On the Koran Abuse and Outrage At Gitmo

[Annie]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...olumn?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true

MAX BOOT
Who's Really Abusing the Koran?
At Gitmo, the prisoners, not the guards, were the worst offenders.
Max Boot

June 9, 2005

All the headlines about "Abuse of the Koran at Gitmo" are absolutely accurate. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood's internal investigation has uncovered some shocking incidents. On at least six occasions, Korans were ripped up. They were urinated on three times, and attempts were made to flush them down the toilet at least three other times.

Why aren't millions of Muslims rioting in response to these defilements? Because the perpetrators were prisoners, not guards. As John Hinderaker notes on weeklystandard.com, the most serious desecrations of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were committed by the Muslim inmates themselves.

You'd never know this from the news coverage, which pounced on Hood's finding of five confirmed incidents of Koran abuse as proof that Newsweek was on to something with its phony-baloney report about guards flushing a Koran down the toilet.

Far from confirming accusations of American depravity, what the report actually shows is that Guantanamo is the first gulag in history run on the principle that no sensibility of the inmates should be offended, no matter how inadvertently.

All inmates are furnished a Koran at U.S. government expense. Since they're imprisoned because they are suspected of being violent religious extremists, some might object that this adds fuel to the fire. But that's not the view of the "Stalinists" who run the Defense Department. For some nefarious reason, they have issued guidelines that call for the utmost respect for the sacred scripture of their enemies.

At Gitmo, personnel receive instructions: "Do not disrespect the Koran (let it touch the floor, kick it, step on it)." They must "handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art." This means ensuring "that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet area." Only Muslim chaplains and interpreters are actually supposed to touch a Koran, and then only if wearing clean latex gloves. Moreover: "Two hands will be used at all times when handling the Koran in a manner signaling respect and reverence."

The Hood report suggests that, for the most part, this elaborate etiquette is obeyed. The worst lapse, splashed (so to speak) across front pages around the world, occurred March 25, when a guard urinated outside an air vent and some of his urine blew into a cell and onto an inmate and his Koran. Human rights absolutists should be relieved (sorry, can't help myself) to know that the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Koran, and the guard was reprimanded and reassigned.

That's the most heinous case of Koran abuse by Gitmo personnel. The four other verified incidents involved an interrogator kicking a Koran, guards accidentally getting a Koran wet with water, an interrogator (subsequently fired) stepping on a Koran and a "two-word obscenity" mysteriously appearing on the inside cover of a Koran.

Some of the most inflammatory allegations, such as guards flushing a Koran, appear to be the result of unsubstantiated rumors spread by inmates who may have been following Al Qaeda instructions to falsely claim mistreatment. Or maybe they were simply trying to deflect blame for all the Korans they were mutilating on their own.

More serious incidents of Koran abuse by Americans conceivably could come to light, but it is clear that anyone who did so would be acting against orders. Reading the Hood report — which is by one count the 189th (no kidding) Defense Department investigation of how prisoners in the war on terrorism are treated — I couldn't help but think: Too bad Muslims don't show the same exquisite concern for the sensibilities of others.

Too bad Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, far from handing out Bibles at government expense, make it a crime to possess that holy book. Too bad Islamic fanatics have no compunction about blowing up churches and synagogues and slaughtering Christians and Jews. Too bad the murderous intolerance of Sunni terrorists extends to Shiite "idolaters" as well.

All the bombings of Shiites in Iraq have resulted not only in the deaths of thousands of Muslims but also, I imagine, the destruction of quite a few Korans.

It would be nice if the global Islamic community, the news media and assorted human rights agitators could display the same level of outrage about the real atrocities perpetrated by our enemies as they do about the imaginary horrors of the American Gulag.

 

[GotZoom]

I don't want my tax dollars going to buy the Koran for these animals.

 

[Semper Fi]

I don't want my tax dollars going to buy the Koran for these animals.

Why not? The thick paper of the Koran would make for a better accident-absorbant than newspaper!

