Well, that's OK then. NOT.
The Pentagon report on Gitmo was issued after business on Friday afternoon, in that way the Bush Administration prefers to distribute actual information. The good news? No toilets.
But there were guys who kicked and stepped on Qurans. And it seems like there were some very odd things happening down there.
One could conjecture that a bit of spirited inter-guard play got out of hand and those Qurans were splashed accidentally, or one could think that guards were "softening up" prisoners by pelting them with water balloons. Similarly, if one worked hard, one could imagine an odd plumbing mishap, or one could read this to mean we have a confirmed case of an American soldier pissing on a prisoner. (Maybe that's why it was released this afternoon?) We'll have to wait to read what the report actually says as soon as the Pentagon puts it on the Web where it can be found.
To be fair to the beleagured good guys at the Pentagon, there are also confirmed cases of prisoners doing a lot worse to their own Qurans.
So now the story can become "No Toilet!" or "Stepped on!" and go for a few more cycles without paying attention to the 800 pound gorilla in the corner. That is that immorality and horror is woven into the fabric of our treatment of detainees, in Gitmo and elsewhere. What is going to be done about it? Frankly, it doesn't really matter if a Quran was flushed, kicked, splashed or peed on, once we admit that disgusting abuse of our prisoners has taken place.
The seed was laid the first day someone accepted the suggestion that we should use Gitmo in the first place, to avoid all those pesky domestic laws we have, while keeping them nicely far away from the eyes of the world and our own press. It was watered by the bounties being paid to tribal thugs in Afghanistan, whose loyalty to us extends only as far as our money. It's been fertilized from the highest levels, and grown, as such things do, in the darkness of secrecy and covert operations. And we now have a global network of torture and murder, in our name and by our own hand, not to mention that work we contract out.
Quibbling over a book in a toilet is so much easier than noticing that the Bush administration has sold our souls.
But there were guys who kicked and stepped on Qurans. And it seems like there were some very odd things happening down there.
In other confirmed incidents, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.I can't find a link to the actual report yet, so I can't provide more detail.
One could conjecture that a bit of spirited inter-guard play got out of hand and those Qurans were splashed accidentally, or one could think that guards were "softening up" prisoners by pelting them with water balloons. Similarly, if one worked hard, one could imagine an odd plumbing mishap, or one could read this to mean we have a confirmed case of an American soldier pissing on a prisoner. (Maybe that's why it was released this afternoon?) We'll have to wait to read what the report actually says as soon as the Pentagon puts it on the Web where it can be found.
To be fair to the beleagured good guys at the Pentagon, there are also confirmed cases of prisoners doing a lot worse to their own Qurans.
So now the story can become "No Toilet!" or "Stepped on!" and go for a few more cycles without paying attention to the 800 pound gorilla in the corner. That is that immorality and horror is woven into the fabric of our treatment of detainees, in Gitmo and elsewhere. What is going to be done about it? Frankly, it doesn't really matter if a Quran was flushed, kicked, splashed or peed on, once we admit that disgusting abuse of our prisoners has taken place.
The seed was laid the first day someone accepted the suggestion that we should use Gitmo in the first place, to avoid all those pesky domestic laws we have, while keeping them nicely far away from the eyes of the world and our own press. It was watered by the bounties being paid to tribal thugs in Afghanistan, whose loyalty to us extends only as far as our money. It's been fertilized from the highest levels, and grown, as such things do, in the darkness of secrecy and covert operations. And we now have a global network of torture and murder, in our name and by our own hand, not to mention that work we contract out.
Quibbling over a book in a toilet is so much easier than noticing that the Bush administration has sold our souls.
posted by Paul at 5:07 PM |
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