The Bush administration reports that the periodical Newsweek has violated the Geneva Convention on over 200 separate occasions during its treatment of political prisoners at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The magazine had recently apologized and acknowledged its source for a May 1 issue regarding prison abuses "was uncertain." That article, which quoted a military source as saying that interrogators flushed copies of the Quran down some $25,000 per Haliburton toilets at the Cuban prison, has sparked riots around the world by unruly and obviously irrational religious zealots. Whether or not the Justice Department will file criminal charges against the magazine for sytematically torturing prisoners in Cuba remains to be seen.
When asked for her take on the situation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the story "appalling." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chastised the magazine, saying "people lost their lives. People are dead." It is unclear if Rumsfeld was referring to the recent riots or the +20,000 Iraqis killed during the illegal U.S. occupation of that country the last two years.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said "this report has had serious consequences. It has caused damage to the image of the United States abroad." Weekly Annals News Gazette CEO David Lopan commented on the situation as well. "It was bad enough when the U.S. ethnically cleansed several thousand civilians in Fallujah last year, but for Newsweek to report that Uncle Sam doesn't play fair when he tortures detainees is obscene. Qurans can't even fit down toilets. Urrr...probably."
Advocates for Guantanamo prisoners said Newsweek's plight should not obscure the issue of prisoners' treatment at Guantanamo Bay. According to Tina Foster, an Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, "There have been firsthand accounts by former detainees of desecration of the Koran," and "It is unfortunate that the story has become about the reporting because the real issue here is the abuse itself."
TKID4 is calling for an investigation into Ms. Foster and what role she may have had in the torture of political prisoners in Cuba, the Hijacking of the Achille Lauro, the failure of the U.S. Intelligence Community to Thwart 9-11, the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and the theft and publishing of the Pentagon Papers.
