Sunday, May 18, 2008

U.S. sniper used Quran for target practice

The U.S. military reported today that they canned an American sniper after he used the Quran for target practice.
Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on a firing range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.
I hope there is more veracity to this report than when Newsweek reported a soldier at Gitmo had flushed the Quran down the toilet. Not that I advocate desecrating sacred materials, but that toilet story turned out to be potty talk, and a handful of people died from the Muslim rioting that resulted and America's rep sunk a little lower.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks like a true story to me. You wouldn't get the U.S. commander for all of Iraq groveling like this if it wasn't:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html

Brad A. Greenberg said...

Good point, Richard. I saw that NYT story about half hour after I posted this and thought the same thing. There no good PR on this one.

Anonymous said...

Obviously sacred items should never be desecrated, but the past response of the Muslim world to things like this shouldn't be tolerated either.

Riots and death threats are infantile behavior and should not be tolerated. If they don't like it, too bad. Suck it up and deal with being offended like grown ups.

Brad A. Greenberg said...

Yeah, "South Park" definitely nailed that with the two-part "Cartoon Wars."