{"id":140,"date":"2005-05-22T21:24:20","date_gmt":"2005-05-23T03:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2005\/05\/22\/koran-in-a-barrel\/"},"modified":"2006-02-22T21:25:51","modified_gmt":"2006-02-23T03:25:51","slug":"koran-in-a-barrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/koran-in-a-barrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Koran in a barrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock<\/h6>\n<p><b>Sunday, May 22, 2005.<\/b> So<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> &#8230; if the International Red Cross says some Americans in some way desecrated the Koran in front of Iraqis, Afghans or other Muslims (with comparable incidents already reported months ago as part of the Abu Ghraib initial and follow-up reports &#8212; and now somehow forgotten)<\/li>\n<li> &#8230; and if a British and an American newspaper publish photos of the imprisoned Saddam Hussein naked except for a pair of briefs<\/li>\n<li> &#8230; does <i>Newsweek<\/i> magazine deserve the derision for reporting an impossibility &#8212; flushing an entire book down a toilet with no details like crumbling a page at a time &#8212; on the basis of an anonymous but official source?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> It&#8217;s shooting fish in a barrel, taking photographs of a captured man. Sure Saddam was a butcher, but one who shook hands years ago with current U.S. officials. Would the world regard Stalin in his skivvies differently? The Allies didn&#8217;t leak photos of Adolph Eichmann in his longjohns. Or Rudoph Hess &#8212; Spandex in Spandau? Am I hosen you? Leder, man.<\/p>\n<p> Here, the photos were taken by someone with access, thus likely an American Authority. And the photos got out. And if the Pentagon and White House only make a <i>Casablanca<\/i> outcry (Capt. Renault: I&#8217;m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!&#8221;), as they have, it sure sounds like this is a leak meant to be leaked.<\/p>\n<p> If there hadn&#8217;t been rioting, Washington never would have demanded a retraction from <i>Newsweek.<\/i> The magazine would not have known that its source had backed down on the allegation. If violence had occurred over Saddam&#8217;s pictures, wouldn&#8217;t the Western press face comparable pressure? Oh, yes. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 22, 2005. So &#8230; if the International Red Cross says some Americans in some way desecrated the Koran in front of Iraqis, Afghans or other Muslims (with comparable incidents already reported months ago as part of the Abu Ghraib initial and follow-up reports &#8212; and now somehow forgotten) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":37,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2003\/12\/fixing-a-hole\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":0},"title":"Fixing a hole","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Monday, December 15, 2003. The Army's capture of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ultimately is bad politically for King George II. Better explain why. Yes, it looks good: George W. Bush was right. Saddam went down like a coward not a martyr. The post-war skirmishes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News, Spin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":280,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/doubt-benefits-govs\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":1},"title":"Doubt Benefits Govs","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Briefly: The president said, most recently in this morning's news conference, that Iran -- officially or unofficially, maybe its government is behind it, knows about it, or knows-no-thing -- is behind some weaponry used against U.S forces in Iraq. You know, Iran's sometime rival, sometime enemy Iraq. Now we wait\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News, Spin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/roomie\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":2},"title":"Roomie!","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 4, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, May 4, 2005. With help of another college friend who e-mailed me out of the blue, I've gotten the e-mail address of my freshman roommate. This was well over a month ago, and only now have I written a real letter to him. If\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Life Lessons&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":110,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/09\/falling-from-a-planes-easy\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":3},"title":"Falling from a plane&#8217;s easy","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Book's as easy as falling out of a plane Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005. I own a lot of books, hundreds, and have read nearly all of them. This isn't bragging, as I haven't read all that much since college, except for my first copy-desk stint\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Course of Words&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":184,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/04\/selling-short\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":4},"title":"Selling short","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The current compromise on the Fudge Project only appears to be a third shorter. (I.e. the Divinity Project but it's named for the wan confection, nothing religious.) Nothing seems to say what brand hotel will manage the lodging part of the formerly 15- and now 10-story building on the club-cafe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Body, Home, Street&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":350,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/09\/hero-addicts\/","url_meta":{"origin":140,"position":5},"title":"Hero Addicts","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Let us consider \"hero,\" not this person or that but the word. To consider how this word is being used in the media is to review to whom it is applied. That's unfair to the person in the headline -- \"A hero remembered: [City name here] memorializes hometown soldier killed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;American Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}