Koran Abuse Redux

I don’t see the word “toilet” in that paragraph. No wonder that journalists are held in such low regard these days.

Huh, I thought I could do some predicting at comment three, but there you have it: whether the Koran was put *in* the toilet or used *as* a toilet (poetic license, wingers) is far more important than whether the U.S. mistreats prisoners, some of whom have turned out to be inconveniently and completely innocent. Specifically, wingers to come will say that the MSM publishes anti-administration screeds, which liberal professor like Kieran Healy defend as “fake but accurate.” Thank god for comments.

Kieran, as long as you and your friends piss on crucifixes with our tax dollars, you simply will not be able to get us upset with this stuff. Find some better agitprop, please.

Tsk. Y81, I spotted that one on Usenet *yesterday*, mouthed by a wingnut incidentally obsessed with urolagnia. I laughed and laughed. You’ll have to be quicker than that. Drink well!

This is also the same US military that didn’t cover up the fact that Korans had been abused when it could have.

Public discourse is finally getting down to the very basic level needed to prepare us all for the great Holy War showdown: “Christians are much better than Muslims. On the contrary, etc.” Releasing a little official information about how American soldiers sometimes piss on Korans — accidentally, mind you — just stokes the fires a bit. It’s hardly a negative, from the military’s POV.

This is also the same US military that didn’t cover up the fact that Korans had been abused when it could have.

A motivated and creative cheerleader like Jet can spin literally any piece of news as proof of American/Christian nobility.

Lots of news this week about how recruitment numbers for the United States military are coming up well short of projections, yet Bush has years left on his contract, and it’s a safe bet that he and John Bolton have some grand foreign policy plans that don’t involve a lot of nuanced negotiations at bargaining tables. When do we start talking in earnest about how best to crank up the Draft machinery?

Or maybe someone here will make such a persuasive argument in favor of Chrisianity as the Hands Down Best Religion, Bar None, that Muslims and everyone else will feel compelled to convert, or at least admit their moral and spiritual inferiority, thereby averting all that bloodshed.

When Newsweek points it out, that’s anti-American. When the military points it out, that’s a deed so noble that it deserves the highest praise from every citizen in the Free World.

Jet – You don’t think that America should be trying to stake the moral high ground in this “war on terror” thing, then?

“Remind the dumshits that the same military that pissed on that Koran was the same military dropping bombs on Serbs to protect Muslims from the e-vile commies/fascists”

Your grasp of how to win the war for hearts and minds is superb.

Fuck the Koran. What about this:
The failed siege of Fallujah

“The Americans have committed a very big massacre to the people of Fallujah. The crime of Fallujah is the greatest crime ever,” [Mohammed] Abdulla [the executive director of the Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Fallujah] said sternly. “This will remain as a black spot in American history forever. Whatever the American people will do, even if they get rid of those liars who are in their government, they will need a long time for people to forget what they have done in Iraq and in Fallujah in order for us to deal with them as a civilized people who have humanity.”

It’s conversations like this that make me wonder if there’s any reason to have comments enabled on blogs.

bi,
Newsweek had shaky evidence and got the story wrong. The military is releasing information that only hurt themselves and for which they have no incentive to do except to be honest and to right wrongs. Newsweek was difficult to believe when they fell over themselves on a story they could not prove. The military released the information based on an official investigation and was documented. But trust me, I can see why you couldn’t see the difference. You could only see the difference if someone with a D next to their name was President.

engles,
You’ll notice in my post that I included in my list of proper responses that the military should be forced to follow the rules. I’d actually prefer FBI or Secret Service oversite since they seem to have fanatics of the Law within their midst.

Kieren,
From where I’m standing there seems to be a plethora of non-substantiative provocative comments on the Left’s side also.

Robbo,
Did you have something real to say relating to one of my posts, or was that just mindless chattering? I’m not sure how I was cheer leading the military since I agreed the issue warranted corrective action.

Leave it to the bright lights at the Pentagon to release a story about Xitans pissing on the Quran on Friday – the holy day for Muslims.