 

[Annie]

Too bad this isn't getting to the MSM more. As far as the Koran problems go, my solution, ban the Koran:

http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/05/05/051305.html

06 13 05
The true horror of American Torture has been revealed. Let me make light of it. Says Time:

” On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods,

What, he made them stand in line for eight hours to vote? Fiend.

isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on “individual phobias” (such as dogs) and “mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.”

If you’ve read accounts of the Soviet gulag you may recall the tales of men forced to march ten miles to a labor site in shoes made of cardboard and frozen spit, and digging hard dead beets from permafrost with hands that hadn’t seen mittens in three years. “Light pushing” in this context was a rifle butt to the chin, twice. Did the 19 methods in the Bill of Cruelty itemize “poking in the chest with the finger” as a separate method, or was it folded into a general go-ahead for acting like a high-school gym teacher?

According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks.

Good.

The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included “use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.” “Our Armed Forces are trained,” a Pentagon memo on the changes read, “to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game “Drink Water or Wear It.”

This is how articles are written, conventional wisdom chopped pressed and formed: the techniques Rumsfeld “balked at” – meaning, I assume, did not permit – did not include actual suffocation, but the use of a wet towel that would induce the misperception of an emanation of a penumbra of suffocation. NEVERTHELESS. Key word, that. Lines crossed not in fact but in spirit. He balked at fake suffocation, aye; NEVERTHELESS the climate of pain and retribution did not forbid men from freely dumping bottles of Dasani on the heads of the detainees. Why, it was a game to the interrogators. “Drink Water or Wear it.” Spiritually, it’s a first cousin to Saddam’s game, “Use Tongue Then Lose It.”

After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.

Djinni in a bottle, no doubt.

According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.”

So Doug is part of the torture crew, then. From the ever-prescient Pythons:

Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.

2nd Interviewer: What did he do?

Vercotti: He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.

And at one point the reader might assume that if something really bad had happened, we might have read about it by now. I know a little bit about modern journalism, and we tend to emphasis the splintery plunger up the butt over the mocking puppet show. In any case, this detail makes you almost want to weep in frustration; domestic politicians are posturing for the camera, huffing about then horrors of Gitmo, insisting that the rest of the world won’t forgive us until we close the joint down and pave it. Over what? A Punch and Judy show? If we gang-mimed the guy and had 17 men in striped shirts with white makeup pantomime falling out of a burning skyscraper, would the critics demand we not only let the guy go but pay him a per diem for his troubles? I’ve read the story twice, and I keep wondering if I missed the part where the suspected 20th hijacker spits teeth into a chamberpot rimming with own bloody urine while massaging the welts the jumper cables left on his groinal division. I mean, I take all that for granted, because our soldiers are all killbot brutes - except for the lower-class ones who got drafted against their will and can only hope Bruce Springsteen sings a monotonal account of their disaffection.

Puppet shows and secret code / I don’t know who to trust / I’m the metaphorical twin of old Tom Joad / inasmuch as we both dealt with dust / his was the kind that got in your eyes / mine gets in your gun / but they both get down deep in your soul / whaddya mean, sing “Born to Run”?

He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem.

Okay, this is torture. But only if you’re interrogating a poster on the Democratic Underground.

His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.”

Meaning what? Forced to kneel before a camera and confess you’re a Jew before your head is sawed off?

Invasion of Space by Female: Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female

Mind you, this is considered punishment. Right now across America there are guys who are seriously peeved because they ordered “Invasion of Space by a Female IV” on pay-per-view and the cable went out. They’re on the phone admitting they wanted it, and demanding they get IV and V no charge, understood?

and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. “I will tell the truth,” he says. “I am doing this to get out of here.” He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner.

One suspects it isn’t the presence of a woman that bothers him; it’s the fact that she doesn’t take any guff, looks him in the eye, laughs at him, blows smoke rings in his face and generally fails to behave like one of the 72 docile celestial whores he was promised. In short: he was broken by the concise application of cultural insensitivity.

