LATimes Keeps Up The Idiocy

15 dead not enough? How about 19? 25? Do I hear 50?

Not to be outdone by Newsweek's jump on the Death by Journalism market, the LATimes has loosed its considerable investigatory powers onto the Koran desecration story, without care to the possible results of dead Muslims or threatened US soldiers:

An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and U.S. military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Koran, not only at Guantanamo, but also at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There you have it: Seven, count 'em, seven, different investigatory directions have been pursued by the LAT on this story. We don't have an indication of whether they started their investigation before or after the Newsweek story triggered riots, killed people and hurt America's image -- but it is clear they're not learning from Newsweek's experience and are doggedly pursuing the story.

The article, which takes three jumps to read in its entirety, is short on named sources. No US sources are quoted validating the charges. Five detainees are quoted, and combined they have no believability. Here's a typical allegation:

"They tore it and threw it on the floor," former detainee Mohammed Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. "They urinated on it."

I read somewhere this morning that Muslim demonstrators urinated on a Bible yesterday. I thought at the time, "Gee, all that Abu Ghraib sensationalism said it was reprehensible for Muslim men to be nude in public. Someone tell me exactly how one urinates without being naked in one critical part of the body?"

So when I read this urination allegation in the LAT story, my main response is, "Why do they bother? And who cares?"

They bother because they are more anti-Bush and anti-American then they are sensible. And the only people who care are the two tribes that Mark Steyn's column detailed so beautifully today -- the radical Arabs and the radical media.

Steyn, by the way, fingers the instigator of the deadly Koran riots as Imran Khan, a wealthy cricket star with a celebrity English wife. Let's hear it for the Arab street! What a bizarre world.