Massive protests follow brief moment of truth

The Bush administration is deliberately missing the point if it thinks that an article in Newsweek magazine is what caused massive anti-U.S. demonstrations across the Muslim world, from Gaza to Indo ne sia, that peaked on Friday, May 13. Further more, no amount of bowing down to White House pressure by Newsweek’s editors will undo the seething anger at Washington for its brutal wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The article in the issue of Newsweek dated May 9 had given details about the abuse of Muslim prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo. For months and months, information has been leaking out about torture, humiliation, sleep deprivation and routine insulting behavior and language toward the prisoners.

Most of the detained are from Afghan istan, and many were captured, tied, blindfolded and flown half-way across the world three years ago when U.S. forces first invaded their country.

They have existed in a limbo ever since. Interrogators have faced few restraints. There is no outside monitoring, no public list of names of those detained, no respect by the U.S. for international law regarding treatment of prisoners. In fact, the Bush administration has created a new category—”enemy combatants”—in order to circumvent such laws.

Last November, there was much discussion in the media here about the role of the new U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gon zales, in writing a memo, approved by Bush, that condoned the use of torture in the “war on terror.”

After the gruesome testimony and photos that came out about the vile treatment of prisoners at the Abu-Ghraib prison camp in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers forced detainees to strip naked and simulate mas turbation while threatening them with beatings and electric shock if they didn’t comply, it was clear to the world that this regime, which sanctimoniously preaches “civility,” “human rights,” “demo cracy” and “freedom” to governments it wants to weaken or overthrow, has not the slightest regard for any of that when it comes to its own conduct.

The White House has now forced News week’s editors to apologize for their story, which reported that an internal investigation showed that one technique used by the Guantanamo interrogators to “soften up” detainees was to put the holiest book in the Muslim religion, the Koran, on a toilet during interrogation, and, in at least one case, to actually flush the book down.

The writer of the story, Michael Isikoff, said the Pentagon had been allowed to read his account before it ran and made no objection. Obviously, the commercial media in the U.S., who constantly refer to themselves as the “free press,” are used to submitting sensitive material to the military for approval before publication.

Given that it is widely known that U.S. military personnel routinely refer to Muslims with the most insulting of terms, and that part of the psychological warfare of a racist, predatory imperialist army is to degrade those it hopes to conquer, this story struck home and inflamed Muslims everywhere.

In Afghanistan itself, anti-U.S. demonstrations went on for days, even though they were put down with such brutality that at least 16 Afghans were killed and hundreds wounded.

There were passionate protests in Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia and many other countries.

Once this happened, the Pentagon, White House and State Department jumped on Newsweek. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the magazine’s report “appalling” and said it created “a very major problem” for the U.S. in the Muslim world.

White House spokesperson Scott McClel lan said, “Our image abroad has been damaged.”

The deaths of demonstrators were blamed on the magazine. Its editors humbly apologized.

But this was not the first time that such an account had appeared.

In August and October 2004, news reports based on a lawsuit and a written report by British citizens who had been released from Guantanamo claimed abuse by U.S. guards, including throwing their Korans into the toilet. And in January, Kristine Huskey, a lawyer representing Kuwaitis detained at Guantanamo, said they claimed to have been abused and one detainee saw a guard throw a Koran into a toilet.

The abuse and the humiliation are real. No amount of media manipulation and intimidation can change that. Newsweek has not tarnished some super-clean U.S. “image.” It has lifted the lid just a little—and then closed it again in great fear—on the cesspool of U.S. imperialism’s criminal conduct in what used to be referred to as the Third World, which has been going on for a long time but can no longer be concealed by platitudes about peace and democracy.