pundits who are still giddy from beating the drum claiming that newsweek=hitler, are running around with hardened nipples with tails wagging like eager dogs who have just been asked wannagooutside wannaGOOUTSIDE!!!

but sadly they still havent even begun to explain why the newsweek story of last week is any different than those printed in the new york times, the bbc, the washington post’s,

or this one from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Lawyers allege abuse of 12 at Guantanamo
by Frank Davies
Jan. 20, 2005

Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – Twelve Kuwaitis held for about three years at the detention center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been physically and psychologically abused, their attorneys said yesterday after their first visit with the detainees.

The men were “all very thin, almost emaciated,” and most were being held in isolation, with 45 minutes of exercise a week, only the Koran to read, and no medical treatment, said Tom Wilner, who visited his clients last week.

Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey, who interviewed clients late last month. Others said that pills were hidden in their food and that people came to their cells claiming to be their attorneys, to gain information.

“All have been physically abused, and, however you define the term, the treatment of these men crossed the line,” Wilner said. “There was torture, make no mistake about it.”

nor do they have an answer for the General (the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) who said last week that the the senior commander of Afghanistan last week said that the rioting there had nothing to do with newsweek.

maybe they secretly think that if they keep on beating the drum we’ll get to the real issue: we have no business in iraq and we have less business torturing people in cuba.

since we all know the way to the red states is to run around saying Liberal Media Hurt Hulk

hey wait, what’s this, another report from the past of koran flushing?

The Independent (UK) 8/5/04

A 115-page dossier, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, produced by the lawyers of three of the recently released British men, said inmates had been shackled, punched, kicked, hooded, and deprived of sleep. Amnesty International condemned the treatment, which drew comparisons with Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison where inmates were ritually humiliated. British Government agencies were accused of complicity.

In the report, released in New York, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul – the so-called Tipton Three – said one inmate was threatened after being shown a video in which hooded inmates were forced to sodomise each other. Guards allegedly threw prisoners’ Korans into toilets, while others were injected with drugs, it was claimed.

who i want to find are those who will talk when threatened with a soon-to-be-flushed koran, it reminds me of the PETA girls who get naked on the Howard Stern show when he threatens to kill a cockroach.

as if there wasnt enough hysteria, msnbc blogger keith olberman calls the white house’s actions regarding the newsweek story “treasonous“. are there sweeps weeks on the blogosphere? (maybe that explains the bikini girls on the busblog)

meanwhile Drudge of all people reprints the back n forth today at the white house press briefing where Scott McClellan was asked by a reporter if he thought it was appropriate for the White House to tell a US magazine what to print. without his boy jeff gannon as backup, mcclellan loses.

sk smith + leah + blogebrity + heroine girl

to detract my alleged bad acts on my little sister.

the relationship wasnt very far removed from the simpsons, which yes, america, was good on sunday

flanders renting a room in his house to two cam girls. classic.

anyway, perhaps newsweek was an only child because if i had been accused for reporting that us interrogators and miltary are desecrating the koran in a way to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, id be saying, but she did it first.

and i’d point with my finger. several times.

if i was lucky enough to have access to the internet i would post pictures of miss universe contestants next to my examples.

Washington Post, 3/26/03

Some of the men released today were close-shaven, but most kept their beards. The men who wore their beards in the long fashion of the Taliban complained most about poor treatment at the hands of Americans and insults against Islam.

Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet.

“It was a very bad situation for us,” said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. “We cried so much and shouted, ‘Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.'”

Merza Khan, who had been captured in northern Afghanistan while fighting for the Taliban, said Americans in Kandahar tied him up and alternately forced him to lie face down on the ground, then squat with his hands on his head for hours. He also said he saw American soldiers throw the Koran on the ground and sit on it while in Kandahar.

BBC, 5/2/05

The brothers said the Americans shaved the inmates’ beards and screamed and swore during the frequent interrogations.

“We were not subjected to any physical torture as such but even shaving our beards and taking off our clothes is a form of cruelty,” said Abdul Rahim.

Abdul Rahim, with his son, says he kept his sanity through poetry

He said a number of Arab prisoners had still not spoken to their investigators after three years to protest at the desecration of the Koran by guards.

New York Times 5/1/05

A high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information, senior military and Pentagon officials say.

The report on the investigation, which is still a few weeks from being completed and released, will deal with accounts by agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who complained after witnessing detainees subjected to several forms of harsh treatment.

The F.B.I. agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners’ genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.

[…]

The new report by General Schmidt also comes as an increasing number of Guantánamo prisoners who have been released are providing accounts of their treatment for the first time to journalists and supportive American lawyers.

One recently released detainee, interviewed by telephone from Kuwait, said he had witnessed or learned from fellow inmates about many of the abusive practices that have been described in previous reports by nongovernmental groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But that detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, also said in a series of interviews with The New York Times that detainees sometimes prevailed over the authorities after protesting conditions with campwide hunger strikes.

Mr. al-Mutairi said there were three major hunger strikes in his more than three years of imprisonment at Guantánamo. He said that after one of them, a protest of guards’ handling of copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stepped on, a senior officer delivered an apology over the camp’s loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer’s apology.

A former interrogator at Guantánamo, 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.

if i was newsweek, and the state department wanted to blame me for causing riots in afghanistan.

first i’d say but i thought General Myers said that wasnt the case

But only a few days earlier, in a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that the senior commander in Afghanistan believed the protests had stemmed from that country’s reconciliation process.

