Terrorists Abuse Koran

The media obsession about supposed abuse of the Koran at Guantanamo is a classic example of much ado about nothing — or at least next to nothing. In general, religious artifacts about which people feel strongly should be treated with respect, but let’s get our priorities straight.

One of the things the mainstream media have overlooked is the extent to which they, themselves, have been inadvertent accomplices in the terrorists campaign of disinformation and progaganda. Peter Bronson, in The Cincinnati Inquirer, has provided some facts from the military’s own investigation into charges:

“A detainee refused recreation time and his cell was searched. A rock hidden in a canteen and a nail hidden in a bucket were found during the search. The detainee was returned to his cell after the search and he fell on the ground. He claimed that the guards hit him in the groin, threw him on the ground and then kicked his Quran.”

Another detainee complained that an obscenity had been written in his Quran. “It is possible that a guard committed this act,” the report said. “It is equally possible that the detainee wrote in his own Quran; however, we consider this a confirmed incident.”

And that’s about the best the press and the loony America-haters at Amnesty International could find. A holy book was touched. Stepped on. Desecrated. Some were thrown in toilets — by not by guards. Detainees did that. In several cases, inmates ripped and urinated on Qurans or tried to flush them, which is not so surprising when their al-Qaida “brothers” are blowing up mosques and desecrating real Muslims to death.

And here’s what the manual tells terrorists who get captured and detained somewhere — say, Gitmo: “brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them,” and, “complain about mistreatment in prison.”

It is extremely hard to defend a mainstream media that obsesses over issues like Koran abuse at Guantanamo when terrorists are killing people in Iraq. It’s equally hard to defend the media’s assumption that charges made by terrorists against American soldiers are true. American soldiers are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, and terrorists innocent until proven guilty.