Misdirection

This brouhaha over Newsweek's retraction of their brief article is classic misdirection. It is well-established that the story of Guantanamo interrogators flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet (and generally desecrating them) is well-known. It's at least a three year-old story. In fact, it's even MORE well-known in the Muslim world than it is here. Numerous released prisoners have related these allegations. And if they were released, it means the US government had nothing on them, so it means they were not terrorists, despite the racist musings of sites like Little Green Footballs that claim "Well, it's in the Jihadi Handbook to make wild charges against the infidels." I'm not saying the detainees don't have reason to be vengeful, and should be trusted implicitly (although the fact that different detainees make similar charges about different locations without consulting one another is pretty damning). But here's the thing: Newsweek may be among the first, but they are not the only news organization to cite a US source corroborating the charges. The Raw Story found a New York Times article that says:

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans,"

In addition, this interview with former Arabic translator at Guantanamo Erik Saar shows abuse that, while not specifically mentioning the Koran desecration, shows that a central tenet of interrogation was "to create a wedge between the detainee we were speaking with and his faith."

And Juan Cole gets an exclusive from a former military officer, who claims that in interrogation practice sessions, Army officials trashed the Bible in a similar way:

The course I attended . . . [had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI [counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc for those running the camp.

One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around, etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school.

I have no doubt the stories about trashing the Koran are true.

Newsweek had the first high-level source to confirm the story. Then, after it was blamed for causing riots in the Muslim world, he changed his story. I wonder if there was any pressure from the White House for him to do that? So the difference is in the sourcing.  A sourcing, mind you, that changed his story.  To my knowledge the detainees in question never changed theirs.  Who's credibility is higher?

Newsweek went through their normal vetting process, giving the story to a high-level Pentagon official, who let it pass. If it's the case that the White House let the story go to make Newsweek look bad, that's about the slimiest thing I've ever heard (and the dumbest, given the consequences in the Muslim world).  If you apply Occam's razor I think it's clear this was all done after the fact.  After the uptick in violence because of the story the senior official who gave Michael Isikoff the tip was pressured to recant, knowing that (him being the only source) it would force Newsweek to recant, and thereby making Newsweek the story in the US rather than the Koran incident itself.

The M.O. of this White House is plausible deniability, and that's all that's going on here.  It's also to attack the source, to get outraged at the outrage, rather than look at the root cause.  The White House had no interest in suppressing similar stories from the Philadelphia Inquirer and others, because none of them started riots.  Once things got out of control in the Muslim world, it was time to bring the hammer down on the high-level source.  Never mind the fact that the Pentagon vetted the story before it ran and saw no reason to challenge the allegation then.