Another Day, Another Bad Headline

Our Washington Post is very quickly turning into the “all Koran desecration, all the time” network. Today’s big headline, “Pentagon Confirms Koran Incidents”, accompanies another one of those stories and, as with similar stories, it a bit bigger than its story.

Here’s the lead:

Pentagon officials said yesterday that investigators have identified five incidents of military guards and an interrogator “mishandling” the Koran at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but characterized the episodes as minor and said most occurred before specific rules on the treatment of Muslim holy items were issued.

Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said investigators have looked into 13 specific allegations of Koran desecration at the prison dating to early 2002 and have determined eight of them to be unfounded, lacking credibility or the result of accidental touching of the holy book. Of the five cases of mishandling, three were “very likely” deliberate and two were “very likely accidental,” he said. But Hood declined to provide details, citing an ongoing investigation.

So, there you go. The Pentagon has indeed confirmed that it is investigating five cases of what it believes to be mishandling of the Koran – only three of which appear to be intentional.

So, okay, we have three cases (and I’ll go ahead and assume that they actually happened) in almost three years. One a year.

That’s it? That’s the huge kerfuffle? We’re getting het up over one incident a year?

Interestingly enough we find that perhaps the detainees don’t quite have as much respect for their own Koran as we do. In the ninth paragraph, the article notes:

He [General Hood] added that there were also 15 cases in which detainees mishandled the Koran, including one who purposefully ripped pages out of his own book.

If I read this correctly, and assume that a Muslim isn’t about to accidently mishandle his Koran (because they’d be a pretty bad Muslim if they did that, wouldn’t they?), I find that the detainees have been defiling the Koran five times more often than we have.

Shouldn’t the Post headline then read, “Pentagon Confirms, Detainees Mishandled Koran More Than US Personnel”? Wouldn’t that be the fair way to report this story? Wouldn’t it be more accurate?

Sure it would, but it sure as heck wouldn’t provide Newsweek any better cover. And it might – might – make America look a little better and our terrorist enemies look a little worse. Heck, it might even prevent stuff like this from happening.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Waving copies of the Koran and chanting anti-American slogans, Muslims across the world took to the streets on Friday to protest at abuse of their holy book by interrogators at a U.S. prison camp in Cuba.

In Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, outraged Muslims burned U.S. flags and vowed revenge.

“O America, listen, listen, with my blood I will protect my Koran,” shouted thousands of Lebanese at a Hizbollah rally in a Shi’ite suburb of Beirut. “America is the enemy of Muslims.” Similar protests swept the country’s Palestinian refugee camps, where bearded Islamists hoisted pictures of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and his Iraq-based ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But, heck, if they did thatthey’d be labeled as a propaganda machine for the administration. We wouldn’t want that to happen. Oh no. That’d be terrible.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media.