=jr050517 JOURNAL FROM 17 MAY '05 Version 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------- If I had it to do over again, I would have married in my 20s -- the first half maybe -- like a normal Israeli. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent IHT via SwissCom 17 May '05 Careful reading of the Nay 23 Newsweek article suggests that desecreation of the Koran did occur but is not legally proeveable. --------- Notes: I read that article in record skim, standing up in the Bellinzona railway station, because this was the start of the 2- Ming phase of the month. It is not a retraction, and not an apology. Nor is an analysis of what went wrong with the article, nor of what really happened. Very well swaddled in the bobbing and weaving an shucking and jiving are two points: 1) The Source did not have first hand knowlege of the incident, he merely read some of the investigative reports and/or a draft of the Army study of those reports. 2) The source first told Ishikoff, the Newsweek Reporterthat there would be a Pentagon Report -- from SoCom, the Southern Command, which includes Guantanomo -- that would note incidents of desecration of the Torah, including one where a copy was flusehd down the toilet. The seems to indicate that the Source had been on the Circulation list for a nearly-final, or final but unreleased, copy of the Report. 3) About a week later, re-contacted by Ihikoff, the Source said he could not now say for sure whether he read of those incidents in the SoCom report, or in other investigative reports. One would have to go over his precise phrasing, but the implication seems to be that he read a final or near-final draft of the Report, which was subsequently modified to delete or minimize reports of desecration of the Koran. It would seem likely that it was in anticipation of that that the Source leaked the information. One does not run the risk of leaking something that will be published. A responsible government official, which this source must have been for Newsweek to base a major article on his word, does not forget where he read something, and does not say after a week that he can no longer remember where he read something, unless he has been spotted by the Bushie's and threatened with something very serious. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Re; IHT 18 May '05 The issue is not whether the 'Gypsies' shouild be allowed to stay in Germany, but whether the Germans should. "Germany should by reparations for a thousand years and then turn itself into a marina." (sa) --------------------------------------------------------------- Re; IHT 18 May '05 It is the poor people of Europe, Israel (including 'Palestinians'), and the USA who benefit from the cheap Chinese yen, and only USA plutocrats who complain. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 18 May '05 (News reports) Again: The 23 May '05 article does not retract allegations that the Koran was desecrated; it clarifies the difficulty of confirming such allegations. And the Source for the Newsweek story was not anonymous, but insisted that his identity be concelaed, known apparently only to the reporter. No doubt the U.S. has no policy of desecrating the Koran. But it tolerates some very highly-placed officials -- Cheney and Rumsfeld come to mind -- who tolerate such desecration. The IHT has simply avoided dealing with this quite major issue. And now the management of Newsweek seems to trying its darndest to roll over, restrained no doubt by its more ethical reporters. ----------- Notes after reading 23 May '05 Newsweek article very fast: 1) SOURCE indicated that the SoCom (Southern Command) REPORT WOULD_INLCUDE reports of desecration of the Koran, involving a toilet N.B.: The IHT, which has no signed article, editorial, nor Op-Ed on this issue -- maybe the initial report of riots in Afghanistan was signed -- pussyfooted around the toilet incident -- I had the initial impression that one might find it resting on the tank cover, or maybe even precariously balanced on the seat -- if there are either in the prisoners' quarters in Guantanamo, which seems unlikely and would be most problematic for security -- But now it seems to me that the pages must have been torn out and placed over the rim, maybe moistened with water or worse to stay in place -- so that the prisoner would have to sit on them -- aa further desecration -- Incidentally, Rice did not deny the allegations, she said only that they were unproven -- 2) SOURCE later said, after the flap had broken, and no more than a few weeks after his first Leak, that he was no longer sure if he had read those allegations in the SoCom Report, or in other investigatibve reports -- Well, if the SOURCe was reliable enough for Newsweek to base a very controversial report on him, written by two of its leading staff, he is not likely to have had the mind of a senile old man - - he would have clearly remembered where hhe read so controversial an allegation, and he would not have forgotten that in a few weeks -- and if he was not sure of his source, hhe would clearly have indicated that to the Reporters -- So presumably someone in the Cheny__Rumsfeld__Bushie administration put some very heavy pressure on him The IHT left the impression, if memory serves, that he may have seen a draft that was not the final draft of the Report -- or that had been the final draft but then was taken back for some changes -- Preesumably the material he Leaked was about to be cut out, and he knew it. He would not have taken the