Rice urges calm, calls Koran desecration abhorrent

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by grant

However, you do end up pissing off your plumber and laundry guy.

Well, at least wealthier.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It's no different at all. Both actions are harmless.

To you a Koran down the toilet or women's menstrual blood on a face is harmless. Tell that to the many people who died in Afghanistan riots because of harmless actions. Firing all those policemen and soldiers in Iraq was also harmless. Clearly violating the teachings of Sze Tzu (500 BC) are just harmless actions.

So how do you explain the nine dead American soldiers and Marine today because Bremmer did something harmless? The Iraqi insurgency, made possible by and then created by American actions, was just something harmless by Bremmer? Clearly it was just as harmless to 'burn the village to save it'. Clearly those lines not to be crossed, as taught by history, are only arbitrary. We can move them at any time because we are righteous Christian Americans?

It is harmless to change our standards of conduct when convenient. Tell that to today's nine dead American soldiers and Marine. Tell it to so many dead Afghanistan civilians. Tell it to the many Americans who will die due to 'no respect' for another people and their culture.

Harmless. What the White House also called it when they changed standards to authorized torture. At what point do we stop moving this line that separates us from Saddam or Hitler?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It shows once again that they will be the enemy regardless. There will always be something about the US to rally the forces of Islam around because they need that.
The communists and every tin horned dictator have always needed an enemy to focus the attention of their minions away from their own problems and toward the group good, fighting fill in blank.
Christians seem to settle for "evil" or "the devil" when there's no enemy more apparent.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It shows once again that they will be the enemy regardless. There will always be something about the US to rally the forces of Islam around because they need that.
The communists and every tin horned dictator have always needed an enemy to focus the attention of their minions away from their own problems and toward the group good, fighting fill in blank.
Christians seem to settle for "evil" or "the devil" when there's no enemy more apparent.

It shows once again that we will be the enemy regardless. There will always be something about the rest of the world to rally the forces of fearmongering war profiteers around because they need that.
The Neocon pseudo-patriots and every cuckholded administration have always needed an enemy to focus the attention of their minions away from their own problems and toward the group good, fighting fill in blank.
Every religion in the world seem[s] to settle for "evil" or "the devil" when there's no enemy more apparent.

xoB, thank you for letting me use your thoughts as a starting point for my post. With these few edits, I haven't changed the truth of the post at all. Especially the first sentence. It takes two, brotha, it takes two.

Your broad generalizations can be supported by actual incidents. As can my equally broad generalizations. And like all broad generalizations, the broader they are the less precisely they apply. The behavior of the mobs in Afghanistan is criminal. Just that. Well, maybe you can throw in a fig leaf of religious indignation. But if the same behavior was demonstrated by Christians, would you say the same of them? I doubt it.

Islam didn't riot, people did. To tar all of Islam like this based on the actions of a small number of people relative to the the population of believers is misinformed or lazy or deluded and I have never seen evidence of any of those traits in your writing. So must naturally conclude that you've made a mistake, which I wish to correct:

Islam is not the enemy of the US.

Agreed?

[Guyute]

I find it sadly ironic that here are dozens of us chiming in on this "messing with the Koran" and upsetting Muslims, but no-one is the least upset that these fanatics are kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians in Iraq. No Western media source expresses outrage over these heinous, cowardly crimes, which happen almost daily, but when a report surfaces about how America is treating its prisoners, in what appear to be relatively isolated events, the whole world goes absolutely bananas. Crowds gather and cause death and destruction over these desecrations, but the kidnappees are just forgotten about as not worth getting all lathered up about. The usual hypocrisy, I see.

I suspect the number of captives "tortured to death" by Americans pales with the numbers tortured for prolonged periods by Saddam and his henchmen, and the kidnappers that exist today. Hmmm, I would rather have 50 bibles cut up and flushed than to have one nutball cut my head off with a knife...

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Guyute

I find it sadly ironic that here are dozens of us chiming in on this "messing with the Koran" and upsetting Muslims, but no-one is the least upset that these fanatics are kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians in Iraq.

What you find "ironic", I find "untrue". To each his own, I guess.

No Western media source expresses outrage over these heinous, cowardly crimes, which happen almost daily, but when a report surfaces about how America is treating its prisoners, in what appear to be relatively isolated events, the whole world goes absolutely bananas.