Oh I guess they figured that by the time the story is released is Jummah prayers will be over.

Sheesh

Kieran, as long as you and your friends piss on crucifixes with our tax dollars, you simply will not be able to get us upset with this stuff.

I wish that I could piss with my tax dollars. I can only manage to piss with urine.

Why is Koran “abuse” an issue? I really can’t see why we should respect the opinions of a bunch of oversensitive nutcases who take their religion far to seriously. It’s not as if Koran “abuse” is a violation of the Geneva convention.

I don’t doubt there’s stuff going on at Guantanomo that is worth criticising – but this certainly isn’t.

Nik,

“Why is Koran “abuse” an issue?”

I can’t see why we should respect the opinions of a bunch of callous (wing)nutcases who take other people’s religions to (sic) flippantly. It’s not as if having a profoundly passionate belief in something is against the Geneva Convention.

I don’t doubt there’s interrogators at Guantanomo (sic) who treat inmates with a shred of human decency – but these guys certainly don’t.

Bi really really has to come up with another term of abuse than “wingnut.” The threads are worn smooth on that one. I realize this will be a tough one for someone as devoted to platitudinizing as he appears to be. “Update: As expected, the comments have examples of several of the expected, semi-trollish lines of defense.” Uh, does this mean disagreement? As long as we’re on the subject, was the outrage about the so-called abuse of the Koran (it’s only a book, people — we don’t have to extend descend to the same idolatry as they do) as deeply felt as when the Islamists were sawing off a head a day off awhile back?

What is interesting from an historical point of view is the global world we live in. The news of the abuse could reach the arab world so fast, it could beat any military strategist. This points to the power of media like nothing else.
In the imperial times of the west revolutions in the colonies got started because of the modern media. So if media is power, how come we don’t vote for them?
In a certain way we do. We pay the magazines, news papers and cable networks. We pay for their technology, resources and networks. And then the news starts to travel. PC to PC, Blog to Blog, Mouth to Mouth.
The only solution for the United States now is to invest in the spreading of other ideas. Unfortunatly most of these travelling ideas are about anger, hate, fear, war and savagery. (Don’t forget Porn)
So how come one lousy piss on a Qu’ran managed to beat the message of friendship?

I doubt a story about ‘desecration’ of the Koran could, all by itself, incite a riot. No, you need a few more transgressions, like, say, occupying a Muslim country, devising specific tortures directed at Muslims, and stuff like that.

It also doesn’t hurt if a vocal minority of radical ‘Christians’ in the nation that’s done all this stuff crow about how the government of that country is now going to do everything they say.

Robbo,
Perhaps our conversation needs to be fleshed out a bit because I think we are both taking each others assumptions for granted and making statements the other finds a little naive. For instance, my reference to “spittle covered Muslims” is in reference to those calls for Jihad or war against the US, the riots in the streets that lead to innocents’ deaths, to rhetoric out of proportion with the transgression of a pissed on bit of pulp and ink (that the inmates themselves abused far worse).

So when I talk about spittle covered Muslims, yes the “other side amounts to” crazy people who would go to war over a book, or kill their own in the streets. For those Muslims not calling for war or Jihad (the majority), they’re on my side and I on theirs when calling for the military to get its shit in a pile. But the televised riots and protests in the streets over a book proved there are a lot of people who are a bit unhinged and need to be reminded there are lot of things more important to worry about than getting a book a little stinky.

The point is, it seems to me, is how we treat our fellow human beings. We imprison them and give them no idea how long they will be held. We do things to humiliate them. We give them their sacred symbols and then we desecrate them. We treat them in ways that terrorize them and debate whether it is torture. “We” do that, because it is done in our name. Others commit atrocities against our fellow human beings. I don’t care to debate who does it worse. But I’d like to think that “we” are better than that, because we believe in “human rights,” and the actions against our fellow human beings are done in our name. That outrages me. I expect better of us.

Kieran, keep raising the issues. Don’t let the hair-splitters and nitpickers change the subject. This is important stuff.

Sorry that second sentence above should have read ‘home (etc.) to the Enlightenment’.

