May 17, 2005

More on the Koran-Clogger Affair

It's late, and the great ululation of Newsweak-bashing may have grown dull in your ears. Yes, yes, Newsweak bad, you say, though you are not especially surprised at the way things have turned out.

Still there are two more posts I recommend, especially if you hail from the Bear Flag state or attended college there. The first is Jeff Harrell, again, with a revealing anecdote about what Newsweak's Mark Whitaker isn't doing tonight at Stanford.

The second, longer piece is by State Department mystery blogger New Sisyphus, who has a harrowing story about a murder at UC Berkeley and what makes such an event into a "story". I will let him connect it to the Newsweak matter for you.

Finally, in the extended entry, a note for the illumination of my Chomskyite interlocutor "Actus":

"We have made clear, I think, that there is the utmost respect for religion of the prisoners. In fact, the Army, since early 2003, has had instructions to its personnel about handing of the Koran. The Koran is only to be handled by chaplains and Muslim interpreters. It's, you know, people -- they're supposed to put on gloves before the touch it. They're not supposed to in any way disrespect or desecrate the Koran and there are a very specific set of rules the military has on handling the Koran. "

--US Ambassador Richard Boucher, quoted in the New Sisyphus post linked above. Actus rolls his eyes at my assertion that US troops probably aren't defacing the Koran as a means of interrogating prisoners. Ambassador Boucher, who I submit knows more than either of us about what goes down at Gitmo, suggests otherwise.