Dateline -- Gulag: Koran was flushed -- by detainee
Associated Press (via USA Today):
[Brig. Gen. Jay] Hood [commander of the detention center at Guantanamo] also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Korans. "These included using a Koran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Koran, attempting to flush a Koran down the toilet and urinating on the Koran," Hood's report said. It offered no possible explanation for the detainees' motives.
In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18 allegedly ripped up his Koran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several guards witnessed this, Hood reported.
The U.S. Southern Command's report on alleged Koran abuse by our boys at Guantanamo is available in pdf format.
In one incident, guards enjoying a water balloon fight reportedly got two Korans wet. In another incident, a guard took a leak near an air vent and the wind blew some of his urine into the vent and onto a Koran.
The report's most damning allegation? A guard kicked a Koran. Tsk, tsk.
In sum, the report provides no evidence that the U.S. military has a policy, practice or pattern of abusing Korans. To the contrary.
Perhaps this stuff belongs in the next edition of Trivial Pursuit. But the hullabaloo over supposed Koran abuse at Gitmo -- fomented by a legacy media anxious to recover from Newsweek's fumble, and celebrated by the Bush-hating left -- isn't news. At best, it's moral silliness; at worse, propaganda.
(Thanks to Michelle Malkin, who correctly admonishes: "Don't trust the MSM reports.")