What I find interesting is that even if he DIDN'T retract, there was never any support for his allegation - i.e. there were only the unverified words of a detainee (who has motive and training to make such allegations). So how could the attention, even before the retraction, be justified?

(cricket noise)

This story made no sense from the start. If someone flushed a Bible all it would do is piss me off and make me more determined no to cooperate. Besides, it would show me that they weren't serious about torture and which would further embolden me, and finally, I would completely lose respect for my interagators who couldn't have demonstrated their total stupidity, total incompetance and utter desperation any better than by such a sutpid and incompetant move.

On the other hand, I fully support this.

Quick! Someone e-mail Howard!

I personally do not believe that the 'flushed Qur'an' story happened--as has been pointed out, these guys are trained to make false allegations, the more embarassing to America and the war effort against Islamofascists the better--but that doesn't mean that it DIDN'T happen, let alone that it could not have happened. After all, the detainee making the original allegation COULD have been telling the truth.

Whether the original allegation was true or not, the report that the detainee has retracted an allegation that so successfully discredited America, the US military, and the GWOT even in Afghanistan was puzzling to me. Nevertheles, I can think of four explanations for the story that the detainee that made the original accusation has retracted the allegation:

1. The detainee might have been tortured into retracting the story;

2. The detainee may not have retracted the story, rather, the Pentegon may be making the retraction up--the detainees retraction, at this point, is no more than a report by the Pentagon that the detainee retracted the story;

3. The detainee may be messing with our heads and sooner, rather than later, the detainee may falsely claim to have been tortured into retracting the story;

4. The detainee may simply have been appalled that Muslims have been killed by Muslims during protest of a story that originated with him and so, to attempt to prevent further deaths he retracted the story.

None of these is anything more than the imaginings of a fevered mind and I claim nothing about their veracity, only that they seem plausible to me.

I would also add that none of the above, even if objectively true, justifies the Newsweek report.