Posted on 05/11/2005 8:20:06 AM PDT by weegee
University students march in the steets in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in this image from televison Wednesday May 11, 2005. Police and U.S. troops opened fire in an eastern Afghan city to control hundreds of students rioting over alleged desecration of Islam's holy book at the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, killing two protesters and injuring more than 50, officials said. (AP Photo/APTN)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Shouting "Death to America," demonstrators angry over the alleged desecration of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay smashed car and shop windows and stoned a passing convoy of U.S. soldiers Wednesday in eastern Afghanistan. Police opened fire on the protesters, killing four and injuring at least 71. The U.S. troops fired into the air before quickly leaving the area in Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border, provincial intelligence chief Sardar Shah told The Associated Press. It was the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Good to see where the media lies in this war.
Perhaps they would all be happier living under the Taliban?
The Taliban can gun down women for showing skin and no one says a word but the Afghans riot over a perceived slight to a book.
Muslims shouting "Death to" something. Hmm.. old news.
It's pretty much a given that somewhere in the world on any given day a crowd of Muslims somewhere is chanting Death to one thing or another.
Perhaps some "Christians" were using the koran to cast spells again:
Christian sentenced for 'desecrating' Quran (Religion of Peace Alert)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1354641/posts
The world press let it slide that part of the reason that the arab world was outraged over the "prison abuse scandal" is that their perception of the abuse included photos (staged in England) of soldiers urinating on "prisoners" and troops "raping" women (stolen from an internet sex site).
The media does nothing to correct the story either in the third world or the western world. No wonder everyone hates America these days. The editors sure do.
I'm still waiting for a good source of Q'ran TP...
If we heard that the ACLU openly defiled our Holy Bible, we wouldn't react to favorably now, would we?
Regardless of what we think about Islam, it is absolutely vital that we respect the Islamic faith (or non-faith). The quickest way to turn the entire Islamic world against us, including Iraq, Afghantistan, and the student movement in Iran, is to disrespect Islam. We can't afford to be shooting the same people who were cheering us on earlier.
Even if this is a Kabul "rent a mob" with elements of Taliban and Al-Qaeda thrown in, we should treat this with utmost respect and caution. How the Afghan government and our troops react will determine our image in the Islamic world.
It was a story last week from an Arab source which claimed American soldiers flushed a Koran down a toilet at Guantanamo. The story looked phony for several reasons, not the least of which was the source.
Marilyn Manson regularly tore pages out of the bible at his concerts. How many people were killed in the "ensuing" riots?
The State Department is right not to trust Newsweek.
The Boston Globe, by the way, was among the newspaper that ran the porn photos as genuine abuse. The Guardian in England was the paper that first ran the posed shots of military urinating on "prisonsers".
The established media of the West is no sure sign of honesty in reporting.
Didn't some feminist make claims about America "raping" the Middle East and it was translated literally resulting in revenge murders in Pakistan?
0. But that doesn't mean it's right. We should grant the Koran as much reverence as the Bible. Even if it is everything we say and more, going around insulting their faith is not going to win us any friends. We have a real chance at creating moderate Islam, let's not blow it. I have no question that the US mlitary does that. I think the allegations are bs. Yet it needs to be disproved decisively.
I went back into the BBC story and found the following which I interpreted to mean that Newsweek got it from the BBC who got it from Arab prisoners.
"In an interview last week with the BBC's Haroon Rashid, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, an Afghan prisoner recently released from the Cuban detention centre, said a number of Arab prisoners had still not spoken to their investigators after three years to protest at the desecration of the Koran by guards"
From my son in J'bad today.
"Disappointed
I realize that sensational news sells, and that death sells in the media. I can understand that a story about a middle eastern city in which there are American troops stationed rioting and some of those rioters dying is a story. What I can't understand is why the media hates the US military so much.
I say this because there was an incident today in the city of Jalalabad where there were reports of American military personnel firing (according to some news agencies) into the crowds and according to others firing into the air and then leaving. If they had stuck around to find out what really happened they would have known that there were absolutely no American military personnel downtown where the rioting was taking place. It disappoints me that the news our families are getting is news that isn't accurate and news which serves only to scare our loved ones.
There are many things that happen in this country (as well as Iraq) that are never reported because they don't have "shock value." It is a sad day when the opening of an all girls school (which in one day has 6000 girls in attendence) in a country that no more than 4 years ago didn't allow girls to attend school can't make the news, especially when the only reason the school was opened was because the American military and contractors paid and protected the people who built it. In one year I have seen my share of nastiness, but I have also seen girls smile who have never smiled before. Kids going to school where there was no school before. Farmers growing crops where before there was nothing but barren rock because they now have an irrigation system and new wells. There are so many things, good things, that have been done here and it is all trashed by one account of careless reporting. I am truly disappointed and frankly disgusted at the news media over all of this. But hey, that is just one soldier's opinion of what I see and have to experience in a city I have spent a year of my life in. Take it for what it is worth."
America isn't politically in the dark ages though
We would never have won WWII if Axis Sally and Lord Haw Haw were editors at American newspapers. Instead they were Americans who lived in Germany and upped with Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine. They were sentenced for their crimes of treason after WWII.
Just because Jane Fonda, John Kerry, and others were not tried after Vietnam does not mean that they were not guilty of treason. As it still is today.
The leftist media has deliberately tarnished the image of America around the world.
Some of us tune out the media. They successfully turned Americans against the war with the pictures from Abu Ghrab but that opposition seems to have shifted back to normal with the elections in Iraq.
Meanwhile the media still sides with the "KKK of the Reconstruction South".
I don't ask that the press become a propaganda machine for the US government. All I ask is that they stop being a propaganda machine for the enemy.
The media even mocked those who protested Marilyn Manson playing at civic owned venues.
Great perspective from your son. I was glad to read it.
I had wondered at the disparity of the 2 headlines: The AP subtitle proclaimed "Police and US troops opened fire...killing two and injuring more than 50..." while the caption under the AP photo read "Police opened fire on the protesters, killing four and injuring at least 71. The U.S. troops fired into the air before quickly leaving the area..."
Personally, I wouldn't even wipe my ass w/ the Qu'ran.
Give them a taste of freedom and they are still backward savages.
Well, they can't deprive them of sleep, they can't stand them up for very long, they can't hit them, they can't threaten them...and now they can't offend them? Just how does one go about getting any useful info from a prisoner? Really, I'm not being rhetorical - I'm seriously asking. Because every time one of the prisoners complains about something, we completely rewrite the rules of interrogation.
Don't you think those prisoners (and the rest of the world) have our number by now? Of course they do - they know exactly what buttons to push to make us jump. We are a laughingstock! We're more concerned about offending people than we are about swiftly and decisively dealing with terrorists in this War on Terror!
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