Newsweek not wrong after all

[Ali]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4608000/4608949.stm

[Funkaloyd]

[After Springfield was nearly destoryed by a meteor]

"Let's go burn down the observatory, so this'll never happen again!"

[EN[i]GMA]

Do you really care?

Honestly, this doesn't bother me one bit. Flush, burn it, defecate on it, I don't really care.

[Documad]

Will the real deal get as much attention as Newsweek's eating shit did? Will the real deal be all over talk radio? Or will they say Newsweek still overstated it so talk radio is still correct?

[yeahwho]

GMA']Do you really care?

Honestly, this doesn't bother me one bit. Flush, burn it, defecate on it, I don't really care.

I do care enough that disrespect of others religious beliefs should not be an activity my goverment tolerates.

I do care enough that this whole Right Wing "Impeach Newsweek" and media witch-hunt should be considered for what it really is, an all out attack on free speech, our first right as citizens.

If these sicko's can thump the Bible and fundamentalist Christian agenda with free will, they should be able to shut the fuck up and let the free world peacefully practice their religion.

After that I don't care......but up to that point I will not tolerate intolerence sponsored by our tax dollars. It's sickening. A slap in the face to all we are taught about what made this country great. These people suck.

[Schmeltz]

Honestly, this doesn't bother me one bit. Flush, burn it, defecate on it, I don't really care.


And you dare to call yourself a libertarian? Appalling.

[EN[i]GMA]

I do care enough that disrespect of others religious beliefs should not be an activity my goverment tolerates.

I do care enough that this whole Right Wing "Impeach Newsweek" and media witch-hunt should be considered for what it really is, an all out attack on free speech, our first right as citizens.

If these sicko's can thump the Bible and fundamentalist Christian agenda with free will, they should be able to shut the fuck up and let the free world peacefully practice their religion.

After that I don't care......but up to that point I will not tolerate intolerence sponsored by our tax dollars. It's sickening. A slap in the face to all we are taught about what made this country great. These people suck.

No, this individual act is not what bothers me.

I don't like the fact the the prison exists (Remember how got it), that we're fighting this war, or that abuses are happening, but quite simply, this is so minor.

Getting riled up over this is missing an oppurunity to get pissed over things.

I'm not angry with the individual soldiers who did this (As long as this is the only they've done), I'm angry with the government that forced them to do it.

If that person bought the book, it's hers or his to do with whatever he or she wants.

If I buy a book, can I kick it? Why then, can these soldiers not buy a book and kick it? Or even flush it down a toilet?

As long as it's their pay, and they weren't ordered to do it, this is nothing to get angry over.

I just cannot make myself feel outrage for something so petty and stupid. And yes, the Muslims are petty and stupid by proxy.

[EN[i]GMA]

And you dare to call yourself a libertarian? Appalling.

I wasn't aware that libertarians were extradordinarily concerned about the kicking of books.

[yeahwho]

How do you feel about folks disrepecting your family and your belief system. Just as things are today wandering around the Mall and looking at chicks at the beach....it would anger me....perhaps not you. Anger me enough to tell whomever was using their free will to front on me to fuck off, using my free will and free speech in return.

Now let's say your imprisoned against your will, not afforded legal counsel, then just to make the days drag by your family and belief system are attacked. I wish I could suspend my reality to somebody just kicking a book, but really it's about a little more than that. It's called the human condition, as much as I have felt at times I could rise above it all, it usually bites me on the ass.

Highly illogical is what Mr. Spock would say, yet Spock would recognize the human condition no matter how illogical it is.

[EN[i]GMA]

They should be given fair trials.

End of story.

[Ace42]

GMA']
As long as it's their pay, and they weren't ordered to do it, this is nothing to get angry over.

And if they had a picture of your mother or sister that they had developed from the negative with their own money, you'd have no problem with them covering it in their jar-head semen, while talking at length about how much they'd like fist her, because "hell, they paid for it" ?

[EN[i]GMA]

And if they had a picture of your mother or sister that they had developed from the negative with their own money, you'd have no problem with them covering it in their jar-head semen, while talking at length about how much they'd like fist her, because "hell, they paid for it" ?

No, I would probably fly to Afghanistan, riot and kill 17 people if such a thing happend.

[Ace42]

GMA']No, I would probably fly to Afghanistan, riot and kill 17 people if such a thing happend.

Knowing your sister, that is understandable...

Assuming you have a sister...

[Schmeltz]

I wasn't aware that libertarians were extradordinarily concerned about the kicking of books.


How extraordinarily superficial. Is the ability to totally miss the point inherent to all libertarians, or is it a special province of your own?

