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Jolie Rouge
05-15-2005, 06:34 PM
By DINO HAZELL, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 33 minutes ago



NEW YORK - Newsweek magazine has apologized for errors in a story alleging that interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran, saying it would re-examine the accusations, which sparked outrage and deadly protests in Afghanistan.


Fifteen people died and scores were injured in violence between protesters and security forces, prompting U.S. promises to investigate the allegations. In Afghanistan, Muslim leaders gave Washington three days to offer a response to the story.


"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in a note to readers.

In an issue dated May 9, the magazine reported that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that interrogators placed copies of Islam's holy book in washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk.


Whitaker wrote that the magazine's information came from "a knowledgeable U.S. government source," and before it published the item, writers Michael Isikoff and John Barry sought comment from two Defense Department officials. One declined to respond, and the other challenged another part of the story but did not dispute the Quran charge, Whitaker said.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into charges of Quran desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.'"

Whitaker added that the magazine's original source later said he could not be sure he read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited, and that it might have been in another document.

"Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we," Whitaker wrote.

Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman said the magazine believes it erred in reporting the allegation that a prison guard tried to flush the Koran down a toilet and that military investigators had confirmed the accusation.

"The issue here is to get the truth out, to acknowledge as quickly as possible what happened, and that's what we're trying to do," Klaidman told the "CBS Evening News" on Sunday.

Many of the 520 inmates at Guantanamo are Muslims arrested during the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies in Afghanistan.

After Newsweek published the story, demonstrations spread across Afghanistan and Muslims around the world decried the alleged desecration.

In Afghanistan, Islamic scholars and tribal elders called for the punishment of anyone found to have abused the Quran, said Maulawi Abdul Wali Arshad, head of the religious affairs department in Badakhshan province.

Arshad and the provincial police chief said the scholars met in Faizabad, 310 miles northeast of the capital, Kabul, and demanded a "reaction" from U.S. authorities within three days.

Lebanon's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric on Sunday said the reported desecration of the Quran is part of an American campaign aimed at disrespecting and smearing Islam.

In a statement faxed to The Associated Press, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah called the alleged desecration a "brutal" form of torture and urged Muslims and international human rights organizations "to raise their voices loudly against the American behavior."

On Saturday, Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, both allies of Washington, demanded an investigation and punishment for those behind the reported desecration of the Quran.

The story also sparked protests in Pakistan, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. The 22-nation Arab League issued a statement saying if the allegations panned out, Washington should apologize to Muslims.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said in an interview for CNN's "Late Edition" that the allegations were being investigated "vigorously."

"If it turns out to be true, obviously we will take action against those responsible," he said.

___

Associated Press Writer Stephen Graham contributed to this report from Kabul, Afghanistan.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050516/ap_on_re_us/newsweek_quran

schsa
05-16-2005, 01:02 PM
I wonder who pressured who to get this changed? I know that someone did something because of the outrage of those in the Middle East. I am sure that we will never know but someone got their tush chewed to retract what was reported.

Jolie Rouge
05-16-2005, 05:26 PM
:rolleyes:

The ABB Crowd must have a new motto .... Always Blame Bush ?


Watching the Media: Who Owns What
A guide to what the major media companies own. By Aaron Moore for the Columbia Journalism Review. Also: an interactive chart of the Big Ten's media holdings, from The Nation.

http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners



Credibility in Question
May 9, 2005

NYT Panel Recommends Ways to Improve Credibility

Update: An internal committee at The New York Times has recommended a number of steps to improve readers' trust in the newspaper, including having senior editors write a regular column about the internal workings of the paper, making reporters and editors more available to the public and systematically tracking errors.

New York Times Report: Preserving Our Readers' Trust (PDF required)

CBS News and the National Guard

A look at what went wrong with the 60 Minutes report from Sept. 8 questioning President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard that cited documents that later appeared to be forgeries.

USA Today and Jack Kelley

A report on the journalistic fraud committed by USA Today's former star correspondent, Jack Kelley, and the paper's aggressive investigation into the matter.

The New York Times and Jayson Blair

The New York Times made headlines of its own in May 2003 after former reporter Jayson Blair resigned amid charges of large-scale plagiarism and fabrication.


Interactive: Making the Ethical Choice

Are the ethical choices journalists must make always black or white? Test your own decision-making skills in this interactive of ten scenarios that represent challenges to basic newsroom standards reporters routinely face.


