Newsweek Should Tell McClellan and His Boss Bushie to Fuck Themselves, a la Emperor Cheney

So Newsweek magazine published a story that may (according to Scottie "Mynah Bird" McClellan) or may not (according to Gen. Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) have contributed to riots in Afghanistan that left 17 people dead. The Bushit administration is going all out nuts on this story, screaming about a disputable and quite indirect effect while still playing us all for suckers when confronted with lies and crimes that have killed tens of thosands of Iraqis, over 1600 Americans, and tens of other coalition soldiers, not to mention while concurrently destroying our credibility worldwide, bankrupting the country, and appealing to a core of the most bigoted extremists in the country.

Am I to believe, then, that an erroneous story about flushing a book down a toilet is more damaging to the US image in the Muslim world than an illegal war, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims, the systematic and widespread torture of Muslims, many of whom arrested and detained with no due process, in addition to the many treaties pissed upon (Kyoto, ABM, etc.), attempts to jam John "I'm a Fucking Maniac and a Liar" Bolton into the UN, and on and on and on. A few inches in Newsweek merit more attention from the White House than all of that as damaging to our image abroad.

I would say that this in itself is equally, if not more, damaging to our image abroad, because now they know we're a totally deluded nation lacking any sense of proportion or responsibility for anything while we swing our considerable weight arbitrarily around the globe leaving death and rubble in our wake.

But getting back to what may have happened at Guantanamo with regard to the copy of the Koran, Molly Ivins reminds us of what conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year:

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped 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 Guantanamo, 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."

And by the way, Newsweek's source for their story, remember, was a government source.

I'm leaving for Berlin and Prague in a few days. I'm very interested to hear how Europeans view the ravings that pass for discourse in this country. I have the feeling that my little research trip is going to make my contempt for the mainstream media in this country so much greater that I may come back in an apoplectic state needing serious medication It is likely that my blog entries will be even more incomprehensible ravings. Consider yourselves warned.

Oh, and if you are one of those so offended by the Newsweek article, why don't you first weigh your outrage as if you were a Muslim: Newsweek mistake or tens of thousands of corpses. Come on, get that little peabrain working on it. Can you see the difference?