[EN[i]GMA]

How extraordinarily superficial. Is the ability to totally miss the point inherent to all libertarians, or is it a special province of your own?

I was only 'missing the point' because I find the point to be trivial and superficial. As I've stated, there are injustices far greater than the kicking of books on prisons, to be riled up about.

The existence of these prisons being on such point.

[yeahwho]

GMA']I was only 'missing the point' because I find the point to be trivial and superficial. As I've stated, there are injustices far greater than the kicking of books on prisons, to be riled up about.

The existence of these prisons being on such point.

Kicking a book. This catalyst seems to to be bringing forth the proper reaction needed to draw attention to what exactly is going on here....there's a man with a gun over there...telling me...I've go to bewa...oh nevermind.

[ScarySquirrel]

I never though Newsweek was wrong in the first place. From what I understood of the situation, they got a quote from somewhere, ran the story past a few people who didn't object to what they read, and then printed the story. After the story came out, then the stink starts. The Pentagon says, "This never happened, I don't know where you're getting that information from," and all that other jazz. It only bothers 'em when their own shit comes back to bite them in the ass.

Newsweek is awesome, y'all. I don't dig on this when everyone was so quickly to blame a newsrag for publishing just what they were told. Just because something's written down somewhere doesn't make it the absolute truth and people need to realize that. Not to mention it's a news magazine. Definitely not the epitome of the best in news. Whatever though. Freak out about it.

[Ali]

US Southern Command Press Release (http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/04_06_05_gitmo.pdf)

So, now does Newsweek retract their retraction?

[yeahwho]

US Southern Command Press Release (http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/04_06_05_gitmo.pdf)

So, now does Newsweek retract their retraction?

By Impeachment.

[Ali]

George W. Bush has renewed his subscription to Newsweek magazine after it's Quran desecration story was confirmed by the Pentagon. Newsweek is planning on reprinting the story and putting a retraction of the retraction on the front cover of it's next issue.

"Boy am I sorry." Said the President at a White House press conference. "You fella's at Newsweek deserve an apology from me and a whole lot of other people who made a big ruckus over that Quran story. Newsweek was right and we were wrong. I'm sorry I told the world you guys are just a bunch of knee jerk liberal thugs out to get me. I'm sorry I threatened to close you down and throw you all in jail for not towing the party line. I'm sorry I had the FBI, CIA and NSA look for dirt to black mail you with. I promise to never say anything bad about the left wing media again."

"America needs a strong and independent media to counter the power of the government." Said White House Spokesman Ben Lion. "The press plays an important role in our democracy and the President knows it. He is committed to press freedom and has decided to read one newspaper a month to properly weigh the publics views on his polices."

"It's true." Said Newsweek editor in chief Mark Whitaker. "A subscription to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been renewed. I can't tell you if its for the guard shack at the front gate or for the President, but the White House is getting an issue. We are glad that people in power value our service and we hope that Newsweek can continue to bring a little ray of truth to an otherwise dark and hostile place."

The retraction of the retraction story will feature President Bush apologizing to the entire Newsweek staff and a long interview with the resident as he explains who he was caught up in the moment by the story and just didn't want to believe that US Troops could do such a thing. "Killing Iraqi's is one thing, but desecration of the Quran, that's going too far." Said Mr. Bush during the interview. If only it were true (http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/?itemid=1015&catid=8)


Meanwhile, in the real world A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not address the confirmed reports of abuse of the Quran, but he did say that command policy calls for “serious, respectful and appropriate” handling of the holy book.

If you want to ensure that the media doesn’t cover an important political story, send out a press release on a Friday, preferably at the end of the day. By the time reporters return on Monday, the story will be old news and will either be buried deep within a newspaper or not covered at all.

That’s what the Pentagon brass is praying for.

At the end of the day Friday, the Pentagon confirmed a pattern of widespread abuse of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, by military personnel dating back two and a half years. Releasing the report when most beat reporters have left for the weekend was a calculated move by White House and Pentagon spin doctors to control media coverage of the explosive report.

Where’s the outrage?

Last month, Bush and his cronies publicly stated that a 10 sentence item in Newsweek detailing that a prison guard flushed a Quran down a toilet sparked an uprising in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia that led to more than a dozen deaths, was flat out wrong. Bush’s mouthpiece, Scott McClellan, hammered away during his daily White House briefings, calling into question the veracity of the story, until Newsweek caved and retracted the item. The magazine’s editor claimed the source who tipped the publication to the news recanted.

But even though more evidence turned up of defacing the Quran, White House and Pentagon senior officials issued warnings to curious reporters who dared to follow up on the Newsweek story. A frightened press corps cowered and the story died.

