October 24, 2005

Democracy Arrives in Afghanistan! Basically, these bodies were decomposing, and needed to be buried or burned. So, in order to elicit attacks from the Taliban, the soldiers burned the bodies because they can't find the Taliban otherwise.
posted by Rev. Christian Mockery 19 years ago
  • ads on the linked site probably NSFW. But what's the point?
  • Yeah, they burned the bodies because of the stench, of course. Because we know that Moslem bodies start to decay that much faster than patriotic white American protestants. Who would argue? The facing them towards Mecca and taunting the villagers over tannoy was just that little bit of extra quality service that the US army supplies.
  • Omar: "well I wasn't Taliban before but now that the U.S has burned my cousin and disgraced his body... Well, I am NOW!"
  • Yeah, just like those Blackwater contractors' bodies were burned by Iraqi insurgents for "hygenic reasons". / Hearts and minds.
  • Mississippi moon, won'tcha keep on shinin' on meeeee . . .
  • I am curious, what ever happened to Al Queda?
  • I think he's working at Target now.
  • I smell a Crusade ... oh, wait, it's just a burning Muslim. On second thought, maybe it is a Crusade.
  • Just out of curiosity — having read, you know, absolutely nothing at all about this story — how do we know it's true? False accusations of misbehavior on the part of US troops seem to far outweigh true ones. Observe the totally bogus stories of Koran desecration at Gitmo from a few months back for instance. So just to raise the question, why is this not total BS? (The linked video isn't playing, and I'd hardly be inclined to believe it anyway considering it says "Don't forget kids, we also have a shitload more stuff RIGHT HERE!" in big letters right beneath it. Hardly screams credible, does it?)
  • Since you've read absolutely nothing, perhaps you could start here.
  • Hey, neat. A link to a totally generic Google search. There's no way in a zillion years I ever would have found that on my own. I can't thank you enough, Wolf.
  • Wow. Apparently Jeff Harrell's been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. How do we know anything Jeff Harrell says is not total BS?
  • no way in a zillion years I ever would have found that on my own. Well, not with your head stuck so far up your arse.
  • So you know who you're dealing with, quid, here's a window into the "mind" of Jeff Harrell. "The editors of Metafilter"?? Talk about intellectual dishonesty. I now believe that anything Jeff Harrell says is indeed BS.
  • Why are right wingers all so fuckin' dumb?
  • I like Jeff. He makes me realize how good my life is. Whenever he posts I get that warm and fuzzy "There but for the grace of God go I" feeling.
  • So … are we all coming together to build a consensus that this story is, in fact, nothing more than another in the long series of lies concocted to foment sentiment against the US and to make us as a nation look bad? Because that's how it smells to me. Y'all can attack me personally all you want. I could give a shit. I'm just asking a real easy question here.
  • "It's all lies." Either that, or, "It's all the evil Democrats' fault." Or else, "Damn those Clintons!" Ah, denial. I'm just making a real simple point here.
  • /snark You're invited to make a real argument, with real facts, any time you want, Jeff Harrell. Really. Encouraged, even. But you probably won't, because all those damn liberals will be waiting to spin your facts and tell outright lies to promote their godless pinko homo agendas. Right?
  • (Well, okay, I didn't manage to completely put away the snark. My challenge remains in any case.)
  • If it's just concocted, and they were burning the bodies for hygeine reasons, why did they face 'em towards Mecca? Or do we have proof that they *didn't* face 'em towards Mecca?
  • It'd be nice if this is concocted, much as it would have been nice if the whole Abu Ghraib thing hadn't happened. But since the latter did happen, I don't have much trouble believing the former did, too.
  • Or do we have proof that they *didn't* face 'em towards Mecca? We have absolutely no proof that they did. We don't even have strong evidence that they did. All we have is a video which was taken by a stringer of unestablished qualifications and which aired on a television network of, again, unestablished qualifications. The phrase we should be going for here is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Couple that with the fact that we've all seen out-and-out lies reported as the unvarnished truth in recent months — again, refer to the false reports of Koran desecration at Gitmo — and bells should be ringing all over the place. But instead, some folks decided to say nasty things about me. Whatever, y'all.
