yet more validation for the essence of the Newsweek story!

Top General Says Courts-Martial Unlikely in Koran Cases

KUALA LUMPUR (June 6) - The United States military is unlikely to hold court-martial proceedings in three cases of deliberate mishandling of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay prison, a top military official said on Monday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a visit to Malaysia that only two or three complaints of mishandling of the Muslim holy book turned out to have involved actions done on purpose.

"This is serious, but it's clearly not -- probably -- going to result in court-martial activity," Myers said. "But it depends on why they did it -- what the motivation was," he told reporters in response to a question.

Myers is visiting Malaysia after attending a security conference in Singapore. He is
visiting the region to hold talks with regional leaders.

The U.S. military released details last week about five cases in which the Koran was kicked, stepped on, soaked in water, and in one instance, splashed with a guard's urine falling through an air vent.

These were among 10 such cases reported among more than 28,000 prisoner interrogations, military officials say. Myers said there was no case of a Koran being flushed down a toilet, though detainees themselves did use pages of the book to try to block their toilets.

Newsweek magazine said in its May 9 issue that interrogators at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba had put copies of the Koran on toilets and flushed at
least one down to make detainees talk.

With anti-American sentiment running strong in the Muslim world after the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the report sparked riots in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

Newsweek later retracted the story, saying it could not substantiate the report that an internal military probe found Koran abuse at the jail.

From among 68,000 people detained in the struggle against violent extremism, Myers said, there had been 325 accusations of detainees being badly treated, of which 100 had been confirmed.

Punishments meted out in some of these cases ranged from courts-martial to administrative action, he said.

Myers said the military gave staff detailed instructions on how to handle the Koran.

"The people who don't obey the rules are either committing a criminal act or perhaps are overzealous," he added. "You can figure out the reasons why people do what they do."

The United States holds about 520 men at Guantanamo, where they are denied rights accorded under international law to prisoners of war. Many have been held without charge for more than three years.

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I'm sure that this will do our standing in the Mid-East well that we don't consider these actions serious enough to warrant discipline! But, somehow it will be Newsweek's fault! Especially since this article is still claiming that the riots were due to Newsweek's story, even though that has been proven false by our own military experts! damn that "liberl media"!