You know, there’s a word for college professors who get freaked out by women in positions of confident authority, and it isn’t “tenure.”

Do you have a problem with that? Then this will freak you out anew:

Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler.

This is one of those telling details that describes the chasm between the culture of the American soldiers and the culture of the terrorists. What can you make of men who are scared of women and dogs?

But a much more serious problem develops on Dec. 7: a medical corpsman reports that al-Qahtani is becoming seriously dehydrated

Because they’ve been withholding water and beating him in the kidneys with the Brooklyn Yellow Pages while the guards belt out “Singin’ in the Rain”?

, the result of his refusal to take water regularly.

Remember drink or wear it? So he doesn’t want to drink it. Under Rummy’s Rules of Torture, no bout #19 is “Let him die, if that’s his wish. Scratch one off, move along.” Right after #18, “Poke him in the sternum, but not more than five times in 30 seconds.” But no:

He is given an IV drip, and a doctor is summoned. An unprecedented 24-hour time out is called, but even as al-Qahtani is put under a doctor’s care, music is played to “prevent detainee from sleeping.” Nine hours later, a medical corpsman checks al-Qahtani’s pulse and finds it “unusually slow.” An electrocardiogram is administered by a doctor, and after al-Qahtani is transferred to a hospital, a CT scan is performed. A second doctor is consulted. Al-Qahtani’s heartbeat is regular but slow: 35 beats a minute. He is placed in isolation and hooked up to a heart monitor, TIME reports.

Because he didn’t drink the water. This guy got more medical care than anyone in non-Gitmo Cuba, and of course he survives to experience additional indignities, such as having a picture of a nude woman hung around his neck.

That’s where the story ends in the web version. You’ll have to read the cover story to learn the entire tale. Because it’s the most important story in the world this week.

If the 20th hijacker had been on a plane, and the author of the Time story had been killed fighting with him in the aisle before the plane hit its target, and we knew this from cell-phone dispatches, there would be an award named after the journalist. With a yearly banquet. Chicken, probably; it’s always chicken. With some limp asparagus no one ever eats, but it looks nice on the plate.

After three years, the award would go to someone who exposed how soldiers in Afghanistan used a Koran as a doorstop. Or so sources said.

 

[manu1959]

nice post.....

 

[manu1959]

I don't want my tax dollars going to buy the Koran for these animals.

you are a rich republican....you don't pay taxes.....the tree huggers do

 

[Annie]

nice post.....

Thanks, yet it seems Islam Online is taking Time to where Newsweek was:

http://islam-online.net/English/News/2005-06/13/article04.shtml

Senators Censure Pentagon Over Guantanamo Torture

“If, in fact, we are treating prisoners this way, it's not only wrong, but dangerous, and very dumb, and very short-sighted,” said Hagel.

WASHINGTON, June 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US Senators have censured the Pentagon after more revelations that prisoners at Guantanamo were subjected to shocking torture techniques to extract information.

“If there's a vacuum, something will fill that vacuum. This kind of stuff fills a vacuum,” Sen. Chuck Hagel said on CNN's “Late Edition” Sunday, June 12.

Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, warned a leadership vacuum at the top of the military hierarchy can end “in disaster for us and humility for this country.”

“It's not appropriate. It's not at all within the standards of who we are as a civilized people, what our laws are,” he stressed.

“If, in fact, we are treating prisoners this way, it's not only wrong, but dangerous, and very dumb, and very short-sighted,” fumed Hagel.

The criticism followed the publication of a classified Guantanamo logbook by Time magazine Sunday detailing the torture and mistreatment of Saudi Mohammed Al-Qahtani, suspected of being the 20th hijacker on September 11, 2001.

The document indicated Qahtani had his head and beard shaved, was stripped naked, ordered to bark like a dog, prevented from sleeping by loud music, had pictures of scantily clad women hung around his neck and was straddled by a female interrogator.

At one point, when the detainee refused to drink water, an IV tube was inserted into his arm, he was pumped with three and a half bags of fluid and told that a bathroom visit will be allowed only in exchange for information.