Forum: Credibility in Question and Newsroom Ethics

What ethical standards should journalists strive to uphold? What constitutes a breach of these standards? And how should news organizations improve public confidence in their ability to report fairly and thoroughly? Michael Getler, ombudsman for The Washington Post, and Jay Rosen, chairman of New York University's Journalism Department and author of the pressthink.org blog, answer your questions.

www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_ethics/index.php


An interesting series of articles ....

excuseme
05-17-2005, 02:59 AM
It's starting to look more and more that the problem lies with the fact that the story was released. Newsweek used the same sources that have proven to be reliable in the past. Newsweek showed the story to the US government officials prior to releasing the story and they agreed with Newsweek's findings and didn't object to the story. The contents of the story seem very plausible given what we have seen in the torture pictures. Story false? Possible sure, more likely truthful though.

excuseme
05-17-2005, 05:11 AM
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=42096

Britons formerly held in US camps allege they saw guards desecrate Koran
Published: 5/16/2005

LONDON - Several Britons who had been held at US military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba alleged Monday that they had seen their US guards desecrate the Koran.

Former prisoners Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi and Jamal al-Harith alleged on the Islamic human rights website Cageprisoners.com that the Muslim holy book had been profaned.

Their statements appeared after clashes erupted in Muslim countries over a Newsweek magazine report that US interrogators at Guantanamo had defiled copies of the Koran by leaving them in toilet cubicles and flushing one down a toilet.

Newsweek, while acknowledging parts of its May 2 article could be wrong, has not issued a retraction.

On the website, Begg said "I saw incidents that provoked fury, including the placing of Qurans (Korans) in an area used as a latrine" during his detention in Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002.

"As cells were entered and searched I witnessed an occasion when a (Koran) was snatched from a captive's hands and thrown to the ground," said Begg who was freed without charge from Guantanamo in January.

Begg told Britain's Press Association "If (Newsweek) are retracting it, it is really silly. So many people are saying exactly the same thing."

Abassi meanwhile told of inmates having Korans taken from them and described an interpreter slapping the book, saying "Why do you want to pass this s around?"

He added: "I swear by Allah! I witnessed this clearly, not 10 metres away from me, with my own eyes and ears."

None of the prisoners said they actually witnessed Korans thrown into toilets at Guantanamo, though they said it had happened.

Harith alleged that the "US has desecrated the Koran on a number of occasions" and "numerous" hunger strikes in Guantanamo's Camp Delta were sparked by a guard who threw a Koran into the toilet.

"When searching our cages the guards would sometimes throw the (Koran) onto the floor," said Harith who was freed without charge from Guantanamo last year. "During interrogation, an interrogator jumped up and down on the Quran (Koran) and taunted a prisoner."

He added that in "Afghanistan, in the American concentration camps, a (Koran) was thrown in a waste bucket by a guard."

Cageprisoners.com spokesman Adnan Siddiqui said "it should be clear to any thinking person that all these detainees could not have colluded, especially since some were in solitary confinement for their duration in Guantanamo Bay."

He added that "the US is guilty of a systematic and horrific assault on Islam and the religious beliefs and practices of a fifth of humanity in their so-called 'war on terror'.

05/16/2005 18:04 GMT

YNKYH8R
05-17-2005, 05:39 AM
The media is only as liberal as the conservative business men that own it.

Jolie Rouge
05-17-2005, 06:40 PM
Newsweek Quran story prompts policy review
White House says magazine should help 'repair damage'
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Posted: 5:41 PM EDT (2141 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Newsweek magazine said Tuesday it would review its sourcing policies and reporting methods a day after it retracted a May 9 story on alleged desecration of the Quran at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. officials have blamed the report -- which said American interrogators put copies of the Quran on toilets or in one case, flushed one down a toilet -- in part for sparking deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world last week.

In its May 23 issue, Newsweek reported that its senior government source had backed away from his initial story, and Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker wrote that "we regret" that any part of the story was wrong. (Full story)

But the magazine did not completely disavow the story until Monday, after Bush administration officials called for a full retraction. (Full story)

On Tuesday, Dan Klaidman, Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, said the magazine was taking preventive action in the aftermath of the incident. "We will continue to look at our processes, our reporting methods, questions about sourcing," Klaidman said. "We're going to go back and learn from the mistakes we made so that we don't repeat them."

"We will go back and look and see what we could have done better. And we'll discuss our sourcing policies and figure out how to proceed."

