Tuesday, January 06, 2004

You really can't make this stuff up

Islamic fundamentalist are famously more then a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but James Taranto points us to a new record as chronicled in the Boston Globe - Rumors of rape fan anti-American flames:
The allegations can be heard almost everywhere in Turkey now, from farmers' wives eating in humble kebab shops, in influential journals, and from erudite political leaders: American troops have raped thousands of Iraqi women and young girls since ousting dictator Saddam Hussein.

Articles in Turkey's Islamist press reporting the allegations have fanned opposition here to the US invasion of Iraq to white-hot anger -- and even, apparently, to murder.

Nurullah Kuncak says his father, Ilyas Kuncak, was boiling about the rumored rapes just before he killed himself delivering the huge car bomb that devasted the Turkish headquarters of HSBC bank last month, killing a dozen people and wounding scores more.

''Didn't you see, the American soldiers raped Iraqi women,'' Nurullah said in a recent interview. ''My father talked to me about it. . . . Thousands of rapes are in the records. Can you imagine how many are still secret?''

Mustafa Ozkafa, mayor of the fervently Muslim city of Konya, also is incensed. While he says he is strictly nonviolent, Ozkafa also said that ''women and children are dying every day in Iraq. . . . We are hearing there is rape in Iraq now. To whom will the Islamic world present the bill for this?''

The articles in the Islamist press are based in part on comments allegedly made by a US sex therapist who denies having written or said anything about soldiers raping women. The therapist, in an online column, explicitly and graphically described the US invasion as a rape, but says that this was clearly a metaphor unrelated to the actions of individual US soldiers, and that she has no knowledge of any physical rapes.

The initial reports in the Turkish press were published in Yeni Safak, a leading Islamist journal.

The first, a front-page article on Oct. 22, stated: ''In addition to the occupation and despoilation, thousands of Iraqi women are being raped by American soldiers. There are more than 4,000 rape events on the record.'' The article's primary source was identified as ''Dr. Susan Block,'' who was reported to have said that a wave of rapes began with the occupation and was ongoing.
...
Block is a California-based sex therapist who has a doctorate in philosophy. She says Yeni Safak apparently drew erroneously on an article she published on the Internet titled ''Rape of Iraq.''
"Published on the Internet" is a polite way of describing Susie's site which is just another pr0n swamp ("TWO DAY PASS For a SMOKING HOT 48 hours!" and telephone "sex therapy") embellished with the political delusions of the aging, underdressed proprietor.

Give these whackos an Internet connection and what do they do? Start trolling for pr0n, I guess. I'm sure Allah is pleased.