Lovely DiRita, Meter Maid

Remember a couple weeks ago, when I said of Larry DiRita, Pentagon spokesman, that "he didn't seem above saying whatever he'd been told to say, nor beyond trying to distract reporters from the facts?" It seems I might have been too kind.

Yesterday's official announcement by the Pentagon that there, in fact, have been at least 13 credible allegations of mishandling of the Koran at Guantanamo, has the progressive blogosphere abuzz. In 5 of those cases actual mishandling took place, and they aren't done with the inquiry yet. Which is why today is 'Larry DiRita Day' on the left side of the blogosphere.

See, unlike, apparently, the administration, the memory of leftie bloggers extends back longer than two weeks, and they also know how to search for transcripts online. Which is why this isn't the first post to point out what lovely DiRita said on May 17th, during the peak of the administration's "All pile on Newsweek!" festival.

With respect to lawyers making allegations of detainees who have been released, we anticipate, and have seen, in fact, all manner of statements made by detainees -- as you recall, many of whom as members of al Qaeda were trained to allege abuse and torture and all manner of other things.

When we have received specific, credible allegations -- and typically that's not what we see when we see a lawyer speaking on Al- Jazeera -- but when a specific, credible allegation of this nature were to be received, we would take it quite seriously. But we've not seen specific, credible allegations.

"We've not seen specific, credible allegations," he said. But they had. They have now admitted that not only did they have specific, credible allegations, but that they've investigated them. Not only have they investigated them, but they've substantiated some. No toilet admitted to, yet, but they aren't giving out details of the 5 proven cases, and they left the door open to acknowledge more later.

Since Larry's "not seen", we've learned that both the Red Cross and the FBI had told the Pentagon about such allegations. I usually think of them as pretty credible. And apparently, so did the folks at Gitmo, who changed practices following the 2002 and 2003 Red Cross reports.

But Larry said,

These kind of, sort of, fantastic charges about our guys doing something wilfully heinous to a Koran for the purposes of rattling detainees are not credible on their face.

That stunts were being pulled with Korans is bad. If they've actually cleaned up their act since someone brought to their attention that it wasn't a good thing to do, great.

But how in the world are we ever supposed to believe them when they tell us that? When they've been handing us weasel words and bald-faced lies so far, from the back of a high-horse where they were throwing poo at Newsweek? DiRita could swear on a stack of Bibles (since his touching a Koran would be very bad), and I still will never believe him. (In fact, I kinda wonder if putting his hand on a Bible might result in burning and smoke, like in an old episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

Not surprisingly, I haven't seen DiRita, or guys from State, or the gang over at Fox news loudly demanding that DiRita retract his statement. I haven't yet heard Rumsfeld stand up and say "Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation." But of course that really should be "we cannot retract the damage," since Larry works for him. Over at the White House, Scottie hasn't pointed out that "It will take work to undo what can be undone," now that the credibility of the nation has been fully destroyed. And of course, I haven't heard DiRita calling himself a "son of a bitch."

Oh well, at least we're winning in Iraq.