National news magazine prints story about desecration of Koran. Muslims riot and kill people. Said news magazine suddenly realizes that they “got it wrong”. White House acts high and mighty (leave it to a hypocrite like Dick Cheney to chastise anyone for causing “unnecessary death”). Does this reak of a public relations move to anyone else?

Desecration of religious items is nothing new, in fact it is a part of the curriculum of US military training programs such as SERE (Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). A former US military officer had the following to say about what he experienced during SERE school, while involved in a mock excercise in which the student was the POW:

The bible trashing was done by one of the top-ranked leaders of the camp, who was always giving us speeches–sort of ‘making it real’ so to speak, because it is a pretty contrived environment. But by the end it almost seemed real. Guards spoke English with a Russian accent, wore Russian-looking uniforms. So the bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling–we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally–how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech. Then he kicked over the soup pot, and threw us back in the cells. Big climax. And psychologically it was crushing and heartbreaking, and then we were left isolated to contemplate this.”

Did they really get it wrong? In the end, like most other things, it comes down to whatever you want to believe. If you’re like me and distrust most things you see and hear in the mainstream news, perhaps you will believe that the story was true and this is simply pressure being applied to Newsweek by an administration feeling the PR heat from the violent reaction it got in the Middle East. Does anyone really believe that the action of “flushing the Koran down the toilet” is something that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay would not do?

Either way, all the outrage just seems kind of fake if you ask me…starting with the Pentagon and the White House, which has had worse things to say about this than it did about Abu Ghraib, and on down to the rioters in Afghanistan and their political mouthpieces who were likely just waiting for some gas to pour on the fire. Frankly I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I’m not trying to be insensitive to the religion, but in the end it is just a book…printed text on paper. Isn’t true spirituality something that you find within yourself which is greater than any mere material item? Maybe I just don’t get it, but the whole thing seems very childish. If I were being held indefinately at a prison famous for using sleep and sensory deprivation tactics I’d welcome a little bible flushing, maybe I could catch some z’s in between testaments.