A White House spokesman said Tuesday the report hurt the U.S. image in the Muslim world and that the magazine should help repair that damage.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stuck to that message in a briefing with reporters, although Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said last week that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan had determined violence there "was not at all tied to the article."

"Clearly the report was used to incite violence by people who oppose us," McClellan said. "The protest may have been prestaged by those who oppose us ... but people lost their lives."

"This report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad," he said. "Newsweek said they got it wrong. ... Now we would encourage them to do all that they can."

The State Department, meanwhile, activated a busy network of diplomatic ties to mitigate any damage, spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Measures included translating a statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into multiple languages for distribution and providing detailed instructions on how embassy and consulate personnel should discuss the issue. "The article should never have appeared," he told reporters Tuesday, adding that it had "sad and regrettable implications overseas."

Boucher said the State Department "reacted quickly" when the story came out, sending out its first telegram last Wednesday and issuing a cable after Monday's retraction.


McCain: Story a setback

Earlier Tuesday, Sen. John McCain and other officials applauded the retraction, but suggested Newsweek must go further. "I think we should know what it is that caused this and how it happened," the Arizona Republican said. "But I think we should all be aware, particularly the news media, of how volatile the situation is in some parts of the Middle East."

"I'm sure the story was exploited by religious extremists," McCain said. "But that doesn't change the fact that we have to have reliable and absolutely accurate stories."

McCain said the article had damaged U.S. efforts in the region but added, "there's been a lot of things that caused long-term, significant damage," including the abuse of detainees by Americans at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. "But we have a war of ideals and ideas, and that is to sell democracy and freedom and tolerance to the world and the stories like these set us back," McCain said.


But Myers told reporters Thursday that Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, determined the violence there was caused by the political situation on the ground rather than the article.

Asked about Myers' statement, McClellan said the report was used by anti-American elements to cause serious damage to the U.S. image.

He also suggested that Newsweek could "take steps to help repair the damage," adding that one way to do that would be to spread the word that "our military goes to great lengths to see that the holy Quran is respected."

He also denied he was trying to tell Newsweek what to do, insisting he was merely "encouraging them."

McClellan acknowledged there are still other ongoing investigations into other reports of religious intolerance -- including desecration of the Quran -- by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

But, he said, so far the Defense Department has found no evidence to substantiate other allegations.

Newsweek's article cited "sources" as saying a report from a military investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse revealed that interrogators, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Quran down a toilet."

But more than a week later, Pentagon officials called Newsweek to deny the story.

Newsweek went back to its original senior government source, who said he couldn't remember if the toilet allegations were in the particular report from the investigation. The magazine said that before publication it had run the story by two Pentagon officials, who neither denied nor confirmed the Quran allegations.


CNN's Dana Bash, Ed Henry, Barbara Starr and journalist Nick Meo contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/newsweek.quran/index.html

YNKYH8R
05-23-2005, 05:47 AM
http://www.msnbc.com/comics/editorial/bs050520.gif

Jolie Rouge
05-23-2005, 06:49 PM
yeah - and he stole a Russian lake too ... ;)

janelle
05-23-2005, 09:13 PM
Tell the ones who were killed they're sorry. Tell their families and children.

I'm sure the bible has had lots of worse things done to it but Christians are not ready to kill over it. Makes me wonder about the muslim religion. If that makes me intolerant than so be it. I never heard of a Christian Jehad or where those who write and say things against the Christian faith are put to death or death warrents out on them. :confused:

Rumors should not be published but sometimes I think some in the media will do anything to make this a lost war just because they hate Bush. They shoud get over themselves. We are in a war and they should be happy the government doesn't put the in jail for treason against our country if nothing else.

excuseme
05-24-2005, 03:08 AM
I guess you've never heard of the Crusades then. Christians have killed in the name of their God much more than muslims, historically speaking.




Tell the ones who were killed they're sorry. Tell their families and children.

I'm sure the bible has had lots of worse things done to it but Christians are not ready to kill over it. Makes me wonder about the muslim religion. If that makes me intolerant than so be it. I never heard of a Christian Jehad or where those who write and say things against the Christian faith are put to death or death warrents out on them. :confused:

Rumors should not be published but sometimes I think some in the media will do anything to make this a lost war just because they hate Bush. They shoud get over themselves. We are in a war and they should be happy the government doesn't put the in jail for treason against our country if nothing else.