When his replies did not satisfy the interrogators, Qahtani was told to relieve himself in his pants, which he did, according to the magazine report.

His questioning spanned over a three-month period from November 2002 to January 2003.

Tarnishing US Image Don't you just love the headers?

“I don't know why we didn't learn from Bagram and Abu Ghraib,” said Feinstein.

Hagel further said the reported techniques and Guantanamo policies sully the reputation of the US in the eyes of the world.

“This is not how you win the people of the world over to our side, especially the Muslim world,” he told CNN. How is it we do that? Oh I know, turn it all over to Kofi or Jacques.

Hagel said such treatment should offend the sensibilities of “any straight-thinking American, any straight-thinking citizen of the world.” Really? I must not be one of the 'any.' Now if they told me they were holding a gun to his head. Or they had electrodes on his privates...

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, told the same program that the treatment outlined in the article presents “a kind of ludicrous view of the United States.”

“I don't know what tree we're barking up,” she said. “It is a terrible mistake.”

“I don't know why we didn't learn from Bagram [prison in Afghanistan],” she added.

“I don't know why we didn't learn from Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq], but here we are in Guantanamo with many of the same things surfacing.” I will not BOLD Feinstein's comments, they are ridiculous. We are talking apples and oranges here, not that what happened in Iraq came close to warranting the attention paid to it, though it was wrong.

The US military on Sunday offered no excuses for interrogation techniques used on Qahtani, saying in a statement the interrogators used “approved and monitored interrogation approach” through a “very detailed plan.”

The Pentagon insisted Qahtani, who was captured on Afghan-Pakistani border in December 2001, had told US authorities about his training at two Al-Qaeda camps as well as his meetings with Osama bin Laden and other senior Al-Qaeda leaders.

No Closure

“At present, there's no plan to close Gitmo,” said Cheney.

US Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated in an interview to be aired on Fox News Monday, June 13, that his administration had no plans to close Guantanamo the Time revelation.

“At present, there's no plan to close Gitmo. The president says we review all of our options on a continuous basis,” Cheney told the American network, using a slang term for the site.

“The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the Al-Qaeda network,” Cheney said.

US military sources had revealed to the Los Angeles Times that the US was holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo, who have no meaningful connection to Al-Qaeda or Taliban.

They said that at least 59 detainees, nearly 10% of the prisoners, were deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan.

Cheney’s statements came after Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that some Bush administration officials want to close the facility.

“I think they're divided. I think ... some members of the White House have come to the conclusion that the legend is different than the fact,” said Hunter, a California Republican.

“And when that's the case, you go with the legend that somehow Guantanamo has been a place of abuse. And you close it down and you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate and you get if off the table and you move on,” he said.

On Wednesday, June 8, President George W. Bush said he was ready to examine alternatives to the X-ray camp after former president and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter joined other voices calling for its closure.

The Guantanamo detention camp has been at the center of a political storm after a Newsweek report that military interrogators at the camp flushed a Qur’an in a toilet to rattle Muslim inmates.

The US military detailed on Friday, June 3, five cases in which American jailers at Guantanamo had desecrated copies of the Noble Qur’an, including one incident which occurred as recent as March.

That report and others sparked angry protests in the Muslim world and condemnation from human rights groups.

Amnesty International has recently described Guantanamo as the “gulag of our times.” And AI has proved to be not only not impartial but biased politically.

 

[GotZoom]

you are a rich republican....you don't pay taxes.....the tree huggers do

Ohhhh.....ok.

 

[gaffer]

I kinda like Invasion of space by Pig myself. Each prisoner should be forced to share a cell with a pig. And I would have lots of MEAN, man hating women guards.

 

[Annie]

There really isn't much to say about the following:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006816

BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, June 13, 2005 4:54 p.m. EDT

Christina Aguilera, Torture Mistress
"The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is drawing fresh criticism following a Time magazine report on a logbook tracing the treatment of a detainee who officials believe was intended to take part in the September 11, 2001, attacks," CNN.com reports:

During the period covered by the logbook, Time reported, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved 16 additional interrogation techniques for use on certain detainees.

