If at first you don’t succeed, lie, and then lie again. Those are words to live by, especially if you’re a member of the Bush Administration.

Clearly, the current government takes us all for fools. A nugget of truth makes its way out of George W. Bush’s treasure house of lies, half-truths, insinuations, and outright lies, and this administration will make sure it goes through the sluice with all the rest of the refuse of democracy.

Newsweek recently reported that America’s guardians of freedom at Guantanamo Bay employed a number of nasty methods of interrogation. No one was hurt – that is to say physically hurt – so no one was wronged. “No torture here!” But then again, there are words that cut like weapons, and actions that twist like shivs in the heart of a people. These acts produce unimaginable pain and suffering. They skewer friendships and cut to pieces even the best of intentions.

According to Newsweek, Military Investigators at the Little Shop of Horrors the other side of Havana tried a new trick of their trade. Driving answers out of your enemies is hard enough, but when they hate you – as do many fundamentalist Muslims – it is even more difficult to close the deal. Yet, the fact that you are dealing with Muslims can give you an edge, for there is a special pain that only Muslims can know.

The Quran is the scripture of Islam. Muslims believe it to be the very word of God, given by Allah to Mohammed. It is, in a great many ways, much more than the Judeo-Christian Bible. Jews and Christians respect the “Good Book,” but most do not take it entirely literally. Even those who profess to see absolute truth in its pages realize still that the Two Testaments are creations of human hands. God may have been the inspiration, but He did not personally write the entire work. Thus while it might be a tad sacrilegious to treat the Bible with obvious disrespect, it is not as if one is trampling on the Very Name of God.

For Muslims, however, the story is very different. Leave the Quran on a toilet (or even worse, flush it down) and you have committed an unpardonable outrage. You have violated the very dignity of God; scorned His words and commandments after a fashion that only Iblis – the Muslim Satan – could contrive, let alone imagine. 

Yet, this is precisely what those noble defenders of our precious freedoms did at Guantanamo – they desecrated the Holy Book of the Muslims. They insulted every Muslim from Morocco to Indonesia, not to mention the many that live here in America and in Europe. This execrable act provoked very justifiable recriminations that provoked widespread disturbances throughout the Muslim World. Angry mobs revolted in Afghanistan. Riots occurred all over Asia. One hundred people died…and… oh yes… Newsweek suddenly realized that it had made a mistake! There really was no evidence that such desecration of the Quran had actually occurred after all. Must have just gotten into the magazine by mistake. Sorry!

“Please accept our humble apologies.”

Presumably some executive at Newsweek spoke those last words. After all, if you make a mistake that costs people’s lives and reputations, then you’d better apologize… right? 

Exactly right. Except when you apologize you should do it yourself. You don’t let someone else, like, say, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, or Scott McClellan put words in your mouth. I know this little speech did not willingly roll off the tongue – no matter how forked it might be – of any employee, paid or freelance, of Newsweek.

When it looks like the Devil’s work… it is the Devil’s work

Or should I say Iblis’ work? That might be a bit more appropriate in the circumstances. But how do I know the work of Iblis when I see it? Simple. After the manner of any good detective, or investigator, I put together all of the clues. I look at the Fiend’s modus operandi, and I take note of an obvious pattern – The Devil is a liar! A pathological liar! How else could he get anyone to go along with his evil schemes? The Devil – Iblis – offers nothing to mortals but pain, hardship, and the eternal fires of Hell. Were he not speaking out of the side of his mouth, no sane human being would ever give – or even lend – his soul to such a… creature.

Sadly, the Devil has been around quite a bit in recent days, recent years. To be a little more exact, just over four years...

Hanging around Washington and in front of news cameras, Old Scratch has delivered quite a few little whoppers. No, he is not the one who is always being talked up by Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. That devil is just a chimera created in the mind of unscrupulous demagogues, who realize they can get up quite a following if they can only frighten people to death. This Mr. Lucifer – or Iblis as he sometimes is called – is a much more low-key and, I hesitate to say, clever fellow. But he’s not really clever, as I suppose “clever” implies a certain crafty wisdom. He is not too smart, but then again, look whom he’s working with.

He is certainly a fast-thinker. The brainstorms just come thundering out of him: Social Security Reforms, deadly weapons of mass-destruction that can blow apart a whole nation, and the little scraps of paper, or snatches of e-mail that burn like a brand. Satan’s paw prints were all over those great speeches that Reverend George used to give – “I haven’t made up my mind yet if we are going to war against Saddam Hussein.” Fortunately, several Englishmen were much better at taking notes. These memoranda have recently been released to the public, and they show that our dear diabolical leaders were lying to us all the time.

And that is why I think George W. Bush and his mendacious minions are behind Newsweek’s unbelievable retraction.

Could anyone at Newsweek have been so stupid?

Can someone in this administration be that stupid?
 

Brian Adler is a freelance writer and an avid history buff. He writes/researches for a company that produces factual essays and reports on a wide range of subjects.  He also writes screenplays and short stories.