Koran Abuse at Guantanamo Bay Detailed by Pentagon

From the Associated Press:

U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee’s Koran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim Holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee’s Koran was deliberately kicked and another’s was stepped on.

It would seem that the Newsweek story was correct.

What irks me is the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration. They certainly allowed the guards at Gitmo to desecrate the Koran. It is all about how to flaunt the Geneva Conventions, and use whatever means of torture you can on the prisoners—who the Administration feels has absolutely no civil or criminal rights. The guards were following their orders from higher-ups in the defense, and intelligence agencies, who got their orders from Rumsfeld, Cheney, and ultimately Bush. So it is okay to torture the prisoners. It is okay to desecrate the Koran as a means of breaking down the prisoners will to resist. But when Newsweek broke the story showing the Administration’s transgressions, the Administration goes back to attack a ‘liberal media’ in publishing false stories causing anti-American riots in Afghanistan. A retraction of the story by Newsweek was not enough. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan wanted Newsweek to spread the Bush Administration’s own propaganda about how the U.S. interrogators “treat the Quran with great care and respect.”

So now the real story comes out. The U.S. military have desecrated the Koran. Brig. General Jay Hood, the commander of Guantanamo Bay, issued a report admitting that nine incidents of mishandling the Koran have occurred. Hood then said that his investigation into the matter “revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Koran dating back almost 2 ½ years.” Hood then said that he found 15 incidents of detainees mishandling their own Korans, as if this would make the Administration's own violations acceptable.

Bush and his minion still don’t get it. In war, you can perform the most brutal acts of terror against the enemy soldiers—you have to kill the bad guys before they kill you. However, when you have captured the enemy soldiers, they have become prisoners, which you must treat in accordance to the Geneva Conventions and international law. This also includes interrogations. The moment you step over the line, the moment you start torturing prisoners at Abu Gharib prison, or desecrating the Koran at Gitmo, you lose whatever international credibility you have in the court of world opinion. The Arab people are never going to trust you—whatever you say. In addition, these transgressions become recruiting slogans for more young terrorists to join. The moment you release your captives, they will tell their stories to the press, which provide more credible evidence in the average Arab citizen’s viewpoints. The war in Iraq, and quite possibly the war on terror, is lost. It is lost in the court of world opinion. It has lost the hearts and minds of the Arab and Iraqi people. It is this world opinion, and the Arab opinion, which will allow you to win or lose the war. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration's military aggressions, the continuous lies about why the U.S. went to war, and the violations of prisoner's rights, have destroyed what limited world credibility the Bush Administration may have had for the war in Iraq. Thus, the war has become a lost cause. The only people who still cling to this lost cause are the current occupants of the White House, and their neo-conservative allies, who never really cared about the war on terror in the first place. The neocons strategy has always been to take over Iraq for their oil supplies and as a means of projecting American power in the Middle East from American bases in Iraq.

When will the American people wake up and realize the futility of this war?