Brendan,
“How do you think Dubya would react if he was made aware of the fact that Muslims were urinating on the Bible?”
Well I don’t know, but considering how he reacted to the Taliban digging up Christian graves and feeding the bones to animals (pre-invastion, went along with the Budha statue destructions), to terrorists seizing and rigging to blow up the Church of the Nativity, to Church bombings and murderous drive by shootings in Pakistan and Iraq, to it being a capital offense to convert to Christianity, to it being a capital offense to even carry a Bible into a country, etc etc, I’d guess he wouldn’t give two shits about piss getting on a Bible. I’m sure blood gets on them every day in Iraq.

But believing that he might says a lot about your grasp of reality.

Heh, and comparing the reaction to the “under God” issue in the US with the calls for holy war, murderous rampages, and mass demonstrations accross the Middle East over the Koran issue would also seem to be, ah, disingenious at best. But hey, whatever it takes to prop up your arguement ;-)

Bob Duckles,
Don’t get too upset. The people imprisoned were, for the most part, picked up in warzones. And as far as “Gulags” go, Gitmo has to be one of the safest and nicest in history. I’ll grant there have been better POW camps, but there probably has never in history been such a nice illegal combatant camp. 50 years ago, Stalin killed millions in his Gulags. 30 years ago France tortured and murdered hundreds in the Algerian gulags. Now adays, the prisoners just have to put up with a little piss on their books. Next war might even have them in 5 star hotels ;-)

If I’ve ever been objectively “naive” it was in the pre-Bush era. I had not understood that so many Americans were prepared to drop gloves (and bombs, and with them America’s standing in the world) for reasons that are, objectively, preposterous. Like the idea that Iraq truly posed a grave and gathering threat to the United States in 2002. Or that Iraq was behind 9/11. Or that Saddam and bin Laden were in cahoots. Or that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were intended for use in centrifuges. Ad infinitum.

In my now-jaded state, I now find it easy to imagine how video of Muslims peeing on a Bible could spur loads of Americans to cheer on the next invasion. As in the case of 9/11, such a propaganda tape could probably be woven into plans to attack whichever Middle Eastern country offered us the juiciest targets at the time. I think it would be naive to believe otherwise.

“Like the idea that Iraq truly posed a grave and gathering threat to the United States in 2002.”

The eye chart says your hindsight is still 20-20. Congratulations and drive carefully.

As regards 20-20 hindsight, the plausibility of the claim that Iraq posed a real threat to the US started dropping when Saddam announced that UN inspectors would be readmitted, and dropped precipitously from Dec 2002, when they started looking at the sites nominated by Bush and Blair, and finding nothing.

So, maybe Robbo should have said “in late 2002 and early 2003”.

_”This is al-Qaeda Rule 18: ‘You must claim you were tortured.'”_

Oh, I’m pretty sure the al-Qaeda manual also teaches people how to create fake photographs of torture and brainwash US military personnel into “uncovering” cases of torture.

A more likely theory, I think, is that there’s a Republican manual somewhere which teaches people how to control Jerry’s fingers via morphogenetic rays.

_Let’s not forget, by the way, that Saddam’s generals thought there were WMDs._

Saddam’s generals are obviously to be trusted more than _Newsweek_.

But hey, what do I know? IOKIYAR!

It’s been a while since Bi worked his atheism into his posts. Going door to door with your pamphlets these days instead? And isn’t it strange that the isolated few cases of torture are discovered by the military, with punishment to follow? Do you recommend tin foil hats for protection against power rays, Bi? Where do you buy yours?

When you detain people without due process and public oversight, you run into problems. Eventually no one trusts you anymore. Soon people are accusing you of running a gulag. Before long you’re a pariah state in the eyes of the world (no matter how pure you think your motives are). That’s the course the Bush administration’s complete disrespect for American Constitutional values is leading us down.

There seem to be three arguments that keep coming up in this thread that are all bunk:

1. Some Muslims do worse things than we do, and therefore our wrong-doings are comparatively benign. Didn’t your mom ever tell you that two wrongs don’t make a right? We need to hold ourselves to the highest standards, not let our standards slip just because some others might have lower standards. This argument is absurd.