  • I hate it when he goes off his meds.
  • which aired on a television network of, again, unestablished qualifications SBS is majority funded by the Australian Government. Unestablished to you, perhaps.
  • Yeah, go cheney yourself, Harrell, you fuckin shill. SBS has higher objective journalistic standards than Fox news, at any rate. Twit.
  • Hey! In May, 15 people died in Afghanistan in widespread protests after Newsweek magazine reported accusations that the Koran holy book had been thrown into a toilet by a US guard at Guantanamo. Though Newsweek later retracted the article, the US authorities later said that there had been five incidents at the camp, including one where a guard had "accidentally" urinated on a Koran.
  • No no no, Wolof, if Jeff Harrell says it aint true, then it aint true la la la la not listening...
  • I'M NOT LISTENING! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! ALSO, WHAT YOUR SAYING IS LIES! AND BESIDES THIS IS NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT CLINTON DID! AND KERRY! AND GORE! Harrell, the Bushies have created this image of themselves as manipulative liars MORE than prepared to abuse those who disagree with them quite by themselves. At this point, tracicle's probably right: The onus is on you to disprove these allegations, rather than on the news report to show that your faith in Bush is misguided. Yet you present no facts; meanwhile, this news piece has real pictures, and real people who claim to be presenting real observations. Who am I supposed to believe? Of course, you'd call me a hateful anti-American for saying this. Which is a crock of shit; I love and stand for what America is really about (equality, democracy, etc.) way more than you do, from what I can gather from your blog.
  • Of course, it's "YOU'RE"
  • extraordinary That the military burned bodies? Mmmmnot really. Check out this for more family fun! In other news Other pieces criticised the practice of punishing adultery with 100 lashes and argued that men and women should be considered by Islamic law to be equals. The Ulema Council, a body of top Islamic clerics, reacted strongly against the articles. "The Ulema Council sent us a letter saying that he should be punished so I sentenced him to two years' jail," Judge Ansarullah Mawizada told the Associated Press. Yep. Democracy is the caramel to Islamic law's chewy nougat.
  • Of course, you'd call me a hateful anti-American for saying this. Hateful? Yeah. You bet. That much is in evidence from the name-calling. I'm pretty sure I've never actually used the phrase "anti-American" about anything or anybody, but don't let that stop you from being total assholes or anything. Now, would anybody care to discuss the story at hand, and whether there's any evidence of any kind at all to support it, or would you rather just call me names some more? Wolof (I think I called you "Wolf" one time because I misread your name; sorry about that) says that SBS is credible because it's funded by a government. I don't see how that works. If a US-based network were funded by the government, that would serve as an argument against its credibility. So I'm gonna go ahead and stick with "of unestablished qualifications" on this one. And I don't understand Wolof's use of scare quotes around the word "accidentally." A guard urinated outside. The wind shifted, and urine was blown through an air vent into a cell where it came into contact with a detainee's Koran. If that was on purpose, it was a masterwork of Rube Goldbergian design. Look, let's focus on the facts here, okay? Newsweek ran a story about how a Koran was deliberately flushed down a toilet. That story was 100% false, a total lie. After exhaustive investigations both by the press and the military, the closest thing anybody could find to deliberate desecration of the Koran was an incident that could be summed up as "don't piss into the wind." No deliberate desecration of the Koran ever took place at Gitmo, and yet the outrage lives on because some (I'm sure) well-meaning people were way too quick to believe a rumor. Can any of you seriously say that you're comfortable giving the total benefit of the doubt to a rumor that, on its face, is substantially less credible than the now-known-to-be-false Newsweek story?
