Really, I'm sure this news makes everything ok. The New York Times reports that a "military inquiry has uncovered five instances in which guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba mishandled the Koran, but found 'no credible evidence' to substantiate claims that it was ever flushed down a toilet." I guess as long as the Koran wasn't flushed down the toliet that Newsweek still owes the Bush Admin. a big apology. But really, the substance of the Bush outrage at the Newsweek story was that the White House took exception to the idea that the U.S. military had done anything offensive with the Koran. I'm waiting for the non-apology apology in which some Pentagon PR hack comes out and says "we're sorry if anyone was offended by our actions. In fact, Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman comes very close to the non-apology apology at a news conference when he said:

"We're in an environment where people react to impressions.

And so what we're trying to make sure people understand is that the impression they ought to have is that the guards, the interrogators, the command down there have been extraordinarily cautious, and yet there have been instances where inadvertent mishandling has occurred or other types of mishandling,"

So according to Di Rita, what matters isn't what we do or don't do with the Koran as long as the impression is ok. This sounds like the same logic Rummy used when he declared that the problem with the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib isn't that it happened, but that there were people with digital cameras taking pictures. And so we sink ever deeper into the banality of evil.
posted by Idle Crank at 5/27/2005 03:07:00 AM