You can see a potential future scenario in this Koran-abuse business. There are several independent claims by released Gitmo inmates that interrogators abused the Koran or otherwise targeted their religious sensibilities. The Pentagon denies it, as they now have. Almost no one in a position to know the truth is free from Pentagon influence; or not employed by the Pentagon. So we are left to ask whether to believe al Qaeda terrorists, trained to make such accusations, or American Pentagon officials. I know whom I’d rather believe. At the same time, we know that other incidents as bad as the Koran incident have indeed occurred, including the truly bizarre one about female interrogators and fake menstrual blood. In the New York Times today, we find reported as a throw-away line that
[i]n another case, a soldier was investigated for taunting a Muslim detainee with a Star of David.
We have evidence that detainees in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were forced to eat pork and had liquor poured down their throats. We know that abuses and torture occurred throughout the military prison system; that the rules for interrogation were deliberately made more lax; that we have 36 deaths-in-interrogation; and so on.
THE BALANCE OF DOUBT: So when we have reports of an alleged desecration of the Koran, whom are we supposed to find credible? Before this war started, I wouldn’t have even considered the possibility that the U.S. was guilty. But, given the enormous evidence of abuse that stares us in the face, doubt is now the only operative position to take. The sad truth is: this administration has forfeited our trust in its management of the military’s interrogation processes. They forfeited it not simply because of the evidence of widespread abuse and memos that expanded the range of interrogation techniques, but by the record of accountability. Anyone with real power or influence was let off the hook in the Abu Ghraib fiasco; no serious external inquiry was allowed; Rumsfeld wasn’t allowed to resign; Sanchez is in place; Gonzales is rewarded for loyalty; the Republican Congress completely looked the other way; last year, John Kerry cowardly avoided the subject. We couldn’t even get a law passed forbidding the CIA from using torture. And what I find remarkable is that interrogatory abuse is now taken for granted, even by defenders of the administration. Here’s Jonah Goldberg today:
But what on earth was gained by Newsweek’s decision to publish the story – whether it was true or not? Were we unaware that interrogators at Gitmo aren’t playing bean bag with detainees?
No we were not unaware. We were just looking the other way. So yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s world-weary assumption. This is how liberty dies – with scattered, knee-jerk applause.
The Dish 