Newsweek Lied! .... oh s**t...
John Cole has been in a fine lather recently over the whole Koran-flushing thing. Start here and scroll down. It seems the military now affirms the toilet incident (which means nothing aside from making Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, and Bush's spokespeople out to be liars- or at least knee-jerk apologists- in their own right) and ups the ante with stories of far darker abuses. I agree with his posts on this matter 100%, which is pretty good for a yunzer and Steeler fan; it's not that I want accusations of Koran-flushing and detainee murder to be true. No. No, no no. What I want is for the truth to come out as to whether (and how often) prisoners in American custody die mysteriously, so that it can stop, and the only way for that to happen is to get the truth about what's happening. Mutilated bodies on ice and artillery corporals making dogpiles of naked prisoners for shits and giggles is not what the US of A is about, period. No matter whether each separate incident is indeed an isolated occurrence or (as it increasingly appears) part of a concerted move toward grisly "interrogation" techniques, that stuff has to end.
And why haven't I already put Cole on the blogroll?
[wik] I should be clear. Newsweek don't get a free pass for rushing to press with a poorly sourced story. Neither do they get a free pass for focusing on an incident so minor when dead bodies on ice turn up in detainee camps. What they do get is a modicum of understanding; was it ever so unbelievable that someone at Gitmo flushed a Koran (or pages from one) down the hopper considering the darker stories that seep out from ongoing investigations into military detention and interrogation techniques? That is all.
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What I found hard to believe
What I found hard to believe is that someone could flush a book down one of our water-conserving 1.2 liters per flush toilets.
Yeh... no kidding. I think
Yeh... no kidding. I think flushed in the terlet is more of what they were after. But that just don't have the same oomph to it, does it?
Do you know what I want? A toilet with proportional response capability. Some jobs don't take much power, and others... let's just say that after Steak Night I wish my terlet was hooked up to a fire hose.
Is it so hard to make a terlet with two buttons, "regular" and "turbo"?
Apparently, the Japanese are
Apparently, the Japanese are working on just such a toilet; further, one that has sensors that can automatically determine whether to use the regular or turbo flush, and analyze your 'output' for medical purposes. Also, auto-targeting bidets.
What I found hard to believe
What I found hard to believe is that anyone can muster a care about a friggin' book, flushed down the toilet, inadvertently knocked off a nightstand or out of someone's satchel onto the floor, or, well, anything. It's a friggin' book.
And even if our brethren in the religion of peace get their panties in a knot over it, the credulity with which some in the US press treat their outrage, without gagging on the irony of instances of more serious and permanent infringement against non-Muslims by Muslims, is a bit much.
However, I haven't had much to say on the Newsweek "crisis" because I haven't really thought it was that big a deal. When loads of folks went ballistic with the finger-pointing at Newsweek, it seemed likely, if not certain, that their fingers would be bitten off for them.
Michael Isikoff has, to the credit of [url="http://www.debbieschlussel.com/columns/column051905.shtml"]some on the right[/url], been given a free pass based on his excellent prior work, his reputation as one of the finest investigative journalists around these days, and a realist's recognition that of COURSE Korans were flushed down the toilet.
Now, auto-targeting bidets, perhaps doubling as boot washers, that I can get into.
See, Patton? That's why we
See, Patton? That's why we pay you the big bucks! While lying a-bed this morning trying to muster the will to rouse my aching frame from the comfort of the prone, I heard an NPR interview with some Afghani gentlemen who is responsible for domestic security. The interviewer asked him about last week's riots, and he very sensibly replied that it was all marketing: various groups were waiting for their opportunity to wave signs and kill people and they took it. Yes, the flushing story didn't go over well in general, but the rioting was all for show.
Unfortunately, the interviewer pressed. "but... but... isn't the US ultimately to blame?" they asked (not in those words), and the resultant blast of irritation propelled me out of bed and toward the clock-radio to shut it off before I had an aneurism.
I would treasure a bathroom with a turbo toilet and an auto-targeting bidet. Excretory comfort in the form of hydrodynamically designed ergonomic white porcelain is high on my list of crowning achievments of human civilization.