Newsweek’s last line of defense just went down the drain. Even Howard Kurtz may not be able to help them now.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Guantanamo detainee who told an
FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
“We’ve gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn’t happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn’t happen,” chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.
An FBI document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made by the detainee in two interviews with an FBI special agent at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The names of the detainee and the agent were redacted.
“The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet,” the FBI agent wrote.
Di Rita told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. military, as part of an inquiry into Koran treatment at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, interviewed the same detainee on May 14, and that the man did not corroborate the earlier allegation. But Di Rita at the time said he did not know whether the man actually had recanted his earlier statement.
During his news conference on Thursday, Di Rita said he changed his account of what the detainee had said after getting more information from the commander of the Guantanamo prison, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood.
So yesterday’s story from the top of the LA Times website was just what it appeared to be – a bunch of poppycock.
Roger, an alternate spelling for ‘poppycock’:
h*o*r*s*e*s*h*i*t.
Great news! How long did they have to beat him until he recanted?
‘n ah’ma gonna KEEP questionin’ him until ma arm gits tired!
Oh, wait. that’s the LAPD….
Beat him? Nah, just made him read the LA Times.
Better question: How long till Andrew Sullivan realizes that nonexistant Koran flushing isn’t torture?
I don’t see how the story being a complete fabrication hurts the al-WaPo Group. Were Pravda or Isvestia ever damaged by anti-American agitprop? The Cuban, Chinese, North Vietnamese and North Koreans run this kind of story on a daily basis – they’re still in business. Al-Jazeera may actually make money running similiar fabricated anti-American stories as well as helping out on this one.
I think that any rational person would have to agree that, unless the al-WaPo Group still has some pretense to being journalistic in nature, this piece served its intended purpose. I’m sure that the CRC or ACLU attorneys that spoonfed Isikoff this crap are tickled to death. It was truly an international effort with al-Jazeera doing their bit in the ME very well. Phony reports of deaths caused by a phony story. The Al-Queada people must be rolling on the floor.
Come on, Roger, you’re smarter than that. The news item went on to say:
Di Rita did not identify the detainee or release his exact words.
Another senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the detainee “indicated, when asked about the desecration, that he was not knowledgeable of anything.”
Well said Rick. Notice how Amnesty International is riding the fake story for all it is worth, putting out Gulag charges, Torture, and now War crimes against the Bush Administration. No need for retractions nor corrected or retracted accusations. Again, well said.
They won’t fall for that. Newsweek reporters sometimes have rough up their own anonymous sources for days to get the right answer.
The new anonymous-source-policy of the MSM:
1) Preferably only use sources who agree with us.
2) If a source agrees with the administration, make him anonymous and require a second opinion.
3) If that fails, try a third.
4) If the third also agrees with the administration, beating may be necessary
5) As a last resort, see (1)
Swopa:
These words are from the captured Al Queda manuel.http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/manuelpart1-2.
“Islamic governments have never been and never will be established thru peacefull solutions and cooperative councils, they are established as they have always been by pen and gun, by word and bullits, by toungue and teeth……spreading rumours and writing statements that instigate the people against the enemy……(Instructions for when you are in jail or on trial)…At the beginning of trial, once more brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on the brother, complain(to the court) of mistreatment while in prison.
They are trained to spread rumours and to claim torture and mistreatment. This is SOP. And it is a smart technique because they now the left will ignore that they are fascists, who blow up century old statues of other faiths, that they ban any other religion except Islam, that they torture, kidnap, and behead non-combatants, that they defile there own holy places by shooting from them, that they use ambulances to hide there murderers so that governmnets have to check ambulances and slow down injured people going to hospital. They issue fatwahs calling for the murder of authors of other countries who print things they don’t approve of. They murder film directors.Swopa concentrates on rumours about the Koran and ignores the most obvious.I do not advocate the mishandling of the Koran and our guards are trained not to do it. But Swopa would prefer to believe proven fascists because of some pathological self loathing.I am sure he would have bought the lies of the Nuremburg prisoners too.
Swopa:
When did you stop beating your wife?
You know maybe we should put you in charge of these guys. If they go out and kill a bunch of folks I am sure you would be a man and step forward and say, “It was my idea to turn them loose on the world so I think it is only fair that I should be responsible for their actions once they are out there”.
No doubt this is what you would say. Right??
Give Newsweek a country with a real ‘gulag’ (China’s lao gai) and we get a glowing cover story featuring a fashion model, entitled “China’s Century.”
Talk about a world turned upside down.
And like the ‘free press,’ the institutions set up to expand and protect global justice and peace — the UNHRC, Human Rights Watch, AI, the UN, etc. — have been hopelessly subverted and politicized by the very people they were set up to monitor.
There’s a reason HRW is headquartered in NYC, and it ain’t ’cause the rent’s cheap.
Swopa,
They didn’t have to beat him – there are far more subtle and torturous ways to extract recantations from the defenseless.
They probably had one of the Ring Babes from FightNight at the nearest Native American Gaming Establishment prance around the guy while scantily clad, spike heeled, sporting a wide and pearly white infidel grin, and holding an Israeli flag abover her head.
I can see the poor, helpless, former detainee now – writhing, sweating bullets, begging for mercy…
the horror… the horror…
Swopa does not realise that those of his stamp are responsible for brutality,because their “enlightened” opinion that brutality towards prisoners always takes place makes it more likely.If you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t,what is to restrain you?
The idiot left has altered the moral climate wherein these things take place making it even more difficult to identify real abuses when they occur.
Good work Batboy!
This news item came from Reuters, and is a fairly simple, straightforward account of a Pentagon briefing.
Q: Why couldn’t Pajamas Media have broken this story? DO you have a blogger in Arlington VA who could get a press pass and attend the briefing?
Better still, do you have a military blogger with enough pull or juice to contact Pentagon Spokesman Di Rita directly and get a statement before Reuters etc can report on it?
Hmmm.
Howard Kurtz keeps on getting titled a “media critic”. Who does he actually criticise other than blogs, conservatives, republicans, non-msm news sources and anybody who isn’t a liberal and isn’t handing him a paycheck?
Seems awfully conditional this “criticism”.