2. If it’s okay in America for an artist to make a “piss Christ” why should we be concerned about pissing on a Koran? There’s a huge difference between an artist expressing him- or herself and the U.S. government doing things to people it is detaining without any due process. The first amendment gives any artist the right to piss on anything and call it art. But our soldiers at Gitmo aren’t artists, they are prison guards, acting in the name of the U.S. government, and they should be held to particularly high standards.

3. Muslims are all nuts. This is patently absurd. I happen to actually know a few Muslims personally and find them to be fine people. Unfortunately, making racist generalizations about Muslims has become far too acceptable in the U.S. Sure there are religious kooks in Islam–as there are in any religion. But the vast majority of Muslims are ordinary people who just want the same things all of us want–food on the table, a roof over their heads, and a decent future for their families.

“Comparison of ‘desecration of the Koran’ with desecration of the Bible is, as you will be aware, highly disingenous in any case.”

There’s another sense in which it’s apples vs. oranges. The Bible includes the Old Testament, whose teachings are part of Islam, and the New Testament, which, by and large, chronicles the life of a man whom Muslims regard as a prophet, albeit a prophet seen only through a corrupted text, darkly. The Koran is another thing, in Islam: the Word of God conveyed through the mouth of Mohammed, in Arabic, and preserved as one text since the words were spoken. (It’s actually a bit more complicated than that — it’s a gospel that had to be compiled somewhat after the fact, just as various Christian gospels had to be compiled.) Whatever: at least in mainstream Islam, the Bible is, if not a holy book per se, a text to be regarded with some respect.

In any case, the issue wasn’t whether or not disrespect and abuse of the Koran is a BFD. It’s about use of anonymous sources. Some hitherto reliable anonymous source got his facts wrong, and those errors specific to Koran abuse were not contradicted by other hitherto reliable sources. Frankly, I’ve never understood why Newseek’s explanations were never accepted. They seemed reasonable enough to me.

And the issue now springs from the fact that there was something like the truth in what Newsweek reported. Is this information being released by the military simply because it’s motivated to do the right thing? Or is it motivated to get out ahead of any leaks, and to avoid accusations of cover-up? I’d suspect the latter.

To a much earlier question: there were Korans at Gitmo because there has been *some* compliance with Geneva protocols. In fact, the prisoners were provided with Muslim chaplains from the U.S. armed services (one of whom got somewhat witch-hunted later, as I recall.)

Now back to our regularly-scheduled trolling.

rsl,
Allow me to respond.

1. This is a time of war, so yes, we are going to do bad things. Since we are a democracy we believe we can do bad things in order to create some good, since this form of government has proved the best at making these types of moral decisions (while still doing a piss poor job). And as a member of said democracy, I believe the less moral our opponents, the less constrained our response need be. Although I still believe that prisoners should be treated better than they’ve apparently been treated at Gitmo.

2. This probably goes into the clash of cultures between the East and West. Much of Eastern culture is anti-thetical to the West, and vice versa. In the context of this collision is the piss stained Koran. The West believes the incident was wrong for entirely different reasons than the East. So the issue becomes an issue of degrees of wrong. The Western view that it was not against any law yet still wrong to piss on a Koran, but only because it disrespected another culture, although less so because most of that culture shows little or no respect for the opposite view (aka, the KKK gets no respect for their points of view). The Eastern point of view is that the Koran is a holy object and a great crime has occurred completely out of context of other points of view. It is hard to believe in pluralism and give credence to the Eastern point of view, as next you’d be excusing stoning to death your neighbor for sleeping with your wife, female mutilation, child sacrifice, religious slavery and every other Evil in the Name of Religion(tm) of the world.

3. Can you point to a post saying Muslims are all nuts? I bet you can’t.

“as next you’d be excusing stoning to death your neighbor”

Riiight, because excusing stoning so follows right after condemning abuse of prisoners. Logic.