YNKYH8R
05-24-2005, 03:43 AM
I guess you've never heard of the Crusades then. Christians have killed in the name of their God much more than muslims, historically speaking.
And the Spanish inquisition(sp). Janelle you really haven't heard of these things? YIkes! :eek:

Hey...I'm not blaming Bush for a missing lake. :D

Jolie Rouge
05-24-2005, 07:01 PM
Saudis Shred Bibles,
Rights Campaigners Claim
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
May 19, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - Bibles found in the possession of visitors to Saudi Arabia are routinely confiscated by customs officials, and in some cases copies allegedly have been put through a paper shredder, according to religious rights campaigners.

Reports from the Islamic world of the abuse of Bibles and other items important to Christians emerge from time to time, but generally have little impact - in contrast to the wave of Muslim anger sparked by a Newsweek report, since retracted, of Koran desecration by the U.S. military. "The Muslims respect the Koran far more than Christians respect the Bible," says Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born evangelical pastor now based in Australia.

During the 1990s, Nalliah spent two years in Saudi Arabia, where he was deeply involved with the underground church. "It's a very well-known fact that if you have a Bible at customs when you enter the airport, and if they find the Bible, that the Bible is taken and put in the shredder," he said in an interview this week. "If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into custody, and if you have a quantity of Bibles you will be given 70 lashes for sure - you could even be executed."

Nalliah had not himself seen a Bible being shredded but said the practice was widely acknowledged among Christians in the kingdom.

Abuse of Christians and their symbols was not restricted to the destruction of Bibles, he added. A friend of his, a fellow Christian in Saudi Arabia, told him of witnessing a particularly unpleasant incident involving a Catholic nun.

The man had been in the transit lounge at the airport in Jeddah - the gateway to Mecca, used by millions of Hajj pilgrims each year - when a nun arrived at the customs desk. "Some fool [travel agent] had put her on a transit flight in Jeddah. You don't do that to a Catholic nun, because she's going to be tormented."

"They opened her bag, went through her prayer book, put the prayer book through the shredder ... took the crucifix off her neck and smashed it, tormented her for many minutes."

Eventually another Muslim official objected to their conduct, came across and "rescued" her, pointing out to the customs officials that she was not entering the country but only in transit and would be leaving on the next plane.

Briefed beforehand about the risks, Nalliah said he did not carry a Bible when he arrived in the kingdom in 1995.

Subsequently, however, he took possession of hundreds of Bibles that had been smuggled into Saudi Arabia to be used by believers there.

Nalliah said he had a close call one morning when armed members of the notorious Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice - the religious police, or muttawa - hammered at his front door at 1 a.m.

With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room table," he believed his life to be in serious danger. "That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed robbery, and in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the death penalty.

Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only describe as a miracle, the men left without entering his home.

'Contraband'

Claims of Bible desecration in Saudi Arabia have been made by others. "One Christian recently reported that his personal Bible was put into a shredder once he entered customs," the late Nagi Kheir, spokesman for the American Coptic Association and a veteran campaigner for religious freedom in the Middle East, wrote in an article several years ago.

"Some Christians have reported that upon entering Saudi Arabia they have had their personal Bibles taken from them and placed into a paper shredder," the U.S.-based organization International Christian Concern said in a 2001 report.

In its most recent report on religious freedom around the world, the State Department made no reference to Bible destruction, but said they were considered contraband. "Customs officials routinely open mail and shipments to search for contraband, including ... non-Muslim materials, such as Bibles and religious videotapes," it said. "Such materials are subject to confiscation, although rules appear to be applied arbitrarily."

In a 2003 report on Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent watchdog set up under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, said: "Customs officials regularly confiscate Bibles and other religious material when Christian foreign workers arrive at the airport from their home countries initially or return from a vacation."

Inquiries about the legality of Bibles and about the shredder claims, sent to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Information Ministry in Riyadh, were not answered by press time.


Koran vs. Bible

After Nalliah left Saudi Arabia in 1997, he went to the U.S. and took part in the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of what eventually became the International Religious Freedom Act, signed into law the following year.

He heads an evangelical ministry in Australia, where late last year he and a colleague became the first people to be found guilty under a controversial state religious hatred law, after Muslims accused them of vilifying Islam during a post-9/11 seminar for Christians.

Nalliah said this week it did not surprise him that Muslims have reacted strongly to the claims that U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base, where terrorism suspects are held, had thrown a Koran into the toilet.

While Bible scholars say the Bible is written by men who were inspired by God, Muslims believe the Koran is "the copy of an original that is sitting in heaven, and has been sent down [by revelation to Mohammed]."

