Isikoff provides the Pentagon's version of why it issued rules for handling the Koran in January, 2003:

In December 2002, a guard inadvertently knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the floor of a detainee's cell, Di Rita said. A number of detainees protested. That January, partly in response to the incident and partly to provide precise guidelines for new guards and interrogators, the Guantanamo commanders issued precise rules to respect the "cultural dignity of the Koran thereby reducing the friction over the searching of the Korans."

This is in contrast to media reports (see quoted Washington Post article below for example)that the rules were issued in response to hunger strikes and mass suicide attempts caused by the alleged prisoner abuse, including claims of abuse of the Koran.

Isikoff writes that a released detainee's claim of Koran abuse contained in a lawsuit may have been a misperception on the part of the detainee:

Last week, NEWSWEEK interviewed Command Sgt. John VanNatta, who served as the prison's warden from October 2002 to the fall of 2003. VanNatta recounted that in 2002, the inmates suddenly started yelling that the guards had thrown a Qur'an on or near an Asian-style squat toilet. The guards found an inmate who admitted that he had dropped his Qur'an near his toilet. According to VanNatta, the inmate then was taken cell to cell to explain this to other detainees to quell the unrest. But the incident could partly account for the multiple allegations among detainees, including one by a released British detainee in a lawsuit that claims that guards flushed Qur'ans down toilets.

Why is there no mention of the detainees' precise claims, which have been widely reported? The complaint detailing their allegations is available here. (pdf) The incidents bear no relation to each other. The Guardian outlines some of them here.

The Washington Post reported last week:

Dozens of detainees have said in declassified court records that Guantanamo Bay detention officials and military guards engaged in widespread religious and sexual humiliation of detainees. Detainees said the goal was to make them feel impure, shake their faith and try to gain information. Yesterday, several former detainees said they witnessed military police and guards at Guantanamo Bay throwing their copies of the Koran on the ground, stomping on them with their feet, and tossing them into buckets and areas used as latrines.

Former detainee Abdallah Tabarak told a Moroccan newspaper in December that he saw guards throw Korans in the toilet, according to a BBC translation of the article. "When I wanted to pray, they would burst into my cell with police dogs to terrorize me and prevent me from praying," he said. "They also would trample the Koran underfoot and throw it in the urine bucket. We staged protests in the prison about the desecrating of the Holy Koran, so the management promised us that they would issue orders to the American soldiers not to touch the copies of the Koran again."

The Pentagon issued those rules on Jan. 19, 2003, requiring that the Koran not be placed on "the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."

Does this sound like the new rules were issued in response to a misperception by the detainees as described by VanNatta? The Pakistan Daily Times last week:

The New York Times published on 1 May this year referred to an interview with a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. The newspaper wrote, “A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans.” The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the British daily Guardian in December 2003. It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror on 12 March 2004. The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

According to the Post, “Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. ‘It was a very bad situation for us,’ said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. ‘We cried so much and shouted, ‘Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.’ “ Also confirming the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge. He said, “The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it.” The claim that U.S. troops at Bagram prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc on 12 April this year. Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in . Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in earlier this month.

I recapped several other accounts here. Isikoff concludes his article with:

Di Rita said that the Pentagon may look further into the reports found in the logs. The Pentagon is not ruling out the possibility of finding credible reports of Qur'an desecration. But so far, said Di Rita, it has not found any.

Iskikoff doesn't even question why the investigation will be limited to reports "found in the logs." Logs written by prison guards? I'm not saying the detainees' claims are true, only that Isikoff should have mentioned them. By failing to even refer to the details of the claims, he wrote a misleading, biased, government propaganda piece.