Afterward, interrogators began their sessions with [Mohammed] al-Qahtani at midnight and awakened him with dripping water or Christina Aguilera music if he dozed off, the magazine article reported.Guess it's the same thing?

The magazine said the techniques approved by Rumsfeld included "standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair" and hanging "pictures of scantily clad women around his neck."

[Sen. Chuck] Hagel said such treatment should offend the sensibilities of "any straight-thinking American, any straight-thinking citizen of the world."

Al-Qahtani, as a Defense Department press release notes, is "believed to be the intended 20th Hijacker in the 9/11 attack that killed more than 3,000 innocent people." And the interrogation tactics worked, the Pentagon says:

The interrogation of Kahtani has enabled the Department of Defense to gain a clear picture of Kahtani's strong connection to al-Qaida leadership to include Osama Bin Laden. For example, while Kahtani repeatedly offered various cover stories ranging from claims of being in Afghanistan to buy falcons to claims he was coming to the U.S. to buy a used car, interrogations were able to uncover the truth.

Kahtani's interrogation during this period was guided by a very detailed plan and conducted by trained professionals motivated by a desire to gain actionable intelligence, to include information that might prevent additional attacks on America.

We must admit, if you'd told us after Sept. 11 that less than four years later U.S. senators would be taking offense because would-be mass murderers were forced to listen to Christina Aguilera tunes, we'd have thought you were crazy. As Mark Steyn writes, "Guantanamo will be remembered not as a byword for torture but for self-torture, a Western fetish the jihad's spin-doctors understand all too well."

The Pentagon press release states that "the Department of Defense remains committed to the unequivocal standard of humane treatment for all detainees, and Kahtani's interrogation plan was guided by that strict standard." We're inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Reasonable people may differ, but if the Pentagon is right about the utility of its interrogation techniques in preventing future attacks, the "human rights" position is problematic on its own terms. If, heaven forbid, America were attacked again, it seems likely that the public would demand even tougher tactics, and civil libertarians would have a much harder time making their case than they do today....

 

[Merlin1047]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...olumn?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true

Moslems seem to have a very selective sense of outrage. If another muslim flushes a koran, that raises not so much as a whimper. But let an American even look at a koran cross-eyed and the jihadists start loading the TNT into the SUVs.

Worse, our idiot politicians lend credence to these raghead fools by responding as if these complaints had any merit. Apparently they don't understand that the only outcome to this butt-kissing attitude is to further encourage the camel jockeys.

I'm sick to death of PC American fools and opportunistic politicians who seek to close Gitmo, and cater to murderers. It's way past time to adopt a more hard-nosed approach and to flat tell these idiots - muslim, politician and leftists alike, that we flatly don't care what they think. That the people being held in Gitmo are prisoners of war and that they're being treated a damn sight better than they deserve.

 

[theim]

This is outrageous!! We MUST demand accountability! Gitmo must be closed!!

I mean, WATER IS BEING DUMPED ON THE MAN'S HEAD!!!!! For the love of Allah! What kind of sick BASTARDS would DUMP A WATER BOTTLE ON A MAN's HEAD?!?!

And they are making him STAND FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME!!! WTF?! This makes me want to weep!

And as for actually being in the presence of a woman...(gasp)...lemme catch my breath on this one...apalling. Just apalling. I mean, this man is a superior follower of Allah!! How DARE he be forced to see a woman!! THIS IS INHUMAN!!! It's bad enough a guard touched a Koran without wearing gloves (FIEND!!!!!!!!!!!(spittle flying from mouth)) but seeing a woman and not having her submit to his every desire...my God...

It is time for us to act. The Nazis, the Soviets, what they did was OK because they were well...Nazis and Soviets. But Americans are supposed to be the good guys. We are supposed to treat prisoners better than our own soldiers, just to show how good we are. They may be murderous Jihadists, but that doesn't mean they aren't entitled to the rights of American citizens!!!

