Newsweek lied, people died

kmccook says:

Afghan Riots Not Tied to Report on Quran Handling
Afghan Riots Not Tied to Report on Quran Handling, General Says.

Washington – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.

kmccook says:

DoD News briefing
It’s so easy to fall for the propoganda without even reading the Department of Defense briefing.
The White House wants to contreol all news..but it can’t as long as we watch.
GEN. MYERS: It’s the — it’s a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran — and I’ll get to that in just a minute — but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that’s — that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn’t — he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

kmccook says:

White House disingenuous on insults acknowledged
Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before
Washington Post May 18, 2005; A12

James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at the prison who was investigated and cleared of charges of mishandling classified material, has asserted that guards’ mishandling and mistreatment of detainees’ Korans led the prisoners to launch a hunger strike in March 2002. Detainee lawyers, attributing their information to an interrogator, have said the strike ended only when military leaders issued an apology to the detainees over the camp loudspeaker. But they said mishandling of the Koran persisted.

Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo Bay who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees at the military prison, said in interviews and in his book that he never saw a Koran flushed in a toilet but that guards routinely ignored prisoners’ sensitivities by tossing it on the ground while searching their cells.

And numerous detainees, whose stories are uncorroborated, have said to various media outlets that at detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, the Koran was stepped on, tossed on the floor and placed in latrines.

kmccook says:

military cover-up of death of Pat Tillman
The Tillman Scandal: ‘Newsweek’ Error Bad, Pentagon Lying OK?
Newsweek made a bad mistake in its recent report on Koran abuse at Guantanamo. But it was a mistake, not outright lying. Yet the same critics who blasted the magazine — and the media in general — are not demanding that same contrition or penalties for anyone in the military.