Did They or Didn't They?

The news headlines are busily reporting various versions of the "Newsweek apology" story. If you aren't listening closely, or you're listening to one of the reporters less careful with the nuances, you may come away with the impression that first Newsweek reported that soldiers at Guantanamo flushed a Koran down a toilet, but now they are saying it never happened. Sadly, that isn't what Newsweek said.

For the best coverage of the issue I've found, I suggest University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, who's Informed Comment blog is a respected resource on Middle Eastern news. Here's a bit from his post on the Newsweek-story story:

Newsweek explains that in response to Pentagon queries,

"On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report."

Isikoff's source, in other words, stands by his report of the incident, but is merely tracing it to other paperwork. What difference does that make? Although Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita angrily denounced the source as no longer credible, in the real world you can't just get rid of a witness because the person made a minor mistake with regard to a text citation. It is like saying that we can't be sure someone has really read the Gospels because he said he read about Caiaphas in the Gospel of Mark rather than in the Gospel of John.

Newsweek has, in other words, confirmed that the source did read a US government account of the desecration of the Koran.

Nor is this the first such indication of this sort of incident.

Many observers have been wondering why the Newsweek story led to the uprisings in Muslim countries; it's not like this is the first report of such things at Guantanamo. Cole points to other reports.

(Frankly, based on my previous observation of their work, if I'm asked to pick between the credibility of Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff or Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita, I'll pick Isikoff. I remember watching a DiRita news conference during the whole "looted explosives depot" controversy, and he didn't seem above saying whatever he'd been told to say, nor beyond trying to distract reporters from the facts.)

Which brings me to the real problem: we have ample reason to believe that our armed forces are capable of committing heinous acts, that the administration will lie to us, or themselves, and that they will shamelessly and aggressively mislead us when it serves their purposes. Compared to the horrors of Abu Gharib, and the "interrogation techniques" approved in writing by the Pentagon, the cultural insult of flushing a Koran seems like small potatoes. As Juan Cole puts it:

As a professional historian, I would say we still do not have enough to be sure that the Koran desecration incident took place. We have enough to consider it plausible. Anyway, the important thing politically is that some Muslims have found it plausible, and their outrage cannot be effectively dealt with by simple denial.

Whether or not the flushing actually took place, we believe it could have taken place, and the only people our leaders have to blame for that are themselves.

At the end of Juan Cole's article is a scary suggestion about what may be the "real" story behind what's happening at Guantanamo. Is it true? We don't know. Could it be? I think so. And it makes a whole lot more sense than Bush's Social Security proposals.