Using The Koran To Block Toilets - Confirmed When?

Via Glenn, we learn that Anne Applebaum of the WaPo is telling us that from Guantanamo, there are "(confirmed) reports that prisoners themselves used Korans to block toilets as a form of protest."

Oh, dear - is the Newsweek/WaPo/MSNBC journalistic enterprise back in the toilet again?

Guided by the notion that the only dumb question is the one you don't ask, let me throw this out - when did Ms. Applebaum get that confirmed?  Or did Newsweek confirm one type of unconfirmed report for another?  In his press briefing last May 12 (transcript), Gen. Myers said this:

They have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they can not confirm yet that there was ever the case of the toilet, except for one case, a log entry which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting them in the toilet to stop it up as a protest, but not where the U.S. did it."

Emphasis added.  Now, Ms. Applebaum may have updated her info, or done some fine reportorial work to advance this story by contacting the Pentagon.  Or Google-News may have betrayed me.

But my confidence in the WaPo is not at its peak just now, and since she does not even hint at a source for the news that this report is now confirmed, I would love to see some reassurance on this point.

And that reassurance will not be coming from the May 17 press briefing by Pentagon spokesperson Larry Di Rita, who addressed these very points:

Q  Isn't this commander's inquiry by General Craddock -- I understood it that he was actually looking into these allegations.

MR. DI RITA:  I think he'll make a determination -- and it's not he, it's a colonel at his command.  I think he'll make a determination based on what he finds, whether any of them -- whether -- how much he wants to go out and try and corroborate some of them.  I mean, for example, a detainee who was alleged to have torn pages out of his Koran and shoved it in a toilet, he may want to go out and try to corroborate that.  I mean I don't know to what extent the next steps will involve that kind of thing.

[snip]

Q     Larry, just to be clear, there have been numerous allegations by detainees who have been released --

MR. DI RITA:  Mm-hmm.

; -- by attorneys who have talked to detainees, alleging mistreatment of the Koran, including instances where it was supposedly thrown into a toilet.  Are you saying that none of those allegations were credible, and that none of them have -- have any of them been investigated, and were any substantiated?

MR. DI RITA:  We've found nothing that would substantiate precisely -- anything that you just said about the treatment of a Koran.  We have -- other than what we've seen, that it's possible detainees themselves have done with pages of the Koran -- and I don't want to overstate that either because it's based on log entries that have to be corroborated.

Well, maybe it has been confirmed subsequently.  Maybe.

Comments

[ed]

Hmmm.

Confirmed by Applebaum prior to publishing the story?

Breath, not held.

[The Kid]

Applebaum may have relied on sister publication Newsweek’s Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas for confirmation before publication. The charming and ever gracious Ann Coulter notes that he justified publication of the American-Standard Koran saying "similar reports from released detainees" had already run in the foreign press -- "and in the Arab news agency al-Jazeera."

Coulter’s reaction is a hoot:

Is there an adult on the editorial board of Newsweek? Al-Jazeera also broadcast a TV miniseries last year based on the "Protocols of the Elders Of Zion." (I didn't see it, but I hear James Brolin was great!) Al-Jazeera has run programs on the intriguing question, "Is Zionism worse than Nazism?" (Take a wild guess where the consensus was on this one.) It runs viewer comments about Jews being descended from pigs and apes. How about that for a Newsweek cover story, Evan? You're covered -- al-Jazeera has already run similar reports!

Ironically, among the reasons Newsweek gave for killing Isikoff's Lewinsky bombshell was that Evan Thomas was worried someone might get hurt. It seems that Lewinsky could be heard on tape saying that if the story came out, "I'll (expletive) kill myself."

I was wavering toward regarding Newsweek as acting, in Rove’s words, oppositional until I read Coulter’s account of how that mag had sat on some of Michael Isikoff’s better reporting during the Clinton years. How soon we forget that it was Matt Drudge who blew the lid off what Newsweek was sitting on:

A thoroughly sourced story about the president of the United States having an affair with an intern and then pressuring her to lie about it under oath;
Kathleen Willey's nasty sexual encounter with the president in the Oval Office;

She adds that Isikoff was the first with detailed reporting on Paula Jones' accusations against a sitting president, Isikoff's then-employer The Washington Post -- which owns Newsweek -- decided not to run it. So apparently it's possible for Michael Isikoff to have a story that actually is true, but for his editors not to run it.

