Friday, May 20, 2005

THE DEADLY riots in South Asia following a report that U.S. prison guards and interrogators had desecrated the Koran demanded a serious response from the Bush administration and from Newsweek magazine, which published the allegation. After checking with its source, Newsweek (which is owned by The Washington Post Co.) retracted the brief item, issued an apology, and printed a story detailing its reporting and the causes of the subsequent riots. Its editors are now rightly reexamining the magazine's policy on the use of unnamed sources.

The Bush administration's first response was equally straightforward. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, told reporters last week that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan believed the violence "was not at all tied to the article in the magazine." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged that "appropriate action" would be taken if the allegations proved true. But then the administration's spinners, led by Pentagon and White House spokesmen, took over. The result has been a cynical campaign to capitalize politically while deflecting attention from serious issues.

The administration's spokesmen have focused on Newsweek's error in reporting that a military investigation into practices at Guantanamo Bay would substantiate charges that interrogators threw the Koran into a toilet. Officials say the report, which has not been released, does not confirm the claim, which was first made by prisoners released from Guantanamo (and cleared from association with al Qaeda) more than a year ago. Spokesmen Lawrence T. Di Rita and Scott McClellan have blamed Newsweek for the violence and for damaging the U.S. image abroad, as if there were no other basis for Muslim suspicions. To "help repair the damage," Mr. McClellan declared, the newsmagazine "can also talk about the policies and practices of the United States military. Our United States military goes out of its way to treat the holy Koran with great care and respect."

The Pentagon did issue detailed rules in early 2003 for proper handling of the Koran, but as multiple investigations in the past year have documented, the "policies and practices" of the U.S. military since 2001 have provided plenty of inflammatory material for exploitation by Muslim extremists. Under a policy approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002, interrogators at Guantanamo were authorized to shave the beards of Muslim prisoners and use dogs (which are considered unclean in Islam) to intimidate them. According to an official investigation commissioned by Mr. Rumsfeld, such practices "migrated" to other U.S. detention facilities around the world. Two American servicemen who served at Guantanamo have separately alleged that desecration of the Koran led to strikes and other protests by prisoners.

Mr. Di Rita said Tuesday that the military was still reviewing whether there had been abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo. He acknowledged that there had been no thorough study of the allegations before Newsweek's report. If the Bush administration's aim is to address the causes of last week's violence, it should accelerate that tardy investigation, broaden it to include any demeaning of Islam that has taken place and make the results public.