Then Bush took a trip to Greece May 24 to talk about Social Security and offered up this doozy that explained why he says what he says, damn the facts.

“See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," Bush said.

Fast forward to the real truth. Friday, June 03, 4:40 p.m. The Pentagon identified more than a half-dozen cases where guards at Guantanamo Bay defaced the Quran, including scribbling obscenities inside one detainee’s holy book, urinating on another, kicking one and tossing water balloons in the direction of others to cite just a few examples.

To understand why defacing the Quran is such a serious matter it’s important to know that for Muslims the Quran is considered to be the literal word of God.

"Muslims believe the entire Quran is the word of God verbatim as dictated by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad," said Jamal Badawi, Islamic scholar at St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a June 2 interview with Knight Ridder News Service. "Muslims believe the Quran has been preserved exactly as it was given to the prophet, so that gives it special status."

Not one senior official in the Bush administration has ever lost his or her job or been held responsible for the widespread mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as well as the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where detainees were beaten, stripped and led around on leashes. Instead, what the public is being fed is a line of BS that the ill-treatment of prisoners is an isolated case involving just a handful of soldiers. Sadly, a majority of Americans are eating that up.

The Bush administration is putting innocent American lives, here and on the frontline of the war in Iraq, in harms way for its constant refusal to hold people like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his most senior staff accountable for allowing the total breakdown of military prison operations at Guantanamo and in Iraq.

And let’s not forget that in late 2002 Rumsfeld disregarded the advice of his military commanders and ordered military officials to rewrite all of their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence and speedier deployment during the buildup to the war in Iraq. That war plan, which Rumsfeld helped shape, has failed and has led to deep divisions between military commanders and the defense secretary, according to several published news reports.

Despite Rumsfeld’s recent denials that he did not override requests by military brass to deploy more ground troops in Iraq, he told the Times last year that the cornerstone of the war plan against Iraq was to use fewer ground troops, a move that caused concern among seasoned military officers who said that in order to assure a victory in Iraq there would have to be 200,000 more ground troops deployed than what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had recommended to President Bush, the New York Times reported in its Oct. 13, 2002 edition.

These officers said they viewed Rumsfeld's approach as injecting too much risk into war planning and have said it could result in U.S. casualties that might be prevented by amassing larger forces. And so it has.

This latest news about abuse at Guantanamo Bay is just another example in the never ending saga of mistreatment of prisoners that has been reported by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Red Cross. Which begs another question: when is someone going to toss Rumsfeld into a cage? Jason Leopold (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/1235/1/32/)

[Ali]

BRUSSELS, June 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday played down the idea of closing the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, saying such a move would raise questions about what would happen to the prisoners.

"A whole lot of questions come to mind. If you closed it, where would you go," he told a news conference at NATO headquarters.

Amid mounting complaints and calls for the facility to be shut down, including a broadside from former president and human rights champion Jimmy Carter, President George W. Bush on Wednesday left open the door to its eventual closing.

"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America. What we don't want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us," Bush said in an interview with Fox News Channel when asked whether it should be shut down.

Rumsfeld, asked about Bush's remarks, did not contradict his boss, but said he understood that what "the president said is that we're always looking at ways to improve our operations."

The Pentagon earlier this week ruled out any prospect of shutting down the Cuba-based detention center and Rumsfeld on a stop in Norway on Wednesday reinforced that line.

"I know of no one in the U.S. government, in the executive branch, that is considering closing Guantanamo," he told reporters, within hours of Bush's comments being broadcast in the Fox News interview.

During the NATO news conference, Rumsfeld said Washington's goal has been to ensure that people involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people or who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere be kept off the street "so they don't kill more people."

Aiming to prevent future attacks, the suspects have been interviewed, in some cases providing intelligence that saved lives, he said.

In all, 70,000 to 80,000 people have been detained and the majority have been released, Rumsfeld said.

The Pentagon has turned over suspects to their countries of origin "when we have been able to negotiate with the country an agreement that they would handle them in a way that was humane and appropriate," he said.

It would like to release many more to Iraqi and Afghan governments but both lack appropriate prison and criminal justice systems.

The aim is to have these suspects "off the street, but in the hands of the countries of origin for the most part," he added.

Calls for closure of the Guantanamo prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects have risen since Amnesty International set off a furore last month by calling it a "gulag" and comparing it to the brutal Soviet system of forced labor camps in which millions died.

Adding to the drumbeat, the United Nations said on Wednesday that 6,000 of Iraq's 10,000 prisoners were in the hands of the U.S. military and that thousands are detained without due process in apparent violation of international law.
Reuters (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09345571.htm)

Fucking NeoNazis