Thursday, May 26, 2005

Speaking of epistemology, here's Michelle Malkin on the koran abuse...

Well, at least she responded here.


It should be obvious to anyone who so much as glances at the documents being cited that the FBI was reporting the statements of detainees rather than endorsing or validating those allegations. Immediately before describing the Koran-in-the-toilet allegation, the FBI notes the detainee's statement that "God tells Muslims to do a jihad against non-Muslims." Does Kos expect us to believe the FBI is endorsing that statement too?

Many detainees have made allegations of serious physical abuse as well as mistreatment of the Koran. Notwithstanding the MSM's "flood the zone" coverage, that's neither unexpected nor particularly newsworthy.

Are the detainees' complaints valid? Maybe some are. But the FBI documents heralded by Kos and others as evidence of abuse actually show that a significant number of detainees' complaints were either exaggerated or completely fabricated.

One detainee who claimed to have been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog" could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive and told detainees that U.S. soldiers were having sex with the detainees' mothers. Yet this detainee said he had neither seen any physical abuse nor heard these comments from the guards...

  • Is she saying, "Don't believe them, they're Muslims?" It seems that way.
  • The construction fallacy is rampant here (A is contained in B implies that if A is false, B is false).
  • The "blame the victim" mentality also seems pretty evident in Malkin's screed.
She does say read the FBI reports though. On that, at least, I can agree. But my reading of those documents shows pretty damning evidence that troops calling themselves from the US have been been engaging in the kind of actions we Americans and human rights groups have deplored for decades.

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