“The Western view that it was not against any law yet still wrong”

Tsk, tsk, if there is such a thing as “the” “western” view on these matters, dear jet, then it is inscribed in international law and conventions which do consider as illegal even what you seem to view as an entertaining thing that only bothers nutcases.

Even trolls can do better than this, come on.

But please continue focusing on the koran, we wouldn’t want to talk about direct physical abuse and torture, no, suddenly all that’s been going on in Guantanamo is a scene out of MTV’s Punked.

This is a time of war, so yes, we are going to do bad things. Since we are a democracy we believe we can do bad things in order to create some good . . .

I guess I don’t see the logic here. Why can’t we charge these people with crimes and try them? That’s the good way to handle the situation and we could do it if we wanted . . .

The “clash of cultures” idea is just BS created by neocon racists who’d like nothing better than to create a clash of cultures because they love war and hate Muslims.

Can you point to a post saying Muslims are all nuts?

I’m sorry, I guess I was wrong here. It’s not just Muslims it’s apparently all “Eastern Cultures.” As you said: The Eastern point of view is that the Koran is a holy object and a great crime has occurred completely out of context of other points of view. It is hard to believe in pluralism and give credence to the Eastern point of view, as next you’d be excusing stoning to death your neighbor for sleeping with your wife, female mutilation, child sacrifice, religious slavery and every other Evil in the Name of Religionâ„¢ of the world.

I swore I’d never do this kind of posting again — but I’m astonished that no one anywhere (to my knowledge) has brought up the case of the American rage over flag-burning and other desecrations of the American flag, for example by the Iranians or the French left.

I’m also amazed at the number of people who are willing to define the War on Terror as “The US vs. All of Islam”. It seems obvious that we should be taking steps to split off our enemies and make it possible for the rest of Islam to be friendly to the US, but many clearly don’t want to do this.

I often fear that some of these things are deliberately being done to keep the Bush hard right core constituency excited, and also that the hard right movement conservatives might gain control within significant parts of the U.S. military. (The trolls can poo-poo this possibility, but because they’re exactly as bad as the goons that I fear are in the military, they obviously will deny that there’s a problem.)

Whoops, that shpuld have said “some Bush supporters do think that.” Casualty of the lack of preview.

Comparisons with flag burning (it’s only a cloth) or stem cell research or abortion (it’s only a bunch of cells) are to the point and show up the “it’s only a book” brigade for the hypocrites they are.

But apart from this, do you guys really think that other people’s feelings count for nothing? So what if you disagree – they feel this way. It’s willful confusion to imply that religious tolerance demands you condone the stoning to death of adulterers, etc. All that is being asked is that you respect the Koran: not a tall order, because there is no intelligent reason for not doing so.

Compare this with stem cell research, where there are compelling reasons for ignoring some people’s scientifically groundless prejudices.

#71. Ok.

Gee, radek, is that your way of showing you’re not a troll?

Do you always fart like that when you yawn, btw? That’s the part that really bothers people.

Somebody shut down this damn thread alreay.

“this looks like another case of a minor infraction”

The problem is, when a number of “minor infractions” form a sequence and pattern, it becomes quite difficult to consider each successive “minor infraction” separate and discrete from the rest.

These “minor infractions” may even become greater than the content of their own individual significance, and perhaps even more significant than the sum of the increasingly significant sequence of “minor infractions.”

OT: Has there been any word on the results of those investigations into extrajudicial extraditions to 3rd countries, and whatever “minor infractions” might have taken place in the course of whatever goes on in those third countries?

And, to remind any one still caught in the spin-cycle:

[b](T)he story here is the contrast between the contents of the Pentagon report and the avalanche of aggressive, high-minded flimflam that the Administration unleashed on Newsweek when it originally ran its version of the story.[/b]

Or,

(T)he story here is the contrast between the contents of the Pentagon report and the avalanche of aggressive, high-minded (sic) flimflam that some posters unleashed on this thread after Kieran Healy originally posted on Friday.

jet: And if Muslims think it is a big deal, they should be asked about their outrage over purposeful, targetted and continueing desecrations of Christian churches and holy sites (or even Muslim on Muslim desecrations).