The book is seen as something sacred in itself, he explained, its words having come "directly from Allah. That's why they are so mad when they think something [unseemly] is being done to the Koran."

A Muslim will never keep a Koran at ground level, for instance.

The Pentagon says a January 2003 memo issued to U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay instructed them to "ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."

Even in Western societies, Nalliah noted, copies of Bibles could often be found in witness boxes of courts, ready for use when witnesses are sworn in. But the Koran will generally be kept in safe storage elsewhere, covered in cloth, to be brought in when required by a Muslim witness.

He said such reverence for the Koran stood in stark contrast to some Muslims' feelings about the Bible, however.

Nalliah said the Koran was "confusing" on this score. In places (e.g.: sura 29:46-47) it appeared to urge Muslims to respect the Bible and those who believe in it; elsewhere it exhorts them to fight those who don't accept Islam until they pay tribute and accept inferior status (sura 9:29-31).

According to author and Islam scholar Robert Spencer, "a devout Muslim might very well mistreat a Bible, because traditional Islamic theology regards it as a corrupted and unreliable version of the genuine revelations that were given to Moses, Jesus, and other Prophets."

Spencer noted that in sura 9:30 the Koran says those who believe Jesus is the Son of God are under Allah's curse. "Throughout history, most Muslim theologians have held that the New Testament has been tampered with since it teaches that Jesus is the Son of God."

Some of the more notorious reported incidents of Muslims abusing Christian symbols implicate Palestinian radicals, including the trashing of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002; and the desecration of Maronite churches in Damour, Lebanon in 1976.

In the Damour episode, Yasser Arafat's PLO killed more than 500 of the Christian town's inhabitants before turning it into a stronghold, and used the interior of the St. Elias church for a shooting range, according to published accounts.



http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewForeignBureaus...R20050519a.html

excuseme
05-26-2005, 02:53 AM
FBI Records Cite Quran Abuse Allegations



By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer 1 hour, 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The conflicting accounts of how U.S. military guards handled Muslim prisoners' Qurans at Guantanamo Bay show two sides of a psychological war between the terror suspects and their holders.
ADVERTISEMENT

Detainees have claimed guards used the holy books as a weapon to break their will to resist interrogation. The
Pentagon asserts that some detainees fabricated their claims in a calculated effort to agitate the wider prison population and undermine the control of the U.S. military.

In the latest disclosure, declassified
FBI reports showed that detainees at the U.S. naval prison in Cuba told FBI and military interrogators on a number of occasions as early as April 2002 — three months after the first prisoners arrived at the makeshift prison — that guards abused them and desecrated the Quran.

"Their behavior is bad," one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent on July 22, 2002. "About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet."

Lawrence Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Wednesday that U.S. military officials at Guantanamo Bay had recently found a separate record of the same allegation by the same detainee, and he was re-interviewed on May 14. "He did not corroborate his own allegation," Di Rita said.

Di Rita said U.S. commanders have documented a number of cases in which detainees tore pages out of a Quran, or ripped off the cover, and then blamed the guards. This was designed, he said, to stir outrage among other detainees and disrupt the order imposed by the guards.

The statements about guards disrespecting the Quran echo public allegations made many months later by some detainees and their lawyers after the prisoners' release from Guantanamo Bay. The FBI documents show a consistency to the allegations and are the first indication that Justice and Defense department officials were aware in early 2002 that detainees were accusing their guards of mistreating the Quran.

One told an interrogator in March 2003 that guards had repeatedly mishandled the Quran. The detainee asked why the United States, as a supporter of freedom of religion, was using the Muslim holy book as a weapon.

Still another said in October 2002 that he and other detainees had been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog."

Separately on Wednesday, Amnesty International urged the United States to shut down the prison, calling it "the gulag of our time." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the human rights group's complaints were "unsupported by the facts" and allegations of mistreatment were being investigated.

Some 540 men are being held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of links to
Afghanistan's ousted Taliban government or the al-Qaida terror network. Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge.

Di Rita said the charges of deliberate Quran desecration by U.S. military personnel were "fantastic" and "not credible on their face" because U.S. commanders were careful not to inflame passions among the detainees.

"Commanders knew it was a very sensitive issue and they didn't need the trouble," the spokesman said.

Di Rita said some detainees had been trained to make such false claims as a psychological tactic.

