Rhinocrisy

Funny how many people have seen a “toilet incident” while in U.S. custody. From Democracy Now:

In August 2003, 23 Yemeni detainees reportedly tried to commit mass suicide after a guard stomped on the Koran. In addition, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights reported former detainees said they saw the Koran being thrown into the toilets. Three British citizens released last year from Guantanamo reported similar treatment of the Koran in a 115-page dossier on the conditions at the detention camp.

Just a quick note: a flippant reply to the scads of reports of Koran desecration floating around (aside from the Newsweek one) is that al-Qaeda operatives are trained to make false allegations. The source being this:

A US military spokesman, Army Col Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. “If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels,” he said.

This is true. You can read it in the manual itself.

Other missions consist of the following:
…
5. Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy.

The only problem with this is that all these allegations are coming from people who have been released from Guantanamo. For example, see this al-Jazeera story, or this one about one of the released UK detainees, both confirming incidents of Koran desecration. Are these men al-Qaeda operatives? If so, why were they released?

In a comment on Eric Muller’s blog, a reader responds:

Almost all released Al Qaida detainees have claimed Koran desecration. Allegations of Koran desecration are made just about every single time the insurgents in Iraq have an encounter with the U.S. military. Whether or not it’s true is utterly irrelevant now.

Is that right? I’ve fulminated (indirectly) here before about this idea that perception is more important than truth. Surely it behooves us to cling to truth like a lifeline - or else we risk being swept away in an endless tide of supposition and baseless invective. Right?

People, something is seriously wrong when a Google search for “Uzbekitty” turns up one thing and one thing only: Saurabh’s post, below. As everyone should know by now, this is an Uzbekitty.