So I ask you what good will come from this story?
What purpose does it have?
Who will benefit from this new information?

Please explain this a little more. What you said was very interesting and I believe in full freedom of the press but I guess I just wanted people think how the world really is rather than what it should be. And does our freedom put other people or ourselves in danger? I don't know the answer to that.

Anyone who feels compelled to make a responsible decision about their elected representatives benefits from having truthful information presented to them. The more information the public has about what its government is doing in its name, the more likely it is to make that informed decision. That is inherently good. The purpose is ensuring transparency and holding the government accountable to the will fo the people.

The facts are not always pretty, but ignoring them or wishing them to go away is irresponsible.

"Go back to bed America. Your Goverment has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America. Your Goverment is in control again. Here, Heres American Gladiators. Watch this. Shut up. Go back to bed America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it. Watch these pituary retards bang thier fucking skulls together and congradulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America. You are free to do as we tell you. You are free to do as we tell you."
Bill Hicks

American Gladiators or the OC or the Apprentice or Survior or what have you. Slavery becomes irrelevant when a complex reward and motivation system is established. "You take this and spend it on that. I give you alot of this for doing what I tell you."

And yet Bush was relected. Somehow these black eyes have not been enough for a vote in new leadership.

Unfortunately that has more to do with an ignorant, brainwahsed, placated, disconnected, and apathetic general public than with Bush's talent(or lack therof) as a leader.

who gives a fuck. no one gives a shit if someone were to flush or burn a bible. if they did, you haven't heard of any riots going on and the ACLU is definitely not going to get involved. i hate this whole you gotta be on your tip-toe around muslims. most of these extremists would look for any excuse to throw a tantrum and bust some skulls. newsweek is fucking trash, i use it to wipe my ass on the toilet. shame on any moron who takes their word literally.

and at the same time shame on the fucking interrogators for using such bullshit tactics to try to sway their prisoners. high school jock mentality fer sure dooodz!

I tend to agree with what monastrell has said in this thread. I would just like to say that I assume that the reason that Newsweek retracted what they printed was not so much because of pressure from the White House or anything so much as that all they had was a source who backed out when the shit hit the fan. Probably they should have dug a little deeper before printing anything, but I don't really hold it against them that they backtracked. I do hold the White House accountable for lying, since these are government documents. Evidently they did not even so much as check the story out before denying everything and calling for people's heads on platters.

I, for one, am not elated. I just think it's funny that when the truth is revealed the ditto heads are no where to be found. Flushing a symbol of anyones religion in a toilet (if is makes it to the drain or not) is just wrong. However, the denial that such an action might possibly take place was ridiculous. Living in a blue state, I don't get to much fundamentalist dogma thrown at me on a daily basis. That being said, there are places where this is not the case and fundamentalists are among the worst examples:

From the Charlotte Observer -

Posted on Wed, May. 25, 2005

Pastor unrepentant over sign

'The Koran needs to be flushed!' says message at Forest City church

KEN GARFIELD

Religion Editor


An N.C. Baptist official Tuesday said he worries that a sign outside a small church in Forest City could incite "negative actions" toward Christians around the world.

"The Koran needs to be flushed!" states the sign outside Danieltown Baptist Church in the small town some 60 miles west of Charlotte.

The Rev. Creighton Lovelace put up the message on the changeable sign last Friday and will likely put up a new saying this Friday. In between, the 23-year-old Forest City native is answering critics and explaining to national media outlets why he chose to demean the Quran, the holy book for the world's second largest religion: Because, he said, they don't worship Christ as the son of God.

"I don't hate Muslims," Lovelace told the Observer. "I don't hate Islamic people. I just hate the false doctrine."

Norman Jameson, a spokesman for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in Cary, said the hallmark of Southern Baptist life is that Lovelace's church enjoys the autonomy to put up whatever sign it chooses. While stressing that the anti-Muslim sentiment does not reflect any position of the N.C. Baptist Convention, Jameson said he's spoken with Southern Baptist missions administrators about the sign's possible effect on Baptists overseas.

Jameson said there has been no talk of relocating missionaries or other Southern Baptists from potential trouble spots. But that doesn't keep him from worrying about the global impact of one N.C. church sign.

"It's a small world," Jameson said. "Nothing that happens in an isolated area goes unnoticed."

Lovelace said he was stirred to put up the sign by the worldwide furor inspired by the Newsweek magazine report that U.S. military guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet to rile Afghan prisoners. At least 17 people died in rioting that erupted in several countries over the Newsweek report -- a report the magazine later retracted and apologized for.

Just because the sign provokes anger, Lovelace said, is no reason not to say what you believe.

"If one church can't put up a sign and the whole nation be mad at them," he said, "something's wrong."

Lovelace, who went straight from Chase High in Rutherford County to Slidell Baptist Seminary in Slidell, La., said his church averages 25 to 35 for Sunday worship. He's led the church for 13 months and didn't need lay leaders' OK for the sign. The church has no deacons, he said.

Religious and secular leaders were quick to condemn the sign.

"That kind of sentiment is not well-received in this community," Bill Hall of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce told the Observer.

Told that Lovelace said he's fielded calls from such national media outlets as MSNBC and "Good Morning America," Hall said, "Oh, my God."

UNC Chapel Hill political science professor Donald Searing told the Daily Courier newspaper in Forest City that putting such a sign in a public place is "an un-American example of intolerance, of aggressive disrespect for deeply held views."

Lovelace said he'll stick to the schedule of changing signs on Friday or perhaps Saturday.

He said the new one may ask, "Where are your treasures, in the flea market or in heaven?"




[Edited on May 25, 2005 11:21PM]

we should have heard from Stockula by now....

This was Patrick_Laswell's lovechild, not Stockula's. Stockula's last see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil bit was regarding the Ken Starr comments on CBS news regarding the "nuclear option". He predicted an unholy shit storm in two weeks. Of course, his two weeks have now passed and Stockula remains unheard from.

That's like three incoherent rants in one.

"But wait, there's more...."

"It is also possible that Newsweek reporters relied too much on an uncertain source, or that the magazine confused the story with (confirmed) reports that prisoners themselves used Korans to block toilets as a form of protest."

Here's the link: Washington Post

You people are soooo gulibile.

Why are we gullibile? The report by the ACLU has nothing to do with that, and this article is a week old.

[Edited on May 26, 2005 by TedKoppel]

wow. you can read. three incoherent rants. indeed.

"it's just that easy!"