Indeed, the FBI records cite at least one instance in which a detainee is said to have falsely claimed that a guard had dropped a Quran. "In actuality the detainee dropped the Quran and then blamed the guard. Many other detainees reacted to this claim," the FBI document said, and that sparked an uprising "on or about 19-20 July 2002."

In an April 6, 2002, FBI interrogation, one of the detainees said guards had been "pushing them around and throwing their waste bucket at them in the cell, sometimes with waste still in the bucket, and kicking the Quran."

Another detainee stated he had been beaten unconscious at Guantanamo Bay in the spring of 2002, a period in which U.S. interrogators were pressing hard for intelligence information they believed some of the detainees held on the planning, structure and tactics of
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

The newly released FBI records do not indicate whether the allegations were investigated or substantiated.

In response to a recent Newsweek story, later retracted, that U.S. officials had confirmed allegations of Quran desecration at Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon officials have said repeatedly that they have turned up no credible, substantiated claims that U.S. military guards had deliberately treated the Muslim holy book with disrespect.

Di Rita said the Pentagon had not seen the new FBI documents until they were made public Wednesday by the
American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU said it had received them in response to a federal court order that directed the FBI and other agencies to comply with the organization's request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Large portions of the interrogation summaries were blacked out by FBI censors before being released to the ACLU.

In January 2003, the military issued a three-page written guideline for handling a detainee's Quran, including a stipulation that it should be handled "as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art," and that it not be placed in "offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet or dirty/wet areas."

janelle
05-26-2005, 08:02 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by excuseme
I guess you've never heard of the Crusades then. Christians have killed in the name of their God much more than muslims, historically speaking.




And the Spanish inquisition(sp). Janelle you really haven't heard of these things? YIkes! :eek:

Hey...I'm not blaming Bush for a missing lake. :D

Are you going to tell me these things were caused be Bush????? LOL

Also how can you say Christians killed more people in the name of God than the Muslims? The Crusades were to save Christians from being slautered by the Muslims. The pope asked the King to send in an army to save the Christians. Before that Christian men and women went in on their won to help save those people.

We only get the Muslim side of it because they won. Who cares what happened centuries ago? Who is calling for a Jehad right now as we speak? You want to bring up what happened centures ago and be just like those who only have revenge in their heart? Go ahead but that is what causes wars and the continuing of wars,

janelle
05-26-2005, 08:16 AM
Di Rita said some detainees had been trained to make such false claims as a psychological tactic.

Indeed, the FBI records cite at least one instance in which a detainee is said to have falsely claimed that a guard had dropped a Quran. "In actuality the detainee dropped the Quran and then blamed the guard. Many other detainees reacted to this claim," the FBI document said, and that sparked an uprising "on or about 19-20 July 2002."

================================================== =======
Sorry but I am more likely to believe this. Go ahead and hate our soldiers but I will support them in the impossible job they have to do. Our freedom is dependent on it and the world is watching those prisons now. I don't think out soldiers are that stupid.GEESH

mesue
05-26-2005, 06:05 PM
================================================== =======
Sorry but I am more likely to believe this. Go ahead and hate our soldiers but I will support them in the impossible job they have to do. Our freedom is dependent on it and the world is watching those prisons now. I don't think out soldiers are that stupid.GEESH

Let me get this straight, if you say anything a soldier does is wrong even if he did do it, then you think that we are are not supporting the soldiers, what exactly is supporting the soldiers? Should we give the Abu Grahib soldiers a medal? There are children being held as young as 8 years old. When are you and others going to wake up to the fact that you can't go into a country and say we are here to save you and give you democracy and then begin locking people up and taking away their liberty and then denigrate their religion, great example of democracy.

I recently watched a show (note it was not on the major network and it never will be) about Iraq and it showed a mother whose son was 17 he was the breadwinner and was at work he happened to be near where something happened, though they had no proof he was involved he has been locked up. For a long while she could only visit him every three months now it is once a week, she said he did not dislike Americans before,, now she worries because he hates them. There is proof people are being tortured many have died in US custody from beatings and torture and you feel thats ok and to say otherwise is not supporting the soldiers.

I am well aware the majority of the soldiers are there doing the best they can in the worst of circumstances and doing so with honor and dignity, putting their lives at risk and for what? Your president put them there and he did so ignoring all evidence that there were no WMD's and there was evidence presented to him that there were no WMD's and he ignored it and indeed planned an invasion long before we knew about it. Don't believe me read this,
http://forums.bigbigsavings.com/showthread.php3?t=475930

You don't believe me when I say that torture was going on, then read this, I posted just a small amount please read the whole article and transcript.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/25/1342206&mode=thread&tid=25Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the torture and abuse of prisoners.

