Posted on 10/07/2005 7:23:49 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
[page 1 of Miami Herald]
An Army chaplain cleared of espionage suspicions described the Guantánamo prison during his 2003 tour as a hotbed of anti-Muslim feelings.
As a Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee made sure terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, got pork-free halal meals and rugs for five-times-a-day prayer and wrote rules for soldiers to treat Islam's holy book, the Koran, with dignity.
But, while the U.S. captain was held on suspicion of espionage, the military took away his Koran, refused him a prayer rug at a Navy brig -- and even for a few days fed him routine military rations featuring Islam's forbidden bacon and ham.
Nine months after Yee, 37, took an honorable discharge from the military, the West Point graduate lays out what he sees as painful ironies in his 240-page memoir, For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism, which went on sale Thursday.
In the book, Yee describes how he went from educating Guantánamo guards about the Islamic indignity of strip searches to enduring them himself -- in a yearlong odyssey of suspicion that, he says, was fueled by anti-Muslim zeal among fellow troops at the Pentagon's premier prison in southeast Cuba.
''I am a patriotic, loyal American,'' he writes. ``I am not a terrorist nor am I a spy.''
The book is the third-generation Chinese American's answer -- on his own terms -- to a secret espionage investigation inside the Pentagon's showcase prison that exploded with a leak to the conservative Washington Times newspaper in late 2003. It ultimately unraveled without explanation, even though the military held its own commissioned officer, Yee, as a virtual enemy combatant in solitary confinement at the brig in Charleston, S.C., for 76 days.
Yee, whose two brothers serve in the U.S. Army, as did his father, paints himself as a typical American patriot who had no reason to disbelieve Pentagon descriptions of the Guantánamo captives as ''the worst of the worst'' post-Sept. 11 prisoners linked to the deadly attacks.
''I felt very nervous. I expected to come face-to-face with hundreds of Osama bin Ladens,'' he writes in a crisp narrative that echoes an earlier Guantánamo book -- Behind the Wire -- by a former Army linguist and sergeant named Erik Saar.
''But most prisoners were friendly and seemed overjoyed to see me,'' he says.
Like Saar, who is Christian, Yee uses his book to question whether the military sacrificed its integrity, due process and religious dignity through its treatment of prisoners held for interrogation there.
But with a distinction. Yee is unemotional, disciplined as he describes guards doing a ''forced cell extraction,'' a procedure he saw as sometimes necessary but suspected became punitive:
Soldiers in riot gear would storm into a stubborn prisoner's cell, tackle and hog-tie him, then drag him down a cell block -- stopping only to rehydrate and celebrate, he says, like at a sporting event.
''They high-fived each other and slammed their chests together,'' he said. ``I found it an odd victory celebration for eight men who took down one prisoner.''
The U.S. military says it investigates credible allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo and has punished what it characterized as rare violations of strict rules of respect toward the prisoners and Islam.
Yee was the fourth -- and, so far, last -- Muslim U.S. chaplain assigned to the project, to tend to the spiritual needs of both Muslim prisoners and U.S. forces.
Yet he said he at times wondered about his job even as he was receiving excellent job evaluations before he was taken into custody on suspicion he was a traitor who could be executed for unspecified crimes.
''I began to consider the idea that my role might have been a political appointment, a piece of theater meant to display the understanding and sensitivity we purported to have toward Islam,'' he said.
Yee describes himself as proud of the role he played, advocating for what he sees as American ideals of treating prisoners with religious dignity.
But he heaps his greatest scorn on what he claimed was an un-American double standard that fostered distrust of Muslim-Americans.
•Christian soldiers, he claimed, got lighter duty on Sundays so they could attend Christian worship, while Muslim servicemen found it more difficult to worship together at Friday prayers.
•Muslim soldiers were seen as more suspect, he claimed. An Urdu linguist, a Muslim-American soldier, reported finding a listening device in his quarters, making Yee and other Muslims wonder whether they, too, got special scrutiny.
•Yee realized that his visits to the prison camp prompted guards to shout, ''Chaplain in the block!'' -- which set him apart from the prison team. ''I sensed that the call was meant as a warning to anyone who was engaged in behavior they'd rather I didn't witness,'' he said.
Yee also writes of his effort to write Army procedures for respectful treatment of the Koran -- even as soldiers shook down cells and prisoners complained that non-Muslims treated their holy book with contempt.
''As Muslims, we would never tolerate similar abuse to the Bible or the Torah,'' he said, describing U.S. Muslim soldiers' evolving discomfort in the predominantly Christian force. ``We had to ask, if the prisoners were Christian, would the command discourage them from practicing their faith or use their religion against them?''
The military has said multiple investigations revealed no systematic pattern of Islamic indignity at the base; in fact, to defend against allegations earlier this year, it released Koran handling procedures based on those Yee wrote before his arrest.
