White House Plays Down New Quran Reports

[ronnykmarshall]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050604/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_quran_2

CRAWFORD, Texas - A Pentagon report detailing incidents in which U.S. guards at Guantanamo Bay prison desecrated the Quran is creating another public relations challenge for President Bush.

Gee what a suprise!

[Ravenseye]

1. Does the White House ever strike people as like Saddam Hussein?

Not the real one...the South Park one...

Hey Guy! Take a load off! Missles? Hey, what's that over there? Relax! Take a load off!

[edhopper]

2. How big is the foot

in McClellan's mouth.

[daleo]

3. They didn't flush a Quran down a toilet.

They just "inadvertently sprayed it with urine" (among other things) according to a report in my local paper.

"We were just doing some routine urine spraying and this Quran happened to get in the way. No biggie", said a White House source.

[kliljedahl]

7. "a White House source."

Wouldn't be Wegman (Pudgy) Waterhouse would it?


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[jpak]

8. When I heard that on NPR this AM - I busted up

How stupid does ChimpCo think we and the rest of the world are???

Murder and torture in Abu Graib.

Murder and torture at Bagram.

Extraordinary Renditions to Uzbekistan (where they boils them terrorisms to deff like crawdads).

And they don't flush the Koran down the crapper at Gitmo???

(no dey sorta tinkle on it accudental-like thu da air vents - yup yup yup).

What Horseshit...

[Supersedeas]

20. NPR is just as laughable IMHO

[2Design]

4. yes - the detainees were the ones who did it - now I wonder who

told them to do that - isolated incidents - yes LOL - WMD are isolated incidents and * has most of them

[leftchick]

5. Go Joe Lockhart!

why don't we hear more from him? Damn, he is good!

~snip~

Joe Lockhart, former press secretary for President Clinton, said that when a news organization — such as Newsweek — makes a factual mistake, White House officials are tempted to try to discredit the entire story.

"I think on this issue, they fell into a trap," Lockhart said. "They saw a way to push back on a damaging story by making it look like it was just out-of-control journalists, and now they've had to admit that it has happened."

"While the news organization got an example wrong, they got the practice right," he said. "I think certainly the public is within their right, in this case, to believe they were misled."

[Cooley Hurd]

10. Joe Lockhart was an excellent Kerry mouthpiece, but, sadly...

...you're right - we hear little from him now.:(

[daleo]

6. This bit seems pretty unlikely to me

"White House officials noted that the investigation last month, by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center, also found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans.

"These included using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran," Hood's report said. It offered no possible explanation for the detainees' actions."

Maybe the bit about the pillow I can believe, but the other parts seem very unlikely to have been done by prisoners themselves.

And how about this gem of an example of using passive language: "a guard's urine had splashed on a detainee and his Quran". In normal English this is called "pissing on someone".

[RedSock]

9. The Times explains piss

It happened like this:

"It was said to have occurred when a guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into a detainee's cell."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/04/politics/04koran.html

Oh, that crazy Cuban wind, blowing piss all over the place.

Be smart; wear your galoshes.

[daleo]

16. I guess the central heating got crossed up with the plumbing

A common result of shoddy contracting.:crazy:

[burrowowl]

23. LOL!

Peeing near a vent, maybe they don't have toilets there :shrug:

[Cooley Hurd]

11. Unlikely to me, also - I'll bet it was done at gunpoint to humiliate them.

Why the fuck else would a Muslim desecrate their own Qu'ran?

We have some sick puppies in the ranks of our military intelligence, that's for sure...:grr:

[arikara]

12. Another story says that the "urine came through an air vent"

Ya better watch those air vents folks, you just never know when urine is going to "come through" them...


http://tinyurl.com/bruvl

The morans are trying to make out that pissing on prisoners and their holy books is somehow not as bad as flushing the books in the toilet.

[demgrrrll]

13. I am sure we can all recall the countless times that urine has been

inadvertently sprayed on a book we own. I frequently look around for vents in buildings so I can stay out of the way of the urine sprays that occur with such regularity. Give me a huge break. How stupid do they think we are.

[okieinpain]

29. www.freerepublic.com

[Ksec]

14. public relations problem my ass Mr *

its the torture and humiliation, stupid.

[Ksec]

15. oh btw. This is a softening up period.

Theyll release the truth after the shock subsides. You know they flushed the Koran . Its just the way they operate folks.

[truthisfreedom]

17. "the white house plays down" is an interesting google search.

take a look at the second to the last one, for an indication of how "playing down" things can eventually end.

The White House played down on Monday the idea of granting
legal status to more than 3 million Mexicans living illegally in the ...

White House played down mercury's effects The New York Times reports that "while
working with Environmental Protection Agency officials to write regulations ...

Last night, the White House played down the turf battle.

The White House played down reports Sunday of a change in policy toward China,
saying planned discussions with Beijing were merely an effort to win support ...

Adding insult to injury, the White House played down its agency scientists’
assessment of global warming and added a reference from an oil industry think ...

Threat Advisory security alert nonsense: John Ashcroft - SourceWatch
Mintz and Schmitt report that, on May 27, 2004, "the White House played down the
turf battle.

The Randi Rhodes Show -> Ashcroft Assailed on Terror Warning
Last night, the White House played down the turf battle.
But even before Mr. Powell had a chance to articulate details, the White House
played down the idea, suggesting that the gathering would be a "meeting," not ...

The White House played down on Monday the idea of granting
legal status to more than 3 million Mexicans living illegally in the ...

The White House played down suggestions that a new US dialogue with
Iran could help resolve a growing controversy over Tehran's nuclear ...

The White House played down the loss of 350 tonnes of high explosives in Iraq which ...