The report, titled "Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S Abuse of Detainees" - found that there was overwhelming evidence of widespread mistreatment and abuse of Muslim prisoners not only at Abu Ghraib but throughout Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other "secret locations" around the world. The report also called for investigations of Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez - the former top U.S commander in Iraq - and General Geoffery Miller the former commander of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Jolie Rouge
05-26-2005, 08:08 PM
Disgraceful
John Leo

It's official. Conservatives are losing their monopoly on complaints about media bias. In the wake of Newsweek's bungled report that U.S. military interrogators "flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," here is Terry Moran, ABC's White House reporter, in an interview with radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt: "There is, I agree with you, a deep antimilitary bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong." Moran thinks it's a hangover from Vietnam. Sure, but the culture of the newsroom is a factor, too. In all my years in journalism, I don't think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil.

Not long ago, memorable comments about press credibility came from two stars at Newsweek: Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman. During the presidential campaign, Thomas said on TV that the news media wanted John Kerry to win. We knew that, but the candor was refreshing. Fineman said during the flap over Dan Rather and CBS's use of forged documents on the George Bush–National Guard story: "A political party is dying before our eyes—and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the 'mainstream media'.... It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the 'media' has any credibility." It's worth mentioning here that the unrepentant Rather and his colleague Mary Mapes, who was fired for her role in presenting the forged documents, received a major industry award last week, a Peabody, as well as "extended applause" from the journalists in the crowd. (What's next? A lifetime achievement award for New York Times prevaricator Jayson Blair?)

Instead of trampling Newsweek — the magazine made a mistake and corrected it quickly and honestly — the focus ought to be on whether the news media are predisposed to make certain kinds of mistakes and, if so, what to do about it. The disdain that so many reporters have for the military (or for police, the FBI, conservative Christians, or right-to-lifers) frames the way that errors and bogus stories tend to occur. The antimilitary mentality makes atrocity stories easier to publish, even when they are untrue. The classic example is CNN’s false 1998 story that the U.S. military knowingly dropped nerve gas on Americans during the Vietnam War. On the other hand, brutal treatment of dissenters by Fidel Castro tends to be softened or omitted in the American press because so many journalists still see him as the romanticized figure from their youth in the 1960s.

Another example: It's possible to read newspapers and newsmagazines carefully and never see anything about the liberal indoctrination now taking place at major universities. This has something to do with the fact that the universities are mostly institutions of the left and that newsrooms tend to hire from the left and from the universities in question.

I once complained to an important news executive that he ignored certain kinds of stories. He said that he would like to do them but that his staff wouldn't let him. He admitted his staff had been assembled from one side — guess which ? — of the political spectrum. This conversation hardened my conviction that the biggest flaw in mainstream journalism today is the lack of diversity.

Remember the sensational New York Times report on the 380 tons of explosives missing in Iraq? It was a questionable and weakly sourced story put on page one eight days before the election in a transparent attempt to defeat George Bush. Wouldn't it have been good for journalism if a single person at the Times editorial conference had been able to muster enough "diversity" to stand up and say, 'Great newspapers don't do things like this.'

Much of what journalists turn out is very good. But when they omit or mess up stories, run badly skewed polls, or publish disgraceful front-page editorials posing as news stories, nobody seems to notice because groupthink is so strong.

Time is running out on the newsroom monoculture. The public has many options now — as well as plenty of media watchdogs, both professional and amateur. So the press takes its lumps and loses readers. In March, a report on the state of the media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism said that in the past 17 years, Americans have "come to see the press as less professional, less moral, more inaccurate, and less caring about the interests of the country." According to the report, fewer than half of Americans think of the press as highly professional (49 percent, down from 72 percent 17 years ago). Another finding was that coverage of George Bush during the presidential campaign was three times as negative as coverage of John Kerry (36 percent to 12 percent).

If the press is that much out of sync with the country, its future looks very uncertain. Something has to change.

Jolie Rouge
05-26-2005, 08:14 PM
Unanswered questions about Newsweek's false story
Marvin Olasky

Newsweek's retraction of its false Quran-down-the-toilet story still leaves at least 16 dead and at least that many unanswered questions. Here are a few:

-- Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff says no one "foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did."
Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas says Muslim reaction "came as something of a surprise" to the magazine's editors. But no one familiar with Islam was surprised: Ardent Muslims treat copies of the Quran reverently and never place it on the floor; desecrating the Quran in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia is a capital crime. Why are national magazine editors so theologically illiterate?