Yee doesn't directly address the only two allegations the military was able to make stick -- engaging in adultery and surfing the Internet on his military computer for pornography -- before the general in charge of Miami's Southern Command swept clean his personnel file. Instead, he dismisses them as an 11th-hour effort to embarrass him even as the government's espionage case unraveled.
But he does describe a certain permissiveness that, he said, permeated the 45-square-mile base during his assignment there in 2003.
''Romances started and ended in the course of an evening. Many of the participants were married, but those considerations don't matter to people at war,'' he said, quoting a rule meant to protect military secrets at the base, ``What happens at Gitmo stays at Gitmo.''
Wow. What a slimy, slimy individual. Even a puff piece can't disguise his true, whiny, smarmy, traitorous self.
Ask Me if I Care About 'Mishandling' of Koran
June 6, 2005 | Doug Patton
First, Newsweek pulled a Dan Rather on us, running a fabricated story just because they wanted it to be true. They told the world that an American guard at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center had ripped pages from a prisoner's Koran and flushed it down a toilet. As a result, innocent people died when practitioners of Islam rioted in protest in Afghanistan.
Oops, said Newsweek, it seems we can't back up our story. Oh well, it's probably true; we just can't prove it. (Isn't it convenient for Newsweek that the media now have "Deep Throat" to talk about so they can revel in their glory days and divert our attention from their criminal negligence.)
The lie heard round the world about the flushed Koran has caused convulsions in the Bush Administration and forced the Pentagon to launch an investigation of unfounded allegations contained in an unsubstantiated story. The results of said investigation are now in, and it seems there are at least five incidents of "mishandling" of the Koran at Gitmo.
Well, guess what? I don't care!
Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we?
Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?
Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania?
Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning death that day, or didn't they?
And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?
Well, I don't. I don't care at all.
I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.
I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia.
I'll care when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi tells the world he is sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling, slashed throat.
I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.
I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.
I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.
I'll care when Clinton-appointed judges stop ordering my government to release photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which are sure to set off the Islamic extremists just as Newsweek's lies did a few weeks ago.
In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.
When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college hazing incident, rest assured ... I don't care.
When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank ... I don't care.
When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts ... I don't care.
And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and -- you guessed it -- I don't care!
It sounds like he admitted to the adultery, there at the end.
It alone, even if everything else would never have happened, would have ruined his career.
The 4 star CG of Tradoc (I believe) was just removed for the same reason.
A military of deployed (and stay-behind), married, young soldiers cannot destroy morale by giving those soldiers the impression that their comrades (especially leaders) will take liberties with their spouses at first opportunity.
Also, they cannot wink at disLOYALTY in oath-based relationships. What message does that send about the importance of other oaths.....oaths of loyalty to country, for example?
Have to agree with wideawake on this one.
PING to those who follow ex military folks who become author's. This guy is well a loose cannon and really is using his plight to make an all mighty buck.
What a waste of a great West Point education.
I had to go to the original source to make sure you did not make that up.
Delusional ramblings is the most charitable description I can think of this article.
The new definition of torture.
After 9/11, did anyone in their wildest dreams think that Muslims would be able to make such hay out of their fellow-believers' slaughter of innocent Americans?
It was all a dream; it didn't happen. What's infinitely more important is to respect the "religion" that inspired the nightmare.
This will sell about ten copies.
Of course the goodly muslimes would not tolerate the abuse of a Bible or Torah! Although they have no problem with beheadings, dragging bodies through streets and ululating in joy at the murder of thousands. F Yee!
I am overjoyed that this muslime Spy was outed as the ratbastard that he is and hope that he reaps what he has sown.
Traitor
Now then, tell us how you REALLY feel!
(Outstanding post. Keep it up!)
I predicted on 9-12 that it wouldn't be long before offending a Muslim would be the greatest "sin."
It seems as though it's become the case across the Western world.
You can either be a loyal American or you can be a Muslim, but by definition you cannot be both.
I wouldn't waste a dime on it!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1498199/posts
Code Words: Daniel Pearl-- President Bush's Speech ILLUSTRATED
White House ^ | 10/6/05 | Cinnamon Girl
Posted on 10/07/2005 12:28:07 AM CDT by Cinnamon Girl
This is a "don't miss"!
Any decent person that belongs to a club whose members engage in reprehensible behavior has a dissonance. Saudi Arabia prohibits by law entry into the country to any "Jewish person." One cannot import a bible. Is that not similar to denying Koran? His fellow Muslims engage in atrocities on almost a daily basis. I don't see any soul-searching on the part of this chaplain, however.
His observations of his fellow Americans (besides being factually suspect) are like those of scientist observing a new species.
He clearly has zero sympathy, camaraderie or fellow-feeling with his fellow Americans.
Just a creepy individual.
Typical lying Mohammedan dog. The more I hear, the more I become convinced that this is the most vile ideology that ever came upon the earth.
I heard this clown's interview on NPR. He did not sound like a Captain in the US Army. He sounded like a college age kid speaking to other college aged kids. I found it hard to get past that to give him any credibility.
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