| The Pentagon
spokesman who savaged Newsweek for reporting
a claim that a U.S. military report would reveal investigators
had confirmed Quran abuse lied repeatedly to the press
about such incidents, RAW
STORY has found.
On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence
DiRita quietly backtracked on his claim that investigators
had not found Quran abuse, revealing the Pentagon had
actually found five credible claims—a complete
reversal from his previous remarks.
Brigadier General Jay Hood joined DiRita for the press
conference Thursday, and confirmed that investigators
had not only found credible allegations of Quran abuse—but
that the military had recently removed a U.S. servicemember
from a security detail as a result.
GEN. HOOD: One of them was, sir. One of them. And
it was essentially for -- it would be a lot easier
if I could tell you exactly what each of the events
were, and you'd probably be a lot happier. But it
was an inadvertent action by a member of the security
force. And he was removed from his duties on that
site and given other duties. And I'll leave it at
that. And it did occur recently.
MR. DIRITA: And again, it involves, again, an inadvertent
mishandling, but one that was deemed sufficiently
-- again, with the caution that the commanders are
trying to establish, that it's inadvertent, but move
him to another set of duties.
Given the fact that the military had removed a security
member from a detail as result of credible military
findings, DiRita’s statement during a May 17 press
briefing was probably a lie.
“When a specific, credible allegation of this
nature were to be received, we would take it quite seriously,”
he said. “But we’ve not seen specific, credible
allegations.”
DiRita has not been favorable to Newsweek’s
coverage: “People are dead because of what this
son of a bitch said,” he
remarked in response to their story.
This assertion is also an apparent lie. The Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers told
reporters May 12 that he has been told that Afghanistan
rioting was related more to the ongoing political “reconciliation”
in Afghanistan than anything else.
DiRita lied again Wednesday.
Q Just to be clear. As of this point right now, are
you aware of any substantiated incident in which the
U.S. military, U.S. personnel, intentionally desecrated
a Koran?
MR. DIRITA: For the purposes of interrogation? I
mean, in other words, to -- I'm not aware of any.
And what he's looking at is log entries that indicate
that there may have been mishandling, and then the
question is what kind of mishandling was it; was it
intentional mishandling or not? And that's -- he'll
be able to talk about that.
But as we understand it at the moment, we know that
they have been extremely cautious; that the interrogators
and the police are trained to know that this is a
high sensitivity issue, so don't use it because it's
too sensitive. And then what we're trying to determine
is, are there people who violated that. And so far,
we haven't been able to develop any chain of indications
that would suggest that.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman also lied in articles
that appeared May 17.
"What we know is that the Newsweek story about
a Koran desecration is demonstrably false, and thus
far there have not been any credible allegations of
willful Koran desecration, and Newsweek hasn't produced
any such evidence either," Whitman told
reporters.
In a press briefing as late as Wednesday, White House
press secretary Scott McClellan repeated the Pentagon’s
claims, and sought to place blame on detainees, who
he said “are taught to mislead and to provide
false reports.”
MR. McCLELLAN: You can check with the Department
of Defense on his words, but I know that they have
publicly said that they have found nothing to substantiate
any such allegations. There have been allegations
made by detainees. We know that members of al Qaeda
are trained to mislead and to provide false reports.
We know that's one of their tactics that they use.
And so I think you have to keep that in mind, as well….
Q Are you saying that there is no substantiation
of any Koran desecration at all at Bagram or Guantanamo
Bay?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, if you look back, I think the
Department of Defense briefed last week, and they
talked about the specific allegation that you're bringing
up, and they have found nothing to substantiate any
such allegation. In terms of the handling of the Koran,
that's a different matter, and they have talked about
that, so you might want to look back at what they've
said.
As Pentagon investigations continue, DiRita may also
face heat for a May 20 comment, in which he said, “We
just have found no indication that as a matter of interrogation
policy, the Koran was used.”
At the briefing Thursday, Hood declined to provide
detail on the five confirmed allegations that the Quran
was mishandled.
Despite other falsehoods, DiRita has so far been correct
in asserting that a Newsweek claim that U.S.
investigators found soldiers flushed a Quran down a
toilet was false; the Pentagon has not admitted to finding
evidence to that effect.
The initial May 17 lie was first
reported by the progressive thinktank, Center for
American Progress.
Article originally published May 27, 2005. |
