Shaken by the storm of criticism over the magazine's "flushing of the Koran" story last week, Newsweek's editors apologized and vowed to continue their investigation into military interrogation abuses. Today that continued investigation paid off.
"The trail of abusive interrogation is longer than we thought," said Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker.
Living in a nursing home on the outskirts of Jersey City Newsweek reporters found one Joe Giamani, World War II veteran and former U.S. Army Inteliigence officer. Under intensive questioning, Mr. Giamani admitted he had forced German POWs to use pages of Mein Kampf as toilet paper--cruelly desecrating the ideals for which the German troops fought and died in their efforts to save the world from international Jewry. "It was the only paper item we allowed them to have. Eventually, they had to use it to wipe themselves," said Giamani.
Unrepentent, Giamani wished he had thought of putting women's underwear on the Germans' heads, but observed in his own defense, "Women's underwear wasn't as handy in those days in the all-male units favored by the Army brass."
Whitaker was unable to produce any evidence substantiating the Koran flushing claim. "This earlier incident, though, shows that a similar pattern of abuse has occurred in the past and, by inference, strongly implies that we could easily imagine it reoccurring in the current context," says Whitaker.
"This isn't the end of it," asserted Whitaker. "We've got leads to other sources."
One of these leads is the granddaughter of a World War I veteran who may have mooned German troops during 1917's brief Christmas ceasefire.
If an atrocity falls in the forest and nobody hears it, is it an atrocity?
If an atrocity does not fall in the forest but somebody hears it anyway, is it an atrocity?