Lack of critical thinking

Lack of critical thinking

CNN reports that Newsweek has backed off on a story of Americans defiling the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. This Newsweek story was widely reported in the middle east, and led to riots in Afghanistan and elsewhere: 15 people died in the riots. All of this was sparked by a report that an American interrogators "had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.".

Yep, you read that right. 15 people killed because of a report that the impossible had occurred. Flushing a book down a toilet? An entire book? Toilets can barely flush down toilet paper. They can't handle feminine napkins. How could a toilet flush down a book?

So far, the only grain of truth in this whole mess is that there was "one case, a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Quran and putting [them] in the toilet to stop it up as a protest."

It is amazing that not one of those people who rioted stopped to think, just for a moment, about the physical impossibility of flushing an entire book. So, fifteen people are now dead, thanks to a refusal to think and dismiss a story for the obvious hogwash it is.