Keith Olbermann writes about Scott McClellan's representation yeterday that Newsweek and its unconfirmed report of desecration of the Koran by personnel at Guantanamo was responsible for the recent riots and deaths in Afghanistan.

It was just last Thursday, at a military briefing, that General Richard Myers said the protests and deaths had more to do with the continuing political and reconciliation process in Afganistan than it did to Newsweek's article about the desecration of the Koran.

Q: Do either one of you have anything about the demonstrations in Afghanistan, which were apparently sparked by reports that there was a lack of respect by some interrogators at Guantanamo for the Koran. Do either one of you have anything to say about that?

GEN. MYERS: It's the -- it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

Yesterday, McClellan said:

The media once again is falling prey to the demands of the White House. The issue is not whether Newsweek should issue a retraction. It is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should appoint a special counsel to investigate detainee claims of torture and religious persecution. The Government cannot continue to investigate itself and proclaim its innocence.

The documents obtained by the ACLU through its Freedom of Information Act request, the lawsuits filed by detainees, the dozens of interviews and two years worth of mainstream media reports all make a compelling case that this kind of abuse occurred.

We must assure the Arab world that an independent and thorough investigation will occur, that the abuse, if confirmed, will stop and that those responsible will be held accountable.

The Arab world could care less about a retraction from Newsweek. It wants action by the U.S. Government. It deserves no less.

I expressed these views this morning -- as a blogger, not a defense lawyer-- on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast .

Does anyone else sense another elevated terror threat warning is about to occur, coincidentally on the eve of the Republican threat to launch their nuclear option?

Today, Afghan clerics threatened a holy war in three days unless the U.S. turns over the Guantanamo military interrogator who allegedly flushed a Koran down the toilet.

The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted U.S. President George W. Bush to handle the matter honestly "and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment. If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America," said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

Here's an update to our earlier post skeptical of Newsweek's retraction of last week's Periscope item(about a military report stating that Guantanamo personnel had flushed a detainee's Koran down the toilet to get him to talk):

There are dozens of news articles referencing detainee allegations that guards threw korans in the toilet prior to the Newsweek article. Here's a sampling, all are available on lexis.com.

The Miami Herald March 9, 2005.

Yet recently declassified court documents allege that, as far back as 2002, some of Guantanamo's staff cursed Allah, threw Korans into toilets, mocked prisoners during prayers and deliberately took away prisoners' pants knowing that Muslims can't pray unless covered. Imagine a U.S. prisoner of war who is a devout Christian having his Bible tossed into the toilet or his rosary taken away. The U.S. government would rightly denounce such offenses as human-rights violations.

The Miami Herald March 6, 2005

Captives at the Guantanamo Bay prison are alleging that guards kicked and stomped on Korans and cursed Allah, and that interrogators punished them by taking away their pants, knowing that would prevent them from praying.

Newsweek now says its report that the officials at Guantanamo flushed a detainee's Koran down the toilet, which was responsible for protests in which 16 people were killed, was in error.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League. On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.

But read closely. Michael Isikoff and John Barry of Newsweek reported May 9 (Periscope Section)that a "knowledgable government source" confirmed a military report that investigators at Guantanamo flushed a Koran down the toilet in order to make a detainee provide information. Now the source is backtracking saying he couldn't be sure.

However, released detainees have made the same claims for months.

In January, British prisoners released from Guantanamo said guards threw their Korans into toilets and tried to force them to give up their faith. Human rights lawyer Tom Wilner, who represents several Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, said in February that his clients told him their Korans were thrown on the floor, stepped on and thrown into toilets at Guantanamo.

Via Raw Story, 51, count them, 51 members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to apoint a special counsel to investigate U.S. actions in the torture scandals and in maintaining secret detention facilities abroad. The question: Did the U.S. violate the War Crimes Act? The first paragraph:

We are writing to request that you appoint a special counsel to investigate whether high-ranking officials within the Bush Administration violated the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441, or the Anti-Torture Act, 18 U.S.C. 2340 by allowing the use of torture techniques banned by domestic and international law at recognized and secret detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

One of the last paragraphs:

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report, The Black Hole, finding that "scores" of alleged Islamic militants have been sent to Egypt for interrogation since 1994,

.... where they have faced torture and serious mistreatment. The Egyptian government has held many of the suspects in prolonged incommunicado detention. In some cases, Egypt has refused to acknowledge the whereabouts of those persons.

The Talking Dog has an interview with Josh Dratel, the New York criminal defense lawyer who is co-counsel for Guantanamo detainee David Hicks of Australia. Josh also is co-author of The Torture Papers. Here's one interesting section of the interview, but go read the whole thing.

Joshua Dratel: Of the people released from Guantanamo so far,
there seems to be something in common: they are let at out at a critical moment when due process from the American government would have to be provided otherwise. This is quite galling, actually. Because as a result of this, we are sending people to their home countries who, if the accusations against them are to be believed, are remarkably "dangerous". We know this because "factual records" for each detainee released have been made public. David, who is not alleged to have shot anyone or committed any kind of a terrorist act, is still detained.

Up until now, most of the details of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay have come from the detainees. Now, an American soldier has come forward to corrorborate the existence of treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions.

Erik Saar, an Arabic speaker who was a translator in interrogation sessions, has produced a searing first-hand account of working at Guantánamo. It will prove a damaging blow to a White House still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

In an exclusive interview, Saar told The Observer that prisoners were physically assaulted by 'snatch squads' and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques and that the Geneva Conventions were deliberately ignored by the US military. Saar paints a picture of a base where interrogations of often innocent prisoners have spiralled out of control, doing massive damage to America's image in the Muslim world.

Saar was a Bush supporter in 2000. He says Guantanamo changed his outlook.

Two more links: The allegations by Omar Deghayes that he was blinded in one eye and tortured at Guantanamo, and this report (pdf) by the Center for Constitutional Rights, consisting of the statements of detainees Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, is a must-read.

Noah at Defense Tech reports on a new energy-saving program in use at Guantanamo Bay:

Happy belated Earth Day, enemy combatants! You may be staying here at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. And lawyers might be a bit tricky to come by. But at least we won't be burning up a whole lot of oil to keep the lights on when we force you to stay awake! Nope, now we've got four brand-spanking-new, 275-foot tall wind turbines supplying the power around here, Defense Industry Daily says.

Remember Khaled el-Masri? We re-told his story here.

Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh'."

The New York Times reports today it was Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice who ordered his release five months after his wrongful imprisonment in an Afghan jail. The White House would have us all believe they didn't know much about the detainees. Rice's involvement suggests otherwise.

Human Rights Watch has released a new report on the Administration's use of extraordinary rendition - shipping suspects off to countries that are known to practice torture. It's focus is the failure of diplomatic assurances to prevent abuse.

“Governments that are using diplomatic assurances know full well that they don’t protect against torture,” said [HRW Executive Director Kenneth]Roth. “But in the age of terror, they’re convenient. Only pressure from the public in Europe and North America can stop this negative trend.”

Governments rely on a variety of devices to transfer suspects to other countries, including renditions, removals, deportations, extraditions and expulsions. But none of them is legally permissible if the person to be transferred is at risk of torture on return.