She has more.

[langmic2]

A story about Billy Jeff, a noted coozehound, getting some head from an intern isn't believeable, but a story about flushing a huge book down a goddam toilet is.

Mind-boggling.

[Chrees]

I enjoy reading Anne Applebaum even when I disagree with her. From what I've seen, she's a pretty "heads up" person.

There is a lot of confusion on this issue, but it would be interesting to know more about her source. However, she's off the rails on the Newsweek debacle. She has turned it to a "why did they (Muslims) believe the story?" slant. It almost sounds like she's one step away from "Why do they hate us?"

I suggest Ms Applebaum look at the press here and abroad in attempting to answer her own question.

[CCM]

Anne's reply to my e-mail requesting confirmation that prisoners were Koran-stuffing: "look them up, like I did."

[turnerbroadcasting]

As I understand it, the way things run
is this.

1. the editors check with the advertisers
2. Advertisers review for content
3. editors suggest changes to title and content
4. editors have final say on title
5. editors make publication decision
6. editors then disappear from the radar

This is so that the advertising money flows
in regardless of the heat an article can
stir up. In some cases, such as talk radio,
stories are simply fabricated in the interest
of controversy, which generates a more rapid,
partisan mindset.

In this case, Isikoff received word
from cabinet level pentagon sources
re: the koran abuse.

Stepping away for a minute, though, really its
the interplay between editor and reporter
that should be looked at. Editors , of late,
really the past 10 years - have been pressuring
reporters to put together stories along
a certain line, similiar to the fabricated
Intel that led us to war.

As I understand it, the Pentagon took a phone
call from the white house requesting redaction
and the pentagon official that confirmed to
Isikoff then called him up and redacted the
article based on updated information.

But for pete's sake! Isn't it time we
as a country move on? Scandal this, scandal
that.

It really gets old after a while. I'd like
a nice, boring, balanced budget. Maybe
some boring, conservation success stories.
Boring education levels rising. Bragging
on kids, again. ho hum. Victory over
a ragged militia by our armed forces.
Zzzzzz

thats the kind of thing I'd like to read.
Of course, it means the government actually
has to do the job we +paid+ them to do..

I guess now they are more interested
in their nuclear option than they are
simply getting things done.. geez.. can't
you see it coming? government shutdown.
in my line of work I call it +un+ paid vacation.

[tracelan]

"In this case, Isikoff received word
from cabinet level pentagon sources
re: the koran abuse."

So turnerbroadcasting do you have a link for "cabinet level pentagon sources"?

And speaking of government shutdowns, last time that happened I didn't notice any difference at all.

[Mark]

Can I vote for a government shutdown, please? Furlough 20% without pay for a week at a time. Bring them back and whack a different 20% the next week. Continue until the budget is at a surplus again.

Then cut taxes. Repeat until someone outside the beltway cares.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Perhaps those "cabinet level pentagon sources" work for Spencer's "Joint Chief of Staff".

[Dan]

Infidels:

Aren't infidels supposed to behave like infidels?? I mean, when did Muslims ever have a say in how foreign infidels behave toward their religion? I think the point isn't who said what and what was true or not, or even how many people died as a result. All of the comments about a false NewsWeek story "inflamed" Muslims and "damaged" US relations seem trivial since there is a presumption that somehow the Muslims were acting in good faith if the article would have been true.

I still recall how the academics and the left rushed to the defense of Rushdie 15 years ago when he wrote the "Satanic Verses." Freedom of speech or expression trumped Islamic law if the offender was British or some other western national.

Personally, I don't think NewsWeek is fit for the bottom of my bird cage, but you're going to have to censor every US publication containing items deemed offensive to Muslims.