The Commander of US and coