I wonder how many times this AP propaganda piece (U.S. Confirms Gitmo Soldier Kicked Quran) had to go through the typical editorial make-the-US-look-bad filtering process before they settled on the layout... and the headline. Seventeen paragraphs dedicated to slamming the U.S. guards (military, contractor, and interrogator) at Gitmo for five confirmed incidents of mishandling a book. Yet, only 2 paragraphs — buried near the bottom — reluctantly included about how detainees defiled their own Quran.
According to the Pentagon's report:
We found nine incidents (seven guard, two interrogator) alleging, intentional or unintentional mishandling of a Koran, but only five could be confirmed.
Remember that... only five confirmed incidents of U.S. personnel mishandling the Quran. But wait, it gets better:
We found 15 incidents where detainees mishandled Korans.
Get that? Three times as many incidents of detainees abusing their own Quran. But, no, the author conveniently shuffles that tidbit in near the end of the [another?] AP hit-piece. A lame, obvious tactic allowing the AP to claim it reported the facts and to hide under a false "objectivity" umbrella.
What's with all this ado over a book, anyway? And this book, even? Given the chance, those misnomered "detainees" (properly named "enemy combatants" — not soldiers) would have one of their precious books in their left hand as they sawed off the head of another infidel American with their right. Get off the apology train, will ya?
La Shawn Barber (site) is fed up with it all, in If I See One More Koran “Mishandling” Story…:
…I just might buy a few to kick around myself. The madness has gone far enough. The West is too darn “civilized” for its own good. We’re teetering on the edge, ready to take a suicidal leap just to show the world how “compassionate” and “tolerant” we are.
This, combined with a trackback to her site:
And they [the Left-media] simply laugh at Jesus in urine….
...pretty much sums up the MSM's filter on desecration of religious icons, eh?
Mike, from Mike's Noise also has a good angle on the media for this, and other, lefty-behavior. His post, Report shows that detainees are the main source of Gitmo Koran abuse gives us yet another example of how the MSM pulls no punches in trying to make the U.S. look like the bad guys:
What both saddens and angers us on the Right is that Democrats seem to be completely ambivalent about the fact that Saddam gouged out eyeballs, cut off tongues, ears, and fingers, broke bones, raped, sodomized, electrocuted, flagellated, and impaled his own citizens. When seven former Iraqi prisoners came to the US for free medical treatment to repair the wounds that they received in Saddam's real torture chambers, the Left yawned. The major press outlets gave the story only pitiful line-item coverage. And when those private torture videos owned by Saddam Hussein were offered to the press, they refused to air them or print videocaps. The mainstream press remains firmly committed to spiking this story.
But let a US soldier (gasp!) step on a book (horrors!) and Democrats come completely unhinged and the mainstream press goes nuts.
For more on this, go read Michelle Malkin's Gitmo Detainees Desecrate Quran.
