WASHINGTON — Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Wednesday there are no credible allegations that U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay threw a Koran down the toilet — despite allegations contained in newly released FBI documents.
Terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just three months after the first detainees arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Koran , the declassified FBI records say.
"Their behavior is bad," one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent on July 22, 2002. "About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet."
Di Rita, the chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said that U.S. military officials at Guantanamo Bay had recently found a separate record of the same allegation by the same detainee, and he was re-interviewed on May 14. "He did not corroborate his own allegation," Di Rita said.
Asked why he felt certain that this detainee did not affirm his allegation out of fear of retaliation, Di Rita said, "It's a judgment call, and I trust the judgment of the commanders more than I trust the judgment of Al Qaeda."
Yes yes i am sure Di Rita trusts his military handlers more than he does the IRC, the FBI, the various NGO's and other agencies who have investigated the claims of torture and prisoner abuse. He has to of course because well, they started the entire war based on lies and if they can't keep lying they would have to admit the truth. This is no difference than saying there were WMD and nuclear bombs in Iraq because their single source of information was an Iraqi dissident who was a known and notorious liar. But of course he too was trusted more than the entire intelligence establishment, the UN inspection teams, the international agencies responsible for all of this. You have to love Fox for never questioning in any way whatsoever the proclamations of this administration.