 

[Annie]

This is outrageous!! We MUST demand accountability! Gitmo must be closed!!

I mean, WATER IS BEING DUMPED ON THE MAN'S HEAD!!!!! For the love of Allah! What kind of sick BASTARDS would DUMP A WATER BOTTLE ON A MAN's HEAD?!?!

And they are making him STAND FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME!!! WTF?! This makes me want to weep!

And as for actually being in the presence of a woman...(gasp)...lemme catch my breath on this one...apalling. Just apalling. I mean, this man is a superior follower of Allah!! How DARE he be forced to see a woman!! THIS IS INHUMAN!!! It's bad enough a guard touched a Koran without wearing gloves (FIEND!!!!!!!!!!!(spittle flying from mouth)) but seeing a woman and not having her submit to his every desire...my God...

It is time for us to act. The Nazis, the Soviets, what they did was OK because they were well...Nazis and Soviets. But Americans are supposed to be the good guys. We are supposed to treat prisoners better than our own soldiers, just to show how good we are. They may be murderous Jihadists, but that doesn't mean they aren't entitled to the rights of American citizens!!!

And don't you forget it, not only are we 'supposed to be the good guys', but it's all our fault in the first place:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21793

Surely a significant portion of our population should be up for a Dawinian award!

 

[manu1959]

ok....just listened to a press conference about prisoner treatment.

they were captured on a battlefield shooting at US troops

they are fed three times a day....lemon chicken was todays special

they are given prayer rugs

they are given korans

they have hot showers

they have single occupancy rooms with ocean view

they have exercise classes

they have in depth intelectual discussions

gulag my ass

 

[Annie]

Hmmm, someone agrees with me. We are 'surrendering at Gitmo' in the sense of letting those whom we cannot win over, WHO DO MEAN TO KILL US, define the problem to something we are not. I guess that is a two stage agreement with the following. I just do not believe they are mutually exclusive viewpoints. Links at site:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/

This Kafir Shrugs
Columnist Diana West is troubled by the precautions American soldiers guarding terrorist prisoners take to avoid "mishandling" the Koran, and she explains their theological underpinnings:

Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Quran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.

The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws. This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids--obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam--and, chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean cloves [sic] and detainee towels, the United States military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis--the unclean infidel--a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the bloodlust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.

Is this political correctness run amok? Not exactly. It's something else again, a new threat from within that needs vigilant redress. P.C. is about victimology, the elevation of perceived victim groups to the canonical pantheon. The Gitmo rules are more blatantly about surrender, a voluntary self-extinguishment, a spreading condition of denial of what is right and worth standing for. Not what you expect from the United States Southern Command.

This seems like an overreaction. To our mind, the military's deference to Muslim law is an act of magnanimity, not surrender. Lots of religions believe things that seem silly to nonbelievers, and if a Muslim fundamentalist believes we're "unclean," there's no reason that should bother us any more than if a Christian fundamentalist believes we're going to hell. Muslim terrorists are our enemies because they're trying to kill us, not because they think we're unclean.

 

[colehart]

especially Islamic, that follows the dictates of the Geneva Convention. la,la lala,la,la, la, I'm waiting.........

 

[theim]

Seriously, If I went back in time to 9/11 and told them that 4 years from now people were ready to close down a US base because Infidels touched the Koran without gloves, they would think we lost the WOT.

 

[Gunny]

Isn't there something wrong with Federal troops on orders from the Federal Government issuing religious material and orders to treat it with reverence?

I'm just imagining the collective squeal that would go up if it was Christians and the Bible involved.

 

[Annie]

Isn't there something wrong with Federal troops on orders from the Federal Government issuing religious material and orders to treat it with reverence?

I'm just imagining the collective squeal that would go up if it was Christians and the Bible involved.

I think so:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showpost.php?p=294100&postcount=19

 

[Gunny]

Nice post. I agree.