  • Yes, he stopped reading it. Just like everyone that doesn't listen to Howard Stern. He's a total poster-child for bad over-rationalization of his irrational behavior, including NOT reading MonkeyFilter. Hey Jackass, if you don't read it, how can you be posting comments about it? Why do you "still care"? Oh, and your website is a totally lame piece of shit, which goes to show how totally hooked you are Monkeyfilter that you can't give up. It must be like smack to you.. douche. Imbecile...
  • "A guard urinated outside. The wind shifted, and urine was blown through an air vent into a cell where it came into contact with a detainee's Koran." Anyone who accepted this lame, utterly facile and unbelievable justification would have to be the stupidest person one could come in contact with. Anyone who tried to make this justification with a straight face would have to be lower than a snake's ass. "I've never actually used the phrase "anti-American" about anything or anybody, but don't let that stop you from being total assholes or anything." No, see, this is a different thing. This is being Anti-Jeff Harrell. I have no doubt you'll find plenty of *real* patriotic Americans around here to call you a douche bag, too. Have fun trying to smear them while you keep your head in the sand. I know it must be hard work.
  • Jeff certainly brings out the best in you folks.
  • There's far too much namecalling in this thread. I think it needs more cowbell. And for my part, the "oops my urine accidentally fell via this air vent onto a Koran" story is simply unbelievable. It's a great story, though. The one thing it's got going for it is that you just don't make that sort of shit up.
  • Yeah really - ease up on the Assholerator folks.
  • oops, sorry ma'am. Cross-post! *doffs hat, scurries off*
  • Jeff Harrell, I was referring to this, from your blog: "Round about the end of 2000, all that stopped, and Metafilter gradually began to morph into a hard-left, anti-American hate site. Seriously. I am not exaggerating." Which sounds to me like pretty much the exact same thing as saying "hateful" and "anti-American". Surely even you can see that. Wilfully dishonest people like you just piss me off. "The editors of Metafilter." "I never called anyone a hateful anti-American, ever." Please. (Don't worry, tracicle, I'm taking a timeout from this thread now.)
  • I stand corrected. I totally forgot using the phrase "anti-American" in that context. But now that you jog my memory … hmph. Maybe I would choose my words differently. I'm not sure. I'd have to mull it over. Just to drag this, for the Nth time, back on topic, I find it pretty interesting that when I said that I was unwilling to accept this story on face value because it's implausible and essentially undocumented, some folks here called me names and were just generally unpleasant about me personally … but then some of those same folks said that they are unwilling to believe the urine-splashed Koran story for precisely the same reasons. Is it reasonable to be skeptical or not, guys? Come on. On point, just this summer I spent a week in the Keys enjoying the hospitality of a friend-of-a-friend. He lives on a boat. One night my friend was sleeping up on deck when I heard him rouse and make his way to the starboard railing. Moments later, a warm mist wafted through my porthole. Of course, I laughed it off rather than calling for global holy war, but that's just me. Point being, "Don't piss into the wind" is a cliché precisely because it happens all the time under those sorts of circumstances. Dismissing it out of hand simply because you think it sounds implausible is, well, kinda silly.
  • Sure, it's reasonable to be skeptical. It's always a good thing. From my perspective, though, there's so much evidence that the Bush administration has played fast and loose with both the truth and human rights standards, to the point that this kind of news seems instantly credible because it's almost to be expected at this point. Your one story of an accidentally urine-splashed Koran is really just a drop in the bucket of evidence damning the Bush crew.
  • Maybe the wind blew the fire onto the bodies.
  • Well, I have heard this reported a few different ways- first, that they faced the bodies away from Mecca as a deliberate insult- then that they faced them towards mecca or "west" (Mecca is SW of Afghanistan unless my geography fails me) And although this was on legit news outlets, the fact that the FPP linked to a site that bills itself as "tasteless humor for the unemployed" doesnt really help with credibility.
  • Scare quotes aren't mine, Jeff, it's cut and pasted from the link.
  • U.S. Back at Full War Footing in Afghanistan "Operation Mountain Thrust," sounds like "Operation Mount and Thrust". You know, as in: "You're Fucked Afghanistan!"
  • Afghani women love the democracy they've been given.