Rice urges calm, calls Koran desecration abhorrent
 

Oh sweet Lord, here we go again.

Can someone please tell these idiots that they are not helping. There are people in a war zone who would probably appreciate not bearing the brunt of the monumental stupidity these guys will show.

"Mischaracterize our intentions"?

I remember the lawyers summation in the movie A Time to Kill.

Someone should tell the guys at Guantanamo "Pretend it's the Bible".

Destroying a Koran isn't tantamount to torture, no matter how you spin it.

Doesn't mean it isn't nasty and stupid, but it isn't torture.

And any Christians who feel that strongly about doing the same to the bible are idolators, so there :-)

But nothing is more evil than destroying an issue of The Economist.

yeah, i have to agree. if i saw someone do that to the Bible - i would consider them stupid... but i don't think i would feel tortured.

but making those poor prisoners endure the sight of a topless american women...
- oh wait, i don't see how that is torture, either.

torture would be someone driving a rusty nail through your scrotem while demanding to know where you hid a nuclear arsenal.

*flashing back to Serpent and The Rainbow*I want to hear you scream...

Whoever you are, please don't mistreat tw.

Is there actually any evidence this happened or is this just some crazy rumour that got out of hand? Would've thought flushing a book would be difficult.

From the article it appears that everyone is assuming it did happen. Whether they tore it apart, just put it in the bowl, etc, is beside the point.

Technically, it is not physical torture. It is incitement. If someone went to downtown Little Rock, threw a bible on the street, unzipped and peed on it, it would probably start a riot.

Whoever is doing the interrogations is crossing a very dangerous line when they go beyond personal abuse to denigrating a prisoners beliefs. Word of that kind of stuff gets out and makes us look bad.

In the movies, it is always the bad guy who is trashing the prisoners religion. When stuff like this is done in real life, the perpetrator looks bad in the eyes of the people in the middle, the swing voters. These are the people who will ultimately win the war one way or another. It's not the diehard insurgents or the rabidly pro-Coalition supporters who will make the difference.

The middle swinging is why the civil rights movement took hold in the South. It's why in less than a decade, segregation went from tradition to bad idea. A lot of this happened when one side overreached. People watched the beatings and bombings, and the people in the middle made up their minds. It's why the Klan are viewed as a hate group and not patriots.

The middle in Iraq and Afghanistan is still soft. The recent elections have resulted in more help being given to the coalition. They were just coming to believe that a coalition-supported democracy could take shape which would also respect their culture.

And then these assholes have to grandstand.

In programming we have a saying, that one 'aw shit' equals 100 'attaboys'. How many small acts of kindness by individual soldiers, how much goodwill built by civil affairs officers has been wiped out by one moron?

We have been trying to keep this war from being viewed as an attack on Islam ever since Bush used the word 'crusade'. Having a soldier deliberately trash a copy of the Koran is not helping.

Damn! I thought I was the only person who saw that movie.

Unfortunately, I went to see it because I had read the book.

It was not a good adaptation.

Day-amm!

Jag's channelling me.

I wondered the same thing. It doesn't really matter if this is quashing a rumor or speaking to something that actually happened. The public reaction tends to be the same with respect to rumor vs. truth.

Yeah, I heard somebody, somewhere disrespected a book. I guess it's time to do my spring looting.

C'mon people...do you honestly think we'll ever coexist with these assholes? That there will ever be a time we aren't at odds with the muslim world? Fat fucking chance of rationalizing that. :Flush:
People in the muslim world do things we don't approve of all the time but we're not burning down our own government buildings or looting the DC stores. That is beyond stupid.
It follows the same thinking as wacking yourself with chains, barbed wire or knives to prove you're more devout. Sure, If I burn down a bigger government building than you do, it proves I am more outraged therefore more devout than thee. Assholes.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapc...protests.reut/

there are far too many instances of "log" and "toilet" appearing in that excerpt for me to contain my 5th grade sense of humor.

From 2003 - U.S. Pledges to Avoid Torture

I think we dipped into the credibility well one too many times.

From an hour ago:

Newsweek says may have erred in Koran report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it may have erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to victims of deadly violence sparked by the article.

The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the original source of the allegation was not sure where he saw the assertion that at least one copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet in an attempt to get detainees to talk.

"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," Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

Not we. You. You certainly have. And now, once again.