Events with photographs are isolated, not events.

As for the higher standard America is held to, would you have it any other way? Would you like it if these stories came out, and people said, "Oh, well, that's America. What do you expect?" Would you prefer for people to ignore it because they have no reasonable expectation that we would take steps to stop it from happening?

I hold my country to a higher standard than others. As should every citizen of every country.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

I hold my country to a higher standard than others. As should every citizen of every country.

Huzzah!:standing ovation: :raucous unending applause:

[Undertoad]

Tell that to the many people who died in Afghanistan riots because of harmless actions.

Nobody died because a Koran was flushed down a toilet. We don't even know if it really happened. What killed those people was religious extremism.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Tell that to the many people who died in Afghanistan riots because of harmless actions.

Nobody died because a Koran was flushed down a toilet. We don't even know if it really happened. What killed those people was religious extremism.

And so you have avoided the bottom line question. Why do you avoid this question?

Harmless. What the White House also called it when they changed standards to authorized torture. At what point do we stop moving this line that separates us from Saddam or Hitler?

Throwing the Koran down a toilet is simply another example of harmless - when only an American perspective matters. After all, they are only gooks. Right? Their perspective is completely irrelevant. Korans down the toilet are harmless. FISHing is acceptable. Hanging people from the ceiling with hands tied behind their backs is harmless. Murdering prisoners and then not even doing an investigation is harmless. Torturing prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghriad is harmless.

At what point do we stop moving this line that separates us from Saddam or Hitler? In Vietnam, we never stopped moving that line to justify a massacre of hundreds in My Lai. So acceptable that soldiers who reported the massacre were investigated. Now that you regard a Koran in the toilet as harmless. Now that you regard menstrual blood on the face as harmless. At what point, UT, do you think we should stop moving this line?

The ends justify the means? Good Morning Vietnam ... all over again.

[Undertoad]

One can always depend on Christopher Hitchens to explain things

For whatever it's worth, I know and admire both John Barry and Michael Isikoff, and I can quite imagine that—based on what they had already learned about the gruesome and illegal goings-on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib—they found it more than plausible that the toilet incident, or something like it, had actually occurred. A second allegation, that a whole pile of Qurans had been stepped upon at Guantanamo, is equally credible. But mere objectivity requires us to note that this is partly because every prisoner is given a Quran, and that thus there are a lot of them lying around, and that none of this "scandal" would ever have occurred if the prison authorities were not at least attempting to respect Islamic codes. Do Christian and Jewish prisoners in Muslim states receive Bibles and Talmuds? Do secular detainees in Pakistan petition with success to be given Thomas Paine's Age of Reason? Isikoff told me recently that he'd been out to see the trial of a madrasah student in Virginia who was accused of terrorist recruitment and propaganda, and he had been somewhat shocked at the virulence of the anti-Jewish teachings on offer at that school. The school is almost certainly paid for by Saudi money. A Wahhabist version of the Quran, containing distortions of the original and calling for war against "unbelievers" of all sorts, is now handed out by imams in our very own prison system! Do we demand in return that Saudi Arabia allow churches and synagogues and free-thought centers on soil where the smallest heresy is punishable by death? No, we do not. Instead, we saturate ourselves in masochism and invent the silly, shallow term "Quran abuse."

This Western cringe, in the face of the intolerance of others, is best corrected by serious Muslims. You idiots, said the elected president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (who is, of course, the real target of the fanatical rioters): You burned down the library in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which contained, among other treasures, 200 Qurans.

[Undertoad]

Mark Steyn points out who really started it and why:

But Imran was the guy who, in a ferocious speech broadcast on Pakistani TV, brought it to the attention of his fellow Muslims, many of whom promptly rioted, with the result that 17 people are dead.
...
...these riots wouldn't have happened if Imran Khan hadn't provided the short fuse between Newsweek's match and those explosive mobs. Imran is a highly Westernized, wealthy Pakistani [cricket player] who found great fame and fortune in England. He palled around with the Rolling Stones, dated supermodels and married Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of billionaire businessman Sir James Goldsmith. Jemima was hot but of Jewish background and therefore, like much of Imran's stereotypical playboy lifestyle, not particularly advantageous when he decided to go into Pakistani politics. So, having demonstrated little previous interest in the preoccupations of the Muslim street, Imran then began pandering to it. I doubt whether he personally cared about that Newsweek story one way or the other, but he's an opportunist and that's why he went out of his way to incite his excitable followers.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Mark Steyn points out who really started it and why:[/url]

So UT, you have found another Rush Limbaugh.

these riots wouldn't have happened if Imran Khan hadn't provided the short fuse between Newsweek's match and those explosive mobs.