Last night, the White House played down the turf battle.

... has produced a torrent of questions in recent days about whether the White
House played down the costs of the conflict until it was underway.

US Checking Alleged Saddam Tape
The White House played down the tape's significance, reports CBS News Senior
White House Correspondent John Roberts. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer ...

The White House played down the significance of the announcement by the UN's
nuclear watchdog that nearly 400 tons of explosives were missing from a ...

The White House played down the significance of the missing weapons, but Democratic
presidential hopeful John Kerry accused President Bush of "incredible ...

The White House played down friction with Jordan, saying it respected the king’s
decision to postpone his visit with President Bush because of questions

The press was duly excited, but in the first day after, the White House played
down the remarks in briefings, and almost acted as if Bush didn’t mean it.

The White House played down the possibility that President Clinton would
reverse previous statements and admit to a sexual relationship with former ...

In a statement today the White House played down the fact that voter turnout in
the Iraqi elections might be on the low side.

[wtmusic]

18. Torture is usually a significant PR challenge

but one that can be overcome by using obtuse grammar, i.e. "the urine splashed" as opposed to "the guard urinated upon the prisoner".

[Jack Rabbit]

19. More in General Discussion

Please click here.

"It is unfortunate that some have chosen to take out of context a few isolated incidents by a few individuals," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement.

My Comment from the linked thread

The context of these incidents is the way the Bush regime has chosen to wage a war on terror.

First of all, the very term war on terror suggests a war designed not to be won. We are not fighting a war against specific terrorists; there can be no rational measure of success. This is a war against a tactic. Instead of resolving to arrest murderers, which would be a practical goal, the regime has promised to wipe out murder, which is not. This allows war to perpetuate, and with any real and imagined emergency powers the chief executive may have to wage war. It is more likely a pretext for tyranny.

Second, the term is dishonest. Invading Iraq had nothing to do with fighting either the tactics of terror or specific terrorists. Saddam had neither a working relationship with terrorists nor any weapons of terror to give or sell. It was colonial piracy, pure and simple. The invasion of Iraq only became a part of the war on terror afterward, when some Islamists chose terror as a tactic to resist the foreign occupation and the colonial rape of their country. The Downing Street document shows that Bush and members of his regime were not concerned about facts, that they were probably aware that facts contradicted their case against Iraq, but that they were determined to make facts and intelligence fit the pre-determined policy of regime change. In other words, they lied and dissembled (that means didn't tell the truth).

Third, we have the Gonzales memos (here in pdf format). These show that from the outset violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment were to be the order of the day. Mr. Gonzales' memoranda is less a legal justification of what the regime is doing by maintaining a network of gulags and of what goes on inside them than an outline of dissembling written in legalese. All one has to do to make it legal is to say the President ordered it, and he is above the law, especially in time of war; this is nonsense. If one assert the right of detainees as prisoners of war, then all one has to do is assert that they are not prisoners of war but something else and that all that is required to call them something else is the President's say so; this is also nonsense and the Third Geneva Convention explicitly says that a battlefield detainee is to be regarded as a prisoner of war until a court of law (not an executive) determines otherwise. Finally, the Gonzales memos define torture in such a way as to say that nothing is torture unless the torturer says its torture; this is clearly nonsense.

So, the context is that a bunch of dissembling, sadistic tyrants bent on world domination are telling us that the situation is not as bad as what some would have us believe, and we are just to take their word for it. We don't need an independent world body looking into the matter, they say, because their word is good enough.

Yeah, right. Just like it was when they said Saddam had a vast biochemical arsenal that should be obvious to anyone who looks and that independent weapons inspectors weren't needed and couldn't prove anything because they were blind anyway. Those were willful lies. Are we supposed to believe them now?

Bush and his neoconservative aide are liars. They are war criminals. They are torturers. It is long past time to start treating them accordingly. If the United States is incapable or unwilling to bring these thugs to justice, then we must urge the United Nations to convene a war crimes tribunal, issue indictments and begin apprehending suspected war criminals.

[thecrow]

22. Well said, Jack Rabbit!

I think your words should be emailed to every MSM outlet and TV station, and Congressperson in this country,

[ckramer]

21. Boosh was not afraid of invading a ME country, but is chickened out

to admit that we have trashed their little bible? How unBrave!

He should have said "So what if I did flush it down the toilet? BRING IT ON!"

[NNN0LHI]

WHouse blames 'few' jailers, media in Koran uproar

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04173392.htm

CRAWFORD, Texas, June 4 (Reuters) - The White House sought on Saturday to minimize damage from new revelations about U.S. personnel mishandling the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison, accusing a few people of violating policy and the media of blowing "isolated incidents" out of proportion.

It was the administration's latest broadside against the press over abuses at Guantanamo. Last month, the White House attacked Newsweek and went so far as to ask the magazine to help repair damage to America's image.

The U.S. military on Friday released details about five cases in which the Islamic holy book was kicked, stepped on and soaked in water.

In one case, a guard's urine splashed onto a detainee and his Koran. Southern Command said a guard urinated near an air vent and "the wind blew his urine through the vent" and onto a detainee and his Koran.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. Oh, right. It's those "few bad apples" again.

The bad apples who accidentally pee on you. Dang, I hate those bad apples.

[MisterP]

26. those few bad apples are in the thousands now

up and down the line of command: all the top and too much of the bottom

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

25. Dupe

[Gman]

27. Nixon called the Watergate burglary a "third rate burglary"

They always trivialize the deadly serious and then attack viciously.

[benburch]

28. When I've been REALLY drunk, I've accidentialy peed on my shoes...

But it wasn't my fault! The urinal kept moving.