Pentagon Releases Koran Desecration Details Late Friday

If the Pentagon were as good at fighting as it is a public relations, the Second World War would have ended much differently. Some clown thought it would be a good idea to release all the information about the Koran desecration claims at Guantanamo, Friday evening. The trick is an old one, to bury bad news when the media aren’t watching. But that is a generation out of date. Now, any news put out late Friday is assumed by journalists to be dirty, suspect and probably deceitful.

The Pentagon did admit to a few incidents of “mishandling” Islam’s holy book by members of the US armed forces. At the same time, it catalogued more than a dozen cases of prisoners doing the same thing. This comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention to the situation in what Amnesty International has called a “gulag.” [A delightful Stalinist contraction of the Russian gosudarstvenoye lager or “government camp”].

But the worry was that more riots may have ensued as occurred after Newsweek first reported and then recanted on a story about Koran desecration. Never mind that the President of Afghanistan, where some people died during such riots, said they had nothing to do with Newsweek (which doesn’t appear in any of the local languages). The Pentagon apparently thought that if everyone was off at Friday happy hour, no one would report on their story, and it would all go away.

Clearly, there is no situation that illustrates quite how ignorant Americans are of the people against and for whom they are fighting. A quick check of such places as the Yemeni Embassy in Washington would have told the wizards at the Pentagon that the Muslim world takes Thursday and Friday (their holy day) off. So, the release about the Koran desecration came out at 7 or so Eastern Daylight Time on Friday evening or GMT -5 hours. In Kabul, which is GMT +4.30, that release came out around 4.30 am Saturday, the very first day of a Muslim journalists work week. A press conference with Al-Jazeera live from the White House would have been only marginally better noticed.

Meanwhile, MSNBC had a news program that highlighted the late Friday release. The introductory line went something like “The Pentagon releases information admitting to Koran desecration at 7 this evening. Fortunately for you, this program airs at 8.” People are cynical about overly slick spin, and the Pentagon needs all the friends in the American press it can get. It scored beautifully with embedded journalists during the attack on Iraq. Now, it seems to have lost its way. The situation can be saved, though. Get a few people who understand the Muslim world, and Arabs in particular (a Yankee T.E. Lawrence) involved, and play it straight with the American press.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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