So why are the people so explosive? Does not matter. They are only gooks. They must be evil.

How many harmless things occurred previously to make those people so explosive? We don't need those details. That people are explosive is enough to say we are right and they are wrong. They are explosive. Therefore they must be religious extremists. But they are only gooks.

UT, you are simply promoting more reasons to move that line closer to Saddam and Hitler. Clearly the US did nothing, did nothing, did noooothing (just as Sgt Schultz says) to make those people angry.

Clearly that Pakistani cricket player was only inciting riots for his own personal benefit. Clearly he is too fat and rich to care about important things - like torture and Korans down the toilet. How convenient, UT, that you tactically approve of torture in Guantanamo. No problem. The line is in the wrong place. We just move it a little ... no problem. Harmless.

We can't be wrong. We are the righteous Americans. It must be those religious extremists causing all problems. Take a look in the mirror. Torture is harmless.

[Undertoad]

The perspective of the enemy is critically important when developing intelligence approaches that are not torture.

If you would like, the American public could have a debate about what constitutes torture and when it should be applied. That would be one way to set this line you speak of. But of all the ways I can imagine to set the line, the actions we're talking about fall on the correct side of it. It's not torture. And prisoners do not have the same rights as the rest of the free world. That's why they're prisoners.

And these prisoners aren't even Iraqi, so now you have mixed your metaphors. If Iraq is Vietnam, Guantanamo is...? Hard to keep it all straight, isn't it?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If you would like, the American public could have a debate about what constitutes torture and when it should be applied. That would be one way to set this line you speak of. But of all the ways I can imagine to set the line, the actions we're talking about fall on the correct side of it. It's not torture. And prisoners do not have the same rights as the rest of the free world. That's why they're prisoners.

UT now declares actions that do not leave permanent organ damage are not torture. Of course that is torture - except to those who think such principles exist only to be circumvented. He says we can debate what requires no debate. The line has long since been defined. Only an extremist supporter would want to debate a well defined truth.

Torture has long since been defined. America is torturing prisoners - and that is called being patriotic? Yes, America simply decided the entire world is wrong and that torture is no longer torture. That was also the attitude of Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and Richard Nixon. Unfortunately many also admire these men of anti-American attitudes.

The definitions of torture need no debate. Torture has long been defined. Torture even resulted in many silly Orange Alerts. Alerts based upon "confessions" of prisoners being tortured. UT would have us believe the current administration - who even lied about the aluminum tubes - is moral? He says the definition of torture can change when necessary. We can move the line whenever it is convenient. This is what Hitler did to take and exercise power - to destroy a democracy. Just another lesson one should have learned from history.

Meanwhile UT also says we don't know if the Koran was violated. Bull. We have all but the 'smoking gun' - and administration supporters so immoral as to justify it.

From the Washington Post of 25 May 2005
Gitmo Guards Accused of Mistreating Koran
Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.

... Red Cross investigators in 2002 and 2003 documented what they considered reliable allegations of Koran mistreatment at the facility, and some detainees have made similar allegations through their attorneys. ...

Following the reports of Koran mistreatment by the Red Cross and others, the Pentagon issued rules in January 2003 governing the handling of the book and forbidding its placement on the floor, near a toilet or in other "dirty/wet areas."

[lookout123]

We have all but the 'smoking gun' - and an administration so immoral as to justify it.

yes. we have all BUT a smoking gun. now, i don't know about you, tw, but i personally believe that we should be careful about rushing forward without a "smoking gun". charging forward without that "smoking gun", might lead to some mistakes. but if you don't feel a "smoking gun" is necessary before making up your mind and taking action, who am i to disagree? i mean, after all, you are the one with the brilliant analytical mind who has been able to consistantly see the truth and point it out to us simpletons.