Newsweek, the Koran and the administration
Linked above is a statement from Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek, retracting a recent story which stated that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Qu'ran down a toilet as an interrogation tactic.
Immediately, the administration slammed Newsweek because, in Scott McClellan's words, "the report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."
How ironic, coming from this administration. It seems to me that the key issue here is not whether the story is true or false, but simply that it is plausible. Those who are disposed to oppose the U.S. don't need any more confirmation than that.
Given what we, and the rest of the world, know about what U.S. interrogators have proven themselves capable of at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay and about the endless capacity of top-level administration officials to insist that the taint of scandal not rise above the level of a "few bad apples," it hardly seems appropriate for the administration to pontificate about what Newsweek should do. Our credibility on the world stage is already shot, irrespective of mistaken or less-than-thorough reporting on Newsweek's part.
posted by Chris @ 8:39 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I'm sorry, but I must disagree with your thoughts on this. Most anything is plausible. Especially when you are talking about human beings. What we are told in scripture is that stirring up dissension and gossip is wrong (Proverbs 16:28). We are also told that, "An evildoer gives heed to false lips; A liar listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue." (Proverbs 17:4).
It is *always* about the truth. If we live by what is plausible, we are lost.
I know you are talking about our government and U.S interrogators, but many of our brethern are members of our government and a good friend of mine was an interrogator at Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. If you ever watched the video clip of him interviewing John Walker Lindh, you would see a Christian earnestly, even kindly, entreating Mr. Lindh to speak. Minutes later, my friend was killed in the uprising there.
"Plausible" just doesn't meet our standard as Christians. We are asked to hold ourselves to a higher standard. To seek the truth in all things.
First, thanks for making your way over to my blog and leaving your thoughts.
I agree that, as you put it, "it is *always* about truth." The main point of the post, which I didn't express very clearly, is that the administration, with an inconsistent and morally questionable record on torture, has very little room to attempt to score political points off of the mistakes of someone else.
Having said that, I'll turn back to my comments about plausibility. From the perspective of the Afghani and Pakistanis who rioted over the Newsweek story (and much of the rest of the world, for that matter) the reputation of the U.S. was irreparably damaged by the actions at Abu Ghraib and the lack of substantive action taken against it (other than the easy condemnation of a few enlisted men and women who had the misfortune of actually being in the pictures), by the neglect of serious reconstruction in Iraq, and by the administration's making a political game out of restoring sovereignty to Iraqis themselves. Given this, it's easy to see why those who rioted acted as they did. I have to say that I wasn't surprised to hear the news of a Koran being flushed down a toilet, before any questioning started about whether the story was true or false.
That was what really struck me about this story -- the sheer plausibility of the story: I knew that U.S. interrogators were capable of it and it never occurred to me to dismiss the story out of hand. We have lived under an administration that for over 2 years now has been so concerned with painting a positive picture about what is going on in Iraq that truth (for Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al.) is a matter of a political game rather than a real and defining principle.
That stark truth is what really stood out to me in all of this.
Even if the U.S. flushed a Koran down a toilet, that doesn't justify the rioting or killing.
America's reputation has always been in the mud in the much of the Islamic world (you do remember that little thing with the Iranians back in the late 70's).
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