Which means he’s…Poo? I mean, Pooh?
Nonono…
It was to stop the abuse at Abu G.
It’s stopped, eh?
-Joe
I just think it royally blows that they’d seize on a story as ridiculous as someone flushing a book down the toilet (try it…it ain’t easy) When the Internation Red Cross has been willing for a couple of years to deviate from their normal impartial reticense to state plainly abuse of the Qu’ran is indeed being used as an interrogation tactic. Was this never leaked to anyone? Was this not worthy of reporting? Did we have to find out via this absurd flushing story? All they did was give the bastards a fucking damn good reason to deflect the issue and claim it’s all about media bias against America (oh, why do they hate America so?). Nice fucking job, Newsweek. Asswipes.
From the 5/27/05 Washington Post:
Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said investigators have looked into 13 specific allegations of Koran desecration at the prison dating to early 2002 and have determined eight of them to be unfounded, lacking credibility or the result of accidental touching of the holy book. Of the five cases of mishandling, three were “very likely” deliberate and two were “very likely accidental,” he said. But Hood declined to provide details, citing an ongoing investigation.
And if you cant’ trust Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood to give you the Straight Dope, then who can you trust?
(Don’t answer that)
I’ve been reading the “flushing down the toilet” as tossing a copy of the book into the toilet and flushing. Whether the book actually goes down the tube or simply sits there being desecrated in the bowl would be beside the point, wouldn’t it?
I daresay this particular allegation was mentioned because it would be shocking even to people who have no idea of how greatly the physical Qu’ran is venerated by Muslims. Since the Newsweek item was brief, it would be shorthand for the detailed discussion of the allegations we’ve been having here.
My take, anyway.
Debaser: You’re eagerness to jump to conclude the worst about the US government and the best about the detainees is very odd.
Huh? I’m certainly not eager to “conclude the worst about the US government”. I’m simply saying that I won’t automatically discount the former detainees’ complaints unless I have good reason to believe that they’re actually lying. Not just that they might be lying, or have some hypothetical incentives to lie.
And unfortunately, the US government has seriously damaged its own credibility when it comes to denying abuse of detainees. (Not just with the Abu Ghraib incidents, either: there have been abuse problems in Afghanistan as well.)
Moreover, even if you insist that former detainees are somehow automatically untrustworthy, how do you explain the confirmation of some of the allegations by people who are not detainees?
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US Army Sergeant Erik Saar has publicly described abuse incidents that he personally witnessed at Guantanamo.
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The New York Times reported that a former interrogator confirmed reports of a senior officer apologizing to hunger-striking detainees for Qur’an desecration.
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And now General Hood has publicly stated that there were at least three “very likely deliberate” incidents of Qur’an desecration—and that’s just up to 2002.
You haven’t addressed any of this non-detainee evidence. Instead, you prefer to speculate about what incentives the detainees have to lie, and to allege that people who take the allegations seriously are “eager” to “jump to conclude the worst about the US government”. (An allegation which I find pretty insulting, btw: if this were GD instead of the Pit, I would ask for an apology for your unsupported assertion that I am “eager” to believe the worst about my government.)
Debaser: 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.)
Your “standard” was apparently considerably lower back in 2002 when you were saying to elucidator:
Hmmm. So you didn’t require “actual proof, you know, with evidence facts and stuff” in order to believe that Iraq posed a sufficiently grave threat to the US to justify our invading it and starting a long-term war and occupation there.
But now you’re complaining that other people are too gullible, or maybe even unfairly biased, if they give any credence to particular allegations of prisoner abuse—some of which have been explicitly confirmed as true or credible by members of the military itself—against a government that has recently been proven to have committed even worse acts of prisoner abuse elsewhere.
Pot, kettle.
On a related note, Thomas Friedman advocates shutting down Gitmo because it has become a colassal embarassment to Americans. Link. (Reg may be req)
These two statements contradict eachother. To require proof that the former detainees are lying instead of requiring proof that they are telling the truth is assuming the worst about the US government.
My incentives are far from hypothetical. They have been detained. They have been in contact with Al Quada terrorists. These aren’t hypotheticals. It’s reasonable to consider these things when evaluating the truthfulness of their story. It’s extremely niave of you to assume that they are telling the truth based solely on their word for it.
Valid point. However, a few instances of abuse does not mean we should jump to assume the worst in every situation.
Maybe some of the stories are true. I don’t know. If they are, then I’ll condemn them just as I have the abuse at Abu Ghraib. But, I’ll need to see some proof first. If abuse did occur than I hope anybody responsible for it goes to prison just like people have already for those instances.
However, it’s still very odd to me that you would give so much credit to the accusers, and so little to the US. You say “somehow automatically untrustworthy” as if I’m crazy for questioning the motives of these people. It’s the other way around. It’s crazy for you not to question the motives of them.
