1115.org

When Newsweek published a story alleging that American soldiers flushed pages of the Koran down a toilet in order to humiliate prisoners at Guantanamo, the outrage was palpable. Republican members of Congress called for the magazine’s hide, or at least for the cancellation of subscriptions. Conservatives blamed the magazine for inciting violent riots in Afghanistan and other countries. And Presidential mouthpiece Scott McLellan blamed the Newsweek article for damaging America’s image abroad. Newsweek, tail in between its legs, hurriedly retracted the story and waited for the storm to pass.

As someone not privy to Newsweek’s inner workings, I have no way of knowing whether the story was accurate or a complete fabrication. But the idea of Americans flushing pages of the Koran down a toilet seems awfully tame when compared to the following descriptions of prisoner abuse reported in today’s New York Times:

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.

These details come from a Army Report investigating allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, where harsh interrogation practices went beyond humiliation; in certain cases, brutal and heavy-handed tactics led to death:

At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Note the italicized portion of that last excerpt: the man who was basically tortured to death was widely believed to be innocent by his own captors, a mere victim of circumstance. With incidents like this under our collective belts, it seems more than a little disingenuous to blame Newsweek for a sudden rise in anti-US sentiment. Our own actions will ensure that there will be plenty of ill will to go around.

How could these types of incidents happen in the first place? The Army report amazingly makes a note of the “young and poorly trained soldiers” who facilitated the abuse. Poorly trained? Why does the Army hate the troops?

At least Newsweek is breathing a sigh of relief, as this one can’t be pinned on them.