesting conditions with campwide hunger strikes. > > Mr. al-Mutairi said there were three major hunger strikes in his more than three years of imprisonment at Guantánamo. He said that after one of them, a protest of guards’ handling of copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stepped 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 Guantánamo, 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 we’ve got an interrogator confirming that Qur’an desecration did occur, and that a senior officer acknowledged and apologized for it. That in no way proves the specific allegations of flushing a Qur’an down a toilet, but it does give them some credibility. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/30 "2005-05-26T16:27:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > It would be kind of like if Paris Hilton, Oprah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Rice, and Barry Bonds\* all suddenly started talking about the Downing Street memo: it would get a **lot** of buzz among many people who might otherwise not notice. **Reporter** : Tell me, Miss Hilton, what do you think of the Downing Street memo? **Paris** : That’s hot! **Oprah** : Women of American, and especially women of color, have needed to discuss this for a long time. My show will be featuring a new book on this subject, soon to be made into a TV movie. **Arnold** : Those British are all Girlie-men. **Jerry** : Dowing Street? Is that in Denver? **Barry** : My coach gave it to me, but he never told me what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/31 "2005-05-26T18:39:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And therefore we have no reason to assume that they’ve been reading any al-Qaeda training manuals, or in any other way plotting to undermine or discredit the US by telling lies about how the US treated them in detention. So why should we automatically disbelieve their stories? Let’s see. They could be: Pissed off that the US government has held them in detention. Wanting attention from the media and maybe a book deal and lawsuit out of it. Influenced by the hundreds of Al Quada agents they were locked up with who have read the training manual and told them about it. * * * You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/32 "2005-05-26T18:48:36Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd. You know, I could get behind this, if, IF there weren’t copious evidence of abuse at other military detention centers (Abu Ghraib, anyone?). It’s not like the US military has had impeccably clean hands throughout this entire debacle, now is it? To start up on the whole “I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to hear of allegations of abuse at a facility used to detain suspected terrorists” now is kind of disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/33 "2005-05-26T19:06:40Z")
[http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/26/national/w120248D64.DTL](http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/26/national/w120248D64.DTL) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/34 "2005-05-26T19:31:50Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > …You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd. That simply won’t do, **Deeb**. The unfortunate way you worded that leaves the impression that you are offering an innuendo, an insinuation that someone might be less than patriotic. That would be slimy, the kind of thing a verminous, cowardly little pustule might say, to imply something he hasn’t the guts to actually state. We can’t have that, now can we? So, reflect, edit, and improve so as to expunge those possible misunderstandings. Just to clarify. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/35 "2005-05-26T19:38:34Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd. Unfortunately, in the big picture, Koran descration would hardly be the worst about the US government. In actuality, there is photographic evidence of the worst about the US government. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/36 "2005-05-26T19:56:39Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > I think we are all fairly well convinced that a bunch of really bad stuff happened at Abu Ghraib > [@Hentor the Barbarian](#): > > The clever bastards are even trained to appear to be severely bruised and mostly dead and lying in ice while gullible guards pose with “thumbs up” over them. > [@jayjay](#): > > You know, I could get behind this, if, IF there weren’t copious evidence of abuse at other military detention centers (Abu Ghraib, anyone?). > [@Hentor (again)](#): > > In actuality, there is photographic evidence of the worst about the US government. Yes, yes, yes, and yes again. Abuse did occur at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq. Everyone knows about it, there really isn’t any need to keep reciting it over and over. However, the fact that abuse did occur in one cellblock in one detention center does not make every report of prisoner abuse true. Do we take every claim of police brutality at face value because of Rodney King? Of course the people detained are going to claim abuse. Why wouldn’t they? Unless there is proof, I see no reason to assume the worst and believe them. If only the ACLU, Amnesty International and Newsweek had the same high standard as myself\* then people might actually believe them when they do have a legitimate complaint. (\*By high standard I mean some kind of actual proof, you know, with evidence facts and stuff.) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/37 "2005-05-26T20:02:32Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > We can’t have that, now can we? So, reflect, edit, and improve so as to expunge those possible misunderstandings. Just to clarify. My statement stands perfectly well on it’s own. I have no qualms about calling someone a anti-American pinko shitbag when I feel it’s appropriate. If I wanted to say something of that nature to **Kimstu** or anybody else for that matter than I would have. I don’t insinuate and imply, I come right out and say it. I didn’t mean anything more than what was right there in my post. I find it odd. I do. It is odd. ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/38 "2005-05-26T20:34:14Z")
I find it odd that one would continue to give the current U. S. government the benefit of the doubt after they started a war on the pretense that the enemy possessed eeeeevil weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be entirely imaginary. Lots of oddity in this thread! ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/39 "2005-05-26T20:42:51Z")
> [@vibrotronica](#): > > I find it odd that one would continue to give the current U. S. government the benefit of the doubt after they started a war on the pretense that the enemy possessed eeeeevil weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be entirely imaginary. Lots of oddity in this thread! Pay attention, darnit…the party line now is that we invaded to bring freedom to millions of Iraqis. Why do you hate liberty, man? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525/40 "2005-05-26T21:24:28Z")
No, **Deeb** has entirely cleared that up, by pointing out that he is a man of straightforward candor, says exactly what he means, nothing more, nothing less. He was merely remarking on **Kimstu** ’s _et. al_ having some personal eccentricities. When he says: “…You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd…” he is merely frolicking innocently amongst the daffodils with Thumper and Eeyore. Yes. Quite. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-low-all-around/305525.md?page=3)