First: I cannot even begin to imagine what “Muslim on Muslim desecrations” alludes to.
Second: the only contemporary instances of desecration of Christian churches I recall are in former Yugoslavia during or post recent ethnic conflict, and the Nativity church siege. Of course if you want to go back to the Turks raiding Christian villages you’re welcome to, but then we’d have to remember about those crusade thingies. Hmm. History, this oh so foreign country.
Thid and final: congratulations, you have just compared the US military in its official duty to loose guerrilla groups engaged in terrorist and/or vandalism acts. I’m sure that was supposed to put things in perspective, placate the reactions of disgust and anger and most of all serve as a positive reappraisal of the moral stature of the US army.

Who, again, was only engaging in slapstick comedy pranks on holy books, not things like torturing people, nah.

Things that are so obviously increasing the safety of American soldiers stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan, of course, not to mention the success of the tireless rebuilding efforts.

But why worry about these things when we can sit back and enjoy the crude taste of religious war by proxy, literally, via modem? Next time, a war will not need outlandish WMD claims as pretext, it’ll be justified entirely for the pleasure of the keyboard troll warriors.

jlsb: yes, I think I can manage to recall:

“a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and…an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for ‘a pattern of unacceptable behavior.’

“…water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.”

By my count, that adds up to exactly *one* incident where an identifiable soldier deliberately broke the rules on handling the Koran but was not fired. Apparently his behavior did not add up to an unacceptable pattern.

As for “the story here,” I think there are several. The one that you and Mr. Healy prefer to focus on is *only* one of them.

OK. Unidentified US soldiers? Not our problem.

John Emerson: thank you for your very civil reply. (Except, possibly, for “***** *** *******” – I don’t recognize the pattern of asterisks. Perhaps that’s for the best.)

I agree that “many who poo-poo Koran desecration can get pretty irate about flag-burning” – or, as I put it in my reply to you, “some American conservatives are bothered more by desecration of the American flag than they are by desecration of the Koran.” I still don’t see anything particularly telling about this.

I also agree that “the rioters weren’t starting from zero.” But I’m not sure that Abu Ghraib or anything else that has happened under the Bush administration was the *true* “underlying cause.” After all, these are the same people who celebrated in the streets after 9/11 – i.e., back in the days when the Bush administration was still sucking up to CAIR.

I also agree that “this kind of thing is totally destructive of rational attempts to split Muslim extremists off from the rest of them” – which is presumably why there are rules at Guantanamo for respectful handling of the Koran and why Dubbyah is forever telling us that “Islam means peace” etc.

Personally, I find that sort of blather rather trying, since on both style and content I rate the Koran about even with the (dreadful) Book of Deuteronomy and the (appalling) Book of Revelation, and I think that Mohammed gives St. Simon Stylites a run for his money in the (highly competitive) sweepstakes for Most Repulsive Historical Religious Leader. (I mean, much as St. Simon hated the jews, he never presided over the live burial of several hundreds of them, so far as I know.) But what can you do? Politics, politics…

I am relieved to learn that you must resort to LGF commenters in your search for those “willing to define the War on Terror as ‘The US vs. All of Islam’.”

Finally: I didn’t ask for “proof” of your rather surprising theory about “things [that] are deliberately being done to keep the Bush hard right core constituency excited.” All I asked for was a little more detail.

Please do try to be a little more responsive.

John Emerson: how would you propose dealing with the unidentified person (presumably an American soldier) who wrote the “two-word obscenity” (f*** y**?) on the inside cover of a copy of the Koran?

Do you think that there is any chance whatsoever that you could identify this individual, given the constraints imposed on American legal processes – sometimes for good reasons – by leftist legal folk?

Now see, that’s why I love Fafblog. He just skewered the US position on torture in half a page without a single pompous would-that-it-were-so, plus he made me laugh. And I voted for Bush!

John Emerson: I am trying to say exactly what I do say. I do not think that I write unclearly.