You do seem eager. I’m just going from what you have posted here in this thread. From this very post I’m quoting you come right out and say it:
*“I’m simply saying that I won’t automatically discount the former detainees’ complaints unless I have good reason to believe that they’re actually lying.”
“And unfortunately, the US government has seriously damaged its own credibility when it comes to denying abuse of detainees.”*
You have added the “unfortunately” and this does help you sound a bit less eager, but that is only in response to my accusation in the first place.
The fact is you are willing to believe the detainees and not believe the government, even without proof. Thus, my statement that you seem “eager” to have such beliefs.
What does a two year old thread about Iraq have to do with anything? Are you seriously going to argue that there were no “facts”, “evidence” or “proof” that Saddam had WMD’s? That the piles of facts, evidence and proof he had them turned out to be wrong doesn’t mean they didn’t exist in the first place. Like the President, and the entire international intelligence community for that matter, I looked at the available facts and evidence and decided it was sufficient proof to warrant an invasion.
Congratulations! You guys were right and we were wrong. Post your mailing address and I’ll send you a Bozo button with some balloons.
But, to say that there was no evidence or facts that led us to that conclusion is not only untrue, it’s just outright stupid.
Excluded middle. I’m not saying we shouldn’t give any credence to allegations of abuse. I’m just saying I’m going to need more than the word of a former detainee that abuse has occurred. It’s you that’s immediately jumping to believe them without evidence backing up their stories.
If we shut it down, what do we do with the detainees?
Is that the only place we detain people?
So we shut it down and detain them someplace else? How does that improve anything?
Last time I checked, prisons existed within the United States. Timothy McVeigh, the Unibomer, and their ilk didn’t have to be sent to Cubato be imprisoner, nor did they have to be set free.
Friedman suggests that we put the criminals and terrorists on trial and lock them up forever and release the rest. Even if a few bad guys end up being released, we’re still rid of this albatross around our neck.
Don’t know and don’t care. It just sounded like from your previous statement that you were implying that’s the only place we detain people. I was wondering if that was true or not.
This was in response to Debaser, if that’s not clear.
Wow. My spelling sucks. “…sent to Cuba to be imprisoned…”
And Debaser, I suggest you read the article instead of asking another question that is directly addressed by the article itself. It’s short and it uses many small words, so it can’t take more than 45 seconds to skim it.
But then I’d have to register for the NYTimes. :smack:
Debaser: *Are you seriously going to argue that there were no “facts”, “evidence” or “proof” that Saddam had WMD’s? *
Absolutely. There were a whole lot of unsupported allegations, hypotheses, and speculation, but there was no actual proof that he had WMD’s—because, in fact, he didn’t.
So when you say that you require, quote, “some kind of actual proof” in order to believe allegations, you’re evidently wrong. Here is one example, at least, of an extremely important issue in which you didn’t require “actual proof” in order to believe something.
If you’ve raised your standards since then, I’m glad to hear it.
Debaser: *Maybe some of the stories are true. I don’t know. *
Fine. I don’t know either. And you’ll note, if you can let go of your focus on what you allege to be my “eagerness” to believe these claims of Qur’an desecration, that nowhere in this thread have I said that I did actually believe them. The strongest claims I made were:
In other words, I consider that the allegations of Qur’an desecration are plausible, and that the government has serious credibility problems when it comes to denying them. (And this is based not so much on detainee accusations as on reports of confirmation by US personnel, please note.) And I will not automatically discount the claims to that effect made by former detainees, just because they have incentives to lie about it.
But I have not decided that I actually believe that such desecration occured (in particular the “flushing” incident, which remains unconfirmed by any official source, as I pointed out in my very first post), and I did not say that I did believe it.
So kindly get the hell off my back.
Debaser: * I’m not saying we shouldn’t give any credence to allegations of abuse. I’m just saying I’m going to need more than the word of a former detainee that abuse has occurred.*
No argument there at all.
Debaser: It’s you that’s immediately jumping to believe them without evidence backing up their stories.
Wrong. Jerk. :mad:
(By the way, I should note that, as is probably clear, I do believe the allegations of other kinds of prisoner abuse at Gitmo, specifically the sexual humiliation and “blood-smearing” by female interrogators. And that’s because of the direct testimony of Sgt. Erik Saar that he actually witnessed such behavior in his role as a translator.)
there ya go.
Y’know, I could sort of get my head around that, except over and over again, reporters have taken great pains to state the act as “flushing down the toilet”. Not flushing in a toilet, or thrown in toilet and flushed, or any other more correct way of describing the obvious about what one can and cannot do to a readable book in a toilet. IOW, it’s media hyperbole at best, and a goddamned lie at worst.
If the “someplace else” is US territory, that puts the matter under the jurisdiction of US courts, not the simple say-so of the Defense Department. That doesn’t apply at Guantanamo, which is still Cuban territory, something that Rumsfeld & co. have found quite useful.
Are *you * seriously going to argue that there were? Where?