Pentagon says Quran was kicked, desecrated

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Pentagon released new details Friday about mishandling of the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behavior."

In other confirmed incidents, a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.

Click here for the rest (emphasis mine).

Back when I was a high school teacher, I had a pretty wild conversation with a student of mine. Richard was a good kid for the most part, a big loud lineman on the football team, quick to anger, but quick to smile, too. The class period I taught him was right after lunch. One day he came to class complaining about an incident that had just happened in the cafeteria. He was really angry at the assistant principals on lunch duty: "Man, they busted me for standing on the table, but I wasn't standing on the table; I was walking over the table."

I tried to explain to him that, from the assistant principals' point of view, the difference didn't matter, one way or the other he was out of line. He went on. "But they wrote on the discipline referral slip that I was standing on the table and I wasn't! They're busting me for something I didn't do!" We went back and forth like that for a couple of minutes until I finally tired of the exchange and told him that he was making the worst argument I had ever heard in my life: either way, his filthy, stinky, mud encrusted tennis shoes were spreading nastiness all over the place where people eat: nobody cares whether he was standing on the table or walking over it; he got caught--too bad. Richard sat down in a huff.

Really, he's a good kid. His squirrelly point of view is pretty typical of teenagers when they get caught after breaking some rule: come up with an argument, any argument, as to why you're not guilty, believe it fiercely, and argue with the authorities until you're blue in the face. Like I said, typical adolescent behavior.

So why, then, is the Pentagon, run by grownups, acting like a teenager? "Okay, we did have someone piss on the Koran, but we did not flush it down the toilet!!!!" Jesus Christ, what's the fucking difference?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$