Your theory about “the whole Guantanamo charade” turns out to be much less interesting (but slightly more plausible) than first appeared. Thanks for filling me in.

If you think that the question of identifying the “bad apples” is purely “diversionary,” than you should probably refrain from posts like yours of 5:19 pm above.

LGF types are to the Bush coalition what Democratic Underground types are to the anti-Bush coalition. Neither type interests me.

But, more seriously – do you really think that a handful of confirmed violations shows that the rules “aren’t being followed?”

I mean, for G-d’s sake, man – where are you coming from? Just spend a few years of your life (as I have) working in ANY public institution in America – and then let’s talk about rule following, and why it never happens, and whose fault it is.

But whatever. If you had simply started out talking about what you now say that you started out talking about in the way that you now talk about it, I would have passed over your comment without comment – or even notice.

In short – mission accomplished.

“LGF types are to the Bush coalition what Democratic Underground types are to the anti-Bush coalition. Neither type interests me.”

Fake parity — LGF is much nastier. Rachel Corrie pancakes, etc. Your “interest” in them is irrelevant, they’re not a novel to choose to read or not read. They’re politically significant. The Bush team depends heavily on the votes and support of a lot of people they’d rather not have appear in public. (Not the handful of LGF individuals; that type, including the even-stupider and more-illiterate ones who don’t read the blog).

Spelling things out backward, this whole issue is out there because the Bush administration claimed that a Newsweek story which they claimed was false started a riot where people were killed. They were probably wrong on both counts.

Newsweek’s attestation of their story was a little weak, but evidence of similiar but not identical behavior (what we’re talking about bow) appeared almost immediately. The reason for my initial vehemence was the trollish ignoring of context, but I didn’t spell this out. You ignored the context too.

The significance of the stories about the many sorts of abuse in Guantanamo and elsewhere is that these issues have been around for a long while. The first time something happens it might be a bad apple, but if the issue is raised, at some point it’s policy.

Very few of your points held up, and now you’re declaring victory. Oh well, I’m a seasoned veteral of the blogosphere, alas. You’re very fluent, your debate coach should be proud.

John Emerson,
You have to be kidding about LGF and DU? If you don’t they they are two sides to the same coin you obviously haven’t ever visited. Just from casually making sure nothings changed, I see that Bush is a puppet for an “insidious group of people bent on world domination” and on the flip side, I see that Amnesty International indirectly supports the epidemic of rape in the Darfur region of Sudan.

In breaking news a collective of RW bloggers and columnists has taken out a full-page apology to Newsweek, given they turned out to be correct in substance, if not precise detail…

sawing off heads with dull blades as the victims squeals and the video rolls are ignored or excused as a valid expression of another culture we must understand

Yes, indeed, it’s so shocking that there’s such a massive amount of people willing to excuse or justify hostage decapitations on grounds of respect for different cultures…

… but wait, where’s all this ignoring and excusing? Could it be, shock horror, a ridiculous straw man? Could it be that those identifying crimes with a whole culture are those setting up that very straw man? No, no one can be that stupid…

…plus he made me laugh. And I voted for Bush!

Correction…

One question: are throwing water balloons at prisoners acceptable under the Guantanamo rules Bush keeps talking about?

“Things are hopeless, Rove will win, and the moderates and libertarians will suck their fingers and watch.”

Before Rove, the left blamed the infinite guile and cunning of Lee Atwater for the Democratic losing streak. When Lucifer, in this view, decided he had other work for Atwater he chose Rove. The alternative that the Republicans have better ideas and people (or at least more electable) doesn’t occur to the left. Or it does, it is swiftly relegated to the status of nightmare that must not, cannot be true.

This disingenuous high school debate team bad faith strategy is effective only if you get behind the table with them. The only judges are the clocks which indicate how much of your time has been lost when they declare “victory” after having been refuted on every point other than “the left wants to hold the American military to the same standards as it holds Israel.”

Which, of course, is true.

But whatever. If you had simply started out talking about what you now say that you started out talking about in the way that you now talk about it, I would have passed over your comment without comment – or even notice.

I think the term is “exasperation”.