very serious risks of leaking if it had not been necessary, and if he had not been completely sure of what he was saying. So if he said he was not sure if it was in the SoCom Report that he read those allegations, that would likely mean that he was not sure if what he read did indeed turn out to have been the final draft. Incidentally, the Pentagon acknowleged two incidents. In one, a detainee was said to have himself stuffed the Koran down a faulty toilet, to stop it from -- overflowing, maybe -- or as a protest gesture -- Well, that does seem quite a crude fabrication -- for one thing, the toilets are clearly not in the cells, since the detainees are reported as having been confronted with the descration after it had occurred -- so they would not be unobserved in the toilets -- and for another thing, even an insane detainee who desecrated the Koran would be severely beaten or worse other Islamic detainees -- And with all the opportunities for denial, no outright denials were made, since that could open one up to an eventual charge of perjury. They just say there is no evidence, or that it could not possibly have occurred since there were clear directives to the contrary -- on which basis there would never have been cause for court-martial in the US armed forces -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 18 May ''5 (Editorial) Like the JW's say, and the USA Yahoo's too, the Theory of Evolution is bunk. If it was true there should be evidence of millions of failed species that never made it to the Survival of the Fittest. And the human body would not work as if it wer manufactured by a klutz after a 3-martini lunch. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Re IHT 18 May '05 (Cohen) The threat of a Russian invasion of western Europe having substantially receeded in the last 50 years, it is hard to imaigne why anyone beside the local whorehouse owner would want U.S. troops to remain in European nations. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 18 May '05 (Editorial) 'Intelligent design' is, generally speaking, no less appropriate and useful notion than Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' -- neither is a theory, subject to confirmation and disconfirmation - - for explaining evolution. Nor are 'supeernatural explanations' "wildly inappropriate" in discussions of natural phenomenon. And the U.S. Constitutional injuntion that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion does not entail that religious conceptualization must be excluded from discussions in state schools. Intellectual discussion must be open to all bona fide perspectives. As religious literalists have indicated, on sound intellectual ground, the Darwinian 'theory of evoluton' has many points and areas of inadequacy, and is long overdue for both serious and popular critical discussion. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 18 May '05 -- (Harvard Prof. of Cgnitive Science, Pinsker ) The existence of 'homophobia' as a social phenomenon should not be taken for granted. Unless that term is pejoratively extended beyond reasonable usage, homophobia would seem to be no more prevalent and no less neurotic than any other phobia -- against water (the cat, sir, is your worst offender here), crowds (a rather important survival mechanism, however socially unproductive), heights (also important as a survival mechanism). Mosd herterosexually secure males regard homosexuals as no more than a curiosity. For Pinsker to attribute homophobia to "cross-wiring between our sense of morality and disgust" is preposterous, exetnding a metaphor to pseud__neuro_physiology. Nor is it psychologically apt, ordinary-language analysis would, I guess, show little correlation. A spot of vomit outside a pub, or piles of poo in cities deficient in public loos, is disgusting, but not immoral. The bombing of Dresden, Nagasaki, and North Vietnam was evualated as immoral but did not arouse feelings of disgust in those who learned of it, for the most part long after the and far from the act. Pinsker is conceptually inept in suggesting that "religious rituals of cleanliness and purification" are a sort of obsessive behavir -- he does not use the term 'obsessive' for some or many "people [who] confuse their own revulsion with objective sinfulness". Considering the reported incidents of officially instigated immoral and disgusting behavior shown by U.S. interrogators toward Muslim prisoners, this is a politically harmful misconception. Islam, and to a lesser extent Judaism, makes much more place than Christianity for "religious rituals of cleanliness and purification". Persons committed to these religions do such rituals from a sense of religious obligation that be definition overrides personal feelings. A sort of epiphenomenal sense of personal unclearnliness may for some sometimes come into play, but it is not motivationally determinative. The notion of 'religious obligaton' is definitive of orthodox Judaism, and I think of Islam, but seems to have very little place in modern Christianity, which may then misperceive it as as merely neurotic, although few of its practioners could reasonably be termed neurotic in the ordinary use of that term. Well, Harvard College has a distinguished roster of arriviste Jews clingling with desperate denial of their own people and cultural heritage to those WASPlike imagined heights. And Bellow got a Nobel for intellectual pop and pap, trashing Delmore Schwartz, rather a great neo-classical poet, along the way. There is more