“He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine,” General Myers said. – NYT 5/17/05

and then i’d say how is what we wrote any different than what they wrote?

heres the entirety of what newsweek wrote in their 5/9/05 issue:

Gitmo: SouthCom Showdown

May 9 issue – Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK:

interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee’s hair and sat on the detainee’s lap.

(New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee’s face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

These findings, expected in an upcoming report by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, could put former Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in the hot seat. Two months ago a more senior general, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, was placed in charge of the SouthCom probe, in part, so Miller could be questioned.

The FBI e-mails indicate that FBI agents quarreled repeatedly with military commanders, including Miller and his predecessor, retired Gen. Michael Dunleavy, over the military’s more aggressive techniques. “Both agreed the bureau has their way of doing business and DOD has their marching orders from the SecDef,” one e-mail stated, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Sources familiar with the SouthCom probe say investigators didn’t find that Miller authorized abusive treatment.

But given the complaints that were being raised, sources say, the report will provoke questions about whether Miller should have known what was happening—and acted to try to prevent it. An Army spokesman declined to comment.

the mistake that newsweek made and continues to make is by giving in after rightfully denying any wrongdoing.

have they learned nothing from big brother bush?

deny everything is so 2005 that if you don’t call bullshit and whine what about the bbc, nyt and wapo, you’ll get accused of being unpatriotic by the instapundit on msnbc.com

and once again i find myself agreeing with the good professor.

bad newsweek.

sploid + welch + san diego

but it is a new photo essay

im not going to send out any resumes until its far too late, im not going to work on anything creative until i have no time to, im not going to clean my ridiculously dirty apartment, im not going to work out, im not going to catch up on all the crap my thousand gig tivo keeps suggesting that my black ass watch, im not going to read the bible and write about it in a new secret bible blog,

im not going to go to the movies every day and write about it in a new blog called moviesprettymuchsuck.com, im not going to meet a new girl every day and kiss three a week, im not going to do any new photo essays, im not going to hang out with tsar as they tour around the west, im not going to write something long and interesting for the la weekly, im not going to hitchhike across the country while i sublease my bachelor pads

im not going to organize my computer, my mp3s, my photos, or this website

im not going to cover e3, im not going to intern at the LA Times and get a gig there blogging now that theyve begun to make their online arm better, im not going to write all the cool kids who i love on buzznet, im not going to network throughout the blogosphere so that i can quit hoverring around 2k hits and quadruple that shit like so many others have already done,

and for damn sure im not going to get high every day and write the novel thats in me

im not going to hang out at dodger stadium and sell $2 bags of peanuts for $5

im not going to paint my bedroom, my bathroom, my laundry room, or my tub like ive always promised

im not going to fix the broken window pane behind my tv, im not going to sell 90 per cent of the shit in my house on ebay which is definately shit, im not going to donate anything to the poor even though i now know how sorta scary it is not to know where your next paycheck is coming from

im not going to jog around my neighborhood every afternoon at noon and lose this buddah belly when nobody is out except for the mailman and the dogs and the old ladies and their umbrellas

im not gonna get my bike fixed, or go to the doctor before my medical insurance expires at the end of the month, or take my dentist up on his generous offer, or take anyone up on their generous offers

im not going to watch every baseball game that comes over the satelite, im not going to call my buddy stu from the stern show, im not going to properly thank all my friends from my old department for coming to my farewell party at welch’s, and lord knows im not going to send a card to matt and em for throwing the damn thing which was lovely and wonderful

im not going to write about how the baking powder and water paste solution really did knock down the itching and bloating of my crazy bee sting, im not going to find osama, and im certainly not going to apologize or retract the information that ive received that our gitmo interrogators are doing far more fucked up shit than flushing copies of religious texts down toilets in order to psychologically brutalize illegally incarcerated human beings who at this point couldnt give a shit what you jammed down the head.

im not going to hang out with my xgirlfriend as she prepares to leave town for the peace corps, im not going to hang out with my other xgirlfriend as she does whatever it is that she does two bus lines away from me, im not going to interview the 92 year old lady who lives in a shoe who yesterday told me that if she was younger id be in trouble and then she cackled and hung up

im not going to buy a guitar and learn how to play some chords other than a, c and that other one i know

im not going to go to venice beach and sit on a towel and sell How To Blog to the tourists, im not going to join the mexican ice cup union and scrape ice into cups and squirt flavor on it for the kids, im not going to try out for the dodgers, im not going to convince michael jackson that he needs to hire him to say WTF every time he shuts the door behind him and spends the night with a little boy

im not going to grow a beard until i find work, im not going to think about grad schools, im not going to tell google that i love them but they HAVE to get a delete button on their gmail shit or im… fuck i dont know but it will involve a mean email.

im not going to be a ticket taker at manns chinese, im not going to dress up as bart simpson and pose next to tourists for tips, im not going to audtion to be a dj at my local strip club which has always been my secret ambition because candy is on the the side stage candy everyone

im not going to blog more, im not going to spell check more, im not going to fix my links, im not going to do shit other than waste time get fat get older and ruin this great opportunity i have in front of me, im going to sit in one of my many mansions and do the same old bullshit that ive done for the last four years: diddley squat in lowercase signifying nothing.

scienceblog + terra + gmask got it wrong, the simpsons were great on sunday