-- If Newsweek journalists had been more knowledgeable about the likely reaction, would they still have run the story?
The magazine on Oct. 21, 2002, ripped Jerry Falwell's riot-causing depiction of Muhammad as a "terrorist," since "Islamic fundamentalists are having a field day with these comments, which have been played and replayed throughout the Muslim world." Does Newsweek have a similar responsibility not to cry fire in a crowded theater?

-- If Newsweek claims a responsibility to print the truth, even when it's likely to lead to riots, why didn't it try harder to ascertain the truth?
Sourcery -- the use of anonymous sources -- has long been a journalistic problem, and going with one spectral speaker on something explosive like this seems particularly questionable. (The biblical standard is the testimony of two witnesses, and they have to be willing to come forward.)

-- Why did Newsweek, after getting this story wrong, report new Quran-into-the-latrine charges made by terrorists and their allies?
The magazine "balanced" the new allegations by reporting a U.S. colonel's statement that "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels." But since terrorist testimony is not credible, why quote such charges without independent investigation?

-- Did Newsweek go easy in scrutinizing the accusation because it is a sucker for attacks on the military and the Bush administration?
At least once before, Isikoff has run with a false anti-military story on a one-source basis. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker told the Post that "there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here."
If so, isn't it time to change the standards?

-- Should Newsweek be pushed to reveal the name of the government official it says was its source?
Some journalists have gone to jail rather than reveal names of anonymous sources, but what's the responsibility when the source has borne false witness and caused the loss of innocent life?
Shouldn't journalists offer only conditional anonymity, with the condition being, "tell the truth"?

-- Will other big media declare their firm opposition to sneak attacks such as those Newsweek is famous for?
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne opined on Oct. 18, 2002, that President Bush should go after Falwell because "one test of leadership is a willingness to take on your own side … Mr. President, we're waiting." The Post, which has the same parent company as Newsweek, has been mild in its critique of its own side. Washington Post, we're waiting.

-- What does the riotous reaction tell us about Islam?
Why do many Muslims leap into deadly activities at the drop of a story like this, or a report during a beauty pageant that Muhammad -- so his friends said -- liked and seized beautiful women? At least now, maybe, fewer people will buy the movie "Kingdom of Heaven's" sweet depiction of Islam.

-- Is there a sickness at the heart of press liberalism that leads many journalists to want the Guantanamo story to be true?
Given the way Islamofascists act, do these journalists have a death wish for themselves and Western civilization?

mesue
05-26-2005, 09:09 PM
Everyone knows that the story is real and Newsweek basically retracted the story to save lives.
There is no liberal media, get real. There was a time when a news outlet had to by FCC rules present both sides of the story, not anymore. The top news outlets in this country is owned by six corporations and many have companies that are making money off of this war and you are going to say there is a liberal media. What is a liberal media? Please tell me and while you are at it tell me what a conservative media is. Here is a look at how we are not getting the news and they are discussing this story as well and they even knock Clinton as well (not that he doesn't deserve it) you should enjoy it.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/26/1427224

Here is also about how the press has sanitized the war in Iraq,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/1341241

excuseme
05-27-2005, 03:02 AM
Are you seriously this naive or are you just trolling with us? I hope you are just trolling.


Quote:
Originally Posted by excuseme
I guess you've never heard of the Crusades then. Christians have killed in the name of their God much more than muslims, historically speaking.





Are you going to tell me these things were caused be Bush????? LOL

Also how can you say Christians killed more people in the name of God than the Muslims? The Crusades were to save Christians from being slautered by the Muslims. The pope asked the King to send in an army to save the Christians. Before that Christian men and women went in on their won to help save those people.

We only get the Muslim side of it because they won. Who cares what happened centuries ago? Who is calling for a Jehad right now as we speak? You want to bring up what happened centures ago and be just like those who only have revenge in their heart? Go ahead but that is what causes wars and the continuing of wars,

janelle
05-27-2005, 05:01 AM
Well I hope saying let's not inflame people by digging up old and I mean old history is trolling. LOL

Saying let's not go there when we have enough problems today, I hope is not trolling.

Being naive is what Newsweek just did by running with a story that was not even factual and then saying they did not know it would cause such backlash as to get people killed. Tell the families of those killed that Newsweek was trying to help them.