point in terming -- exclusively only -- homosexual behavior as a 'biological error' -- though in a nonvaluational sense -- than in so terming devotion to one's offspring (shown by most species), or devotion to one's mate (shown by many specieis) or in tolerance of members of one's own species (shown by almost all species except man). One rarely chooses one's sexual inclinations, except in trying to cultivate an attatchment to a too-familiar spouse. But one choose how to act sexually. Judaism, and I think Islam, both place no moral onus on male homosexual inclination -- female homosexuality is practically ignored -- but strictly forbid male homosexual pracice. Again, it is clear that the U.S. military, with the indulgence and most likely instigation of Cheney and Rumsfeld, has had a policy of deliberately violating the religious practices of Muslim prisoners, under the sophmoric notion that this will demoralize them and so make them more informative -- an especially disgusting policy since, giving the ineptitude shown by the USA in fighting its imagined war against terroristm, most of the USA's Islamic prisoners probably have practically no relevant information to yield. Nor is it the case the people can not be seduced (Pinker's term 'converted' is inappropriate) to sexual behavior not in harmony with their true nature; most normal young men try to do it with a rather large number of young women by at least the third date, as_it_is_said, "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker" (Dorothy Rothschild Parker). Nor, despite the demands of intellectual fashion in Cambridge, can Pinker quite say that "what consenting adults do in private is nobody's business but their own". First of all, the notion of 'informed consent' comes into play; it's not nice to bugger the village idiot even though he smiles and drools the whole time. More generally, what consenting adults do in private becomes public business insofar as it may reasonably be said to threaten public health and/or safety. Nor is homosexuality especially fascinating except to those whom it tempts, it seems merely a statistical aspect of the redundancy of evolution, somewhat like sending forth a million sperm when one will do (as Woody Allen so delightfully illustrated in his movie.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 18 May '05 (Wadler) "Al Wilsey, a businessman with ... money from a faily dairy business that supplied McDonald's with the tallow to make french fries" So in short McDonald's french fries are fleischig, not , as I had assumed, cooked in vegetable oil and so , pareve. Well, McDonald's has no hexsure, but I had thought to work around that. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 16 May '05 (Bumiller) quoting Buchanan's column, 11 May '05 Pat Buchanan has termed Stalin "the most odious tyrant of the century" Looks like Pat Buchanan would be more accurately termed 'facist' than 'conservative' . Or at least as indifferent, at best, to Jews. -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 16 May '05 (hertzberg) Even if the Catholic Church is "free of errors on doctrine and morality" that is a matter only of eternal values, and not relevant to its position and actions on realtime issues, in particular during the Nazi genocide. Obviously the Church is not responsible for and did not collaborate in the Shoah, in contrast to its position during the Crusades. Although, with some individual exceptions, it seems to have made little notable effort, much less heroic effort, to oppose it. The Vatican cannot remain faithful to its own tradition and also , as Hertberg suggests "question the orthodox [ (!)) -- within Catholicism, unlike Judaism, there is no non-orthodox grou ]. But following the example of rabinic Judaism when confronted with an infallible Torah that includes intolerable Biblical edicts -- in particular a large number of capital offenses -- the situation can be circumscribed with restrictions, and thus finessed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- When I visited she would apologize for working in the kitchen while we talked. One day she dropped me a note that read 'These are my last words to you.' --------------------------------------------------------------- My father was once arrested in Pittsburgh for speeding on horseback in Schenley Park. the judge found him guilty but charged the cops for the case. Later he did War work which needed Security Clearance and each time he filled out a form that asked, Were you ever arrested he answered Yes for speeding on horseback. (Olivone, Spring '05) -------------------------------------------------------------- Of course the aesthetics of music is 'transcendentally absolute' - - for our specieis -- and to a lesser exteent so are painting and of course ethics -- they touch chords in the human psyche. A dog would have different aesthetic criteria. One has abstract painting, but not abstract cuisine. As R. Shlomo would contrive an illustration, as a sort of reductio ad absurdum: I walk into this very chic restaurant, they serve me a sushi platter with a a bit of dry grass, a piece of year-old asparagus, a little dollop of dogturd, and say, it's the very latest culinary experience, bon appetit. Religion too -- some rituals will be welcomed by people of good will, other rituals only by obvious perverts. One may sacrifice an animal on the altar, but not your neighbor's daughter. So prisoners must be granted religious freedom, as an inalienable human right, but that does not extend to satanists. And if you ask, but how can we distinguish, I will reply, how can you not. and apologetics for the latter -- as for some, insurrecitonsis (PLO) -- are mere epistemic fallibilism at best -- a refusal to make value judgements, on the groud that any judgement may under some circumstances be shown to have been wrong. The "how can we ever know" gambit. Which of course is correct, but so what -- that's merely an inevitable aspect of being human. Do the best you can, you can't be asked to do more than taht. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Climbing the green mountain in spring rain the driver plays American Rap loudly. (17 May '05, Aquaross--Olivone bus) --------------------------------------------------------------- Nonsense dialogue (after Peanuts) "According to one theory, a whole lot of the birds which you see when you go out for a walk at night ain't birds at all, they are AerOplanes." " ::::::::::::cccc:::::: ? " "I know. This is something which science cannot yet explain." ------------------------------------------------------------------ COMPUTER NOTES: BitTorrent, Sweden -- fastest file-sharing yet -- though it would seem to require a 1 Mbit to 100 Mbit /second optical fiber broadband connection. As I recall, what I had in Israel was about 900 Kbit ADSL. Which was certainly fast enough for everything except maybe realtime video. A telephone connection is of course 56 Kbit /second maximum, and practially, areound 36 Kbit . -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 19 May 'l05 (Avnery) Uri Avenery, hwo is politically correct to a fault, might have noted that the tune of HaTikva, the Israel national anthem, seems based on a theme from Smetna's The Moldau. As to Averny's claim that in 1967 "the neighboring countries had not intended to attack but merely to bluff" -- no nation apparently facing a war of annihilation can be blamed for a pre_emptive attack. And if the Arab states were merely bluffing in an attempt to obtain territory without war, it seems implausible that they would not have attacked had their bluff been called. The IHT publishes a small number of unreprsentative Jewish writers who tell its readers what they want to hear- -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 20 May '05 ÿ(Hoge) Clearly an annotated English bilingual re-translation of Dag Hammarskjold's manuscript Vagmarken, translated by Auden as Markings in 1964, is much overdue. Apparently the reported critical essays on that translation by Kai Falkman, which one hopes are or will be available on Internet, would be the best starting point. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Were a dog to poop on his stoop and I scoop it up, Honest George would surrely say that's mine; put it back. ----------------------------------------------- Modern Germany -- no-fault genocide. -------------------------------------------------------- One might mourn that Sharon lost his soul, and spirit too, but not his obsolete body. 19 May '05 --------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 21 May '05 (Golden) Speaking as a U.S. citizen, I would urge all members of the U.S. National Guard to refuwe further service, on the ground that under present U.S. policies they they may be ordered to perform 'blatntly illegal' acts. This refusal should continue until there is clear evidence that U.S. policy has changed. One criterion of such change would be the replacement of the applicable chain_of_command, starting with Cheney and Rumsfeld. Members of the Israel armed forces are not merely allowed but required to refuse to obey a 'blatantly illegal' order -- most notably Rabin's order to break the arms or legs of Palestinians arrested during violent demonstrations. ----------------------------------------------------------------- re: IHT 21 May '05 (Noceera) Closed-source applications, primarily Microsoft, must fall to open_source , because the latter enable maximum responsiveness the the practically unlimited range of user needs. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 21 May (editorial) The potential viciousness of capitalism is illustrated by an IHT editorial calling for increased access to combat roles for womenin the armed forces -- as a career move for the lower class. "You bet your life." Heaven created women to bear and nurture children -- to give life, not to take it. It is indecent to unnecessarily put a women, especially of child-bearing age, in a position where she may have to kill. Israel and the USSR have used women in combat roles, but only when the survival of their nation at people was in clear and present danger. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The official U.S. position is that torture, and intentional violation of prisoners' religious sensibilities, by members and employees of its armed forces was a sort of frat_house prank, absolutely unauthorized. But no army allows its soldiers nor employees such license. That applies especially to interrogation, which is one of the black arts. