The Pentagon has confirmed that some ill-treatment of Korans by guards and interrogators at Guantanamo Bay has been uncovered. But abuses were not, they say, of the order so controversially alleged by Newsweek.
It is worth reading the press briefing transcript in full. It is short on facts and long on euphemism but telling nonetheless. It is rather a shame that the press corps seems rather potty-obsessed, going back to the Koran-in-latrine issue and failing to raise all the other non-Koran related abuses.
Clearly abuses of all sorts have been uncovered and the response has been a combination of cover-up and scapegoating of junior staff. Take for example:
Q: General, when these incidents were first reported or first came up, were they investigated and were people punished at the time, or were they regarded as not credible and therefore not investigated?
GEN. HOOD: Part of the latter, sir. I think in several cases -- I have recorded each of these incidents because I sought to get to every place we saw anything which indicated anybody had ever done anything wrong involving the Koran as a religious item for the Islamic faith. And so several of them may not have been fully investigated. At least one of them I know -- I don't know enough about it to say that it ever actually occurred, but it is my belief that it has, and so I have accepted it as a credible event.
Q: On the two disciplinary actions that you mentioned, were those recent disciplinary actions or --
GEN. HOOD: One of them was, sir. One of them. And it was essentially for -- it would be a lot easier if I could tell you exactly what each of the events were, and you'd probably be a lot happier. But it was an inadvertent action by a member of the security force. And he was removed from his duties on that site and given other duties. And I'll leave it at that. And it did occur recently.
MR. DIRITA: And again, it involves, again, an inadvertent mishandling, but one that was deemed sufficiently -- again, with the caution that the commanders are trying to establish, that it's inadvertent, but move him to another set of duties.
So it was an accident, but an accident insufficiently accidental for the perpetrator to be allowed to continue in his (or her) duties. Hmm.
Meanwhile, because it's Friday, time for some light relief. While browsing around the Pentagon site we uncovered the darkly and unintentionally comic GTMO in-house news magazine, full of colourful features about life in Camp Delta. Our favourite is the one about the dentist:
Navy Dentist Stays Busy at Guantanamo Bay Detainee Camp
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press ServiceNAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Feb. 18, 2005 -- When Navy Lt. Jennifer Tharp started her current job, her greatest fear was that she'd get bitten. But so far, that fear has proved unfounded.
Tharp is the only dentist assigned to Joint Task Force Guantanamo here. She's responsible for the dental health of the 2,200 JTF personnel as well as the roughly 545 detainees held here.
An active-duty dentist deployed from Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla., Tharp admits she was nervous about treating detainees. "My biggest fear was that I would get bitten," she said. In reality, she now says she's never even felt threatened while treating a detainee.
With news like that who needs the Onion?