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Early in the morning but not too early Honest George drives up to the Restorante and parks by the Terrasse. Everyone else parks in the parking lot but Honest George parks by the Terrasse. (22 May '05) -------------------------------------------------------------- Leary once said that no man should serve in government past the age of procreation. One can see that in Rumsfeld, rather a dried up old fruit who, bearing responsibility for the deliberate use of torture in interrogation by the U.S. armed forces, is one of the crueler facists in recent history. As to who initiated that policy, this was most likely shared amongst Cheney, Bushie, and Rumsfeld. ----------------------------------------------------------------- It is most important that the SO(W) not involve itself in politics (tempting as it may be for an ostensibly Islamic group of Euro_yuppies to accommodate liberal political fashion and so bash Israel,) And this is especially important in Switzerland, which serves as the foremost, and one of the few, neutral nations in the world. But, following the precedent of PVK's endorsement of Amnesty International (albeit in the 1970s, when AI had not become to some extent politicized, at least, or so it seems to me, regarding Israel) -- the SO should continue to advocate for human rights. That may seem political, especially as the USA is presently the most conspicuous offender, even though most likely quantitaively no worse than one of the worst of the supposedly civilized nations. But defense of human rights is not political, because human rights are universal, something which all people are "endowed by their Creator" (Jefferson/Madison, U.S. Declaration of Independence. ) Meanwhile, the SO should keep confidential material, in particular its membership and mailing lists, out of the USA. As yet there has been no anti_Islamic withchunt, analogous to the USA anti_Communist witchhunt of the 1950s , but one ought not ignore that possibility. The Bush Administration's frequent professions of respect for non_violent religous Islam seem no deeper than opportunism. ---------------------------------------------------------------- One is held responsinble for what one does -- voluntarily, in general -- but not for what one is. That is, one may be held responsible for giving active affront, but not, in general -- within societal norms, as a rule of thumb - - for giving passive affront. Interactions must be evaluated dyadically in any utilitarian or even social calculus. Though I harm your feelings by shouting, would I not do more harm to my own feelings by remaining quiet -- eg if I am dabbling my toes in a pond stocked with minature sharks (bansai, I say), And any calculs must weight for orders of magnitude. Minimizing physical harm takes priority, in general, over mimimizng harm to feelings. And minimizing harm to feelings takes precedence, in general, over minimizing harm to 'religious sensibilities'. (That is R. Zalman's maxim, "Do not turn the Shabat into a battlebround." Eg, throwing stones at cars that drive down Bar Ilan Street, even though it shouild be closed to traffic: or shouting "Shabbos!" at some old frump who keeps her kiosk open in Sfad on Shabat, or even picketing a mixed swimming pool in Ramot. (Now this principle may be used to justify desecration of the Koran in interrogation. And even of torute, (That is the Israel "ticking bomb" principle. )Though of course the justification is dependent upon a reasonable estimation of the circumstances.. Of course social correctness is often used as a power-tool. If you say to me, you make me feel bad, then I am the defendant against your accusation -- you are the prince(ss) and I am the churl, Earl. As R. Shlomo ofen points out, one of the Adversarry's favorite tricks is 'raising the ante' -- postng as your moral or religious superior, and then telling you, sorry, but you're just not quite good enough to play in the gaeme -- 'How could you dare to step into the Bet Knesset, why you haven't even covered your kneecaps. And as R. Shlomo would say, this is like saying to an accident victim, You can't come into our nice clean hospital looking like that, go home and get cleaned up first, then we'll be gald to see you. This is why I always say, "No hablo Psychobabble" -- some very elaborate in-grouop games have been built up on this basis, most for the upper-middle classes -- no doubt in competition for rising into a higher class -- and Everyman, "ben Adam", "the son of Man" -- yes, that was how Jesus referred to himself, and i think it did not mean, I am the culmination of all mankind, but was merely a sort of tactful self- abasement, the sort of thing Jack Kennedy used to do with such grace, and Georgie Bush flops when he tries -- something like "Shmendrik here" -- ain't likely to learn the rules wihtout having spent thousands of dollars in psychotherapy groups -- a sort of tennis club for couch potatoes -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Walking back to my camp between rainsqualls I am caught in the rain Noticeing an abandonned umbrulla I pick it up fold it neatly and carry it in my hand. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 24 May '05 (Manly) It is apparent now that the Bush Administration has put substantial pressure on major USA news media, including the NY Times , which is the primary source for the IHT, to limit publication of news stories based on sources who request that their identity be withheld. Such a policy would greatly reduce publication of news from internal critics of any organization, in particular the U.S. military. In particular, reports of abuse of military prisoners will be greatly reduced, since any soldier reporting such abuse would risk prison at best. As foreign observers are starting to remark, the coverup to the Newsweek story may be a greater scandal than the original story. And the media are frantically spinning the approprate buzzwords to discredit those allegations without actually denying them. First of all, the Source was not 'anonymous', but rather, withheld his identify. That source evidently was identified by the Bush administration, and came under substantial pressure, in response to which he then denied, not his claim that he had read reports of desecration of the Koran, but merely his claim that he had read them in the -- final draft, or so it was implied -- of the SoCom Report. Unless he is suffering from Alzheimer's, a senior government offical does not normally, within a few weeks, forget nor even lose certainty of where it was that he read something so significant that he risked his career and maybe freedom to leak it to the press. And again, his reported denial can be interpreted as saying, with intentional ambiguity, not that hwe was no longer certain where it was that he read the report, but rather, that he was no longer certain that the report he read was the final draft of the SoCom Report . And that would be true if the report he read had been intended as the final draft, but was withdrawn or revised subsequent to the time that he told Newsweek that he had read the (then presumably final draft of) the SoCom Report. In Washington D.C. there is a great art in being as misleading as possible without actually lying. Relative to epistemology, this topic is related to that of media bias. It points the way toward a new and much less naive theory of meaning. Austin's notion o f'perlocutionay force' is like a first step into the ocean of it. We start by expanding the notion of designation and connotation, to designation, connotation, and insinuation. Again, this Source is neither anonymous nor unidentified, he merely withheld his identity from publication, while making it kown to the Newsweek staff with whom he dealt -- a reporter, a researcher, and presumably at least one Editor. Considering how obsequious senior editors are toward the government, most sources would not be very hesitant to put themselves at risk. Especially since the Bush Administration has already taken several senior reporters to court under threat of imprisonment for contempt, to force them to reveal their sources. In short, freedom of the press is now very much at risk in the USA. There were never more than a few publications that one could trust, now the NY Times and IHT are compromised. (Newsweek and TIME were never very trustworthy.) Secondly, Newsweek did not retract the allegations of desecration of the Koran, it simply reported that its Source now said he was not sure of his own source. ----------------------------------------------------------------- There is a pattern to the reported incidents of abuse of Islamic religious sensibility which indicates that these incidents stemmed from a deliberate inteligent and weird policy, and were not merely, as the offical scape_goat cover_up claims, instances of spontaneous sophmoric callousness and cruelty -- the sort of thing Georgie Bush was rememberd for by some of his Yale schoolmaates -- by a few dumb southern crackers like Lyndie England. The rationale is sufficiently odd that it must have come from someone of rather high military rank, or more likely from one of the rather weird ideologues who pull the strings of the present U.S. administraiton. First of all there is the assumption that prisoners who did not give useful information were not innocent passers-by, but were hardened terrorists who had but refused to divulge information important to the safety of USA citizens. Second was the assumtion that these hardened terrorists were exceptionally strongly motivated to withstand interrogation, that that their motivation stemmed from their religious belief. Third was the assumption that the religious belief of Islam is a sort of idolatry of not satanism -- and that it is not truly religious belief, in the sense that Christianity is. (Jewish religious belief seems for reasons of USA culture and politics to have been umbrulla'd under Christian religious belief, although the Bush administration's attitude toward Islam has distrubing points of similarity to the Nazi attitude toward Judaism. Someone Jewish following these reports may think, "There but for the grace of G_d go we." ) Fourth was the assumption that Islamic religious belief imposes obligations which allow no exceptions. (I do not know Islamic principles, but in Jewish and in American Indian belief, even the most devout are obligated only to try to do the best they can under the circumstances. Most of the holiest rabbi's and other spiritual leadrs of European Judaism went to their deaths under the Nazi regime in circumstances in which they were forced to continuously violate almost all Jewish religious obligations -- yet their memory is revered by even the most strictly observant within orthodox Judaism. ) Fifth was the assumption that if an Islamic prisoner could be forced to violate the religious obligations of Islam -- through contact with a woman, or through being force to acquiesce ihe desecration of his sacred scripture -- that he would then assume personal guilt for an act that he had been powerless to prevent, and that as a consequence of that personal guilt his self-image as a holy warrior would be destroyed, and his will to resist interrogation broken. Well, this is quite an elaborate chain of reaoning, and not the sort of thing one would expect of someone who barely graduated from high school, joined the National Guard because she/he had no other ecnomic option as good, and was considered to have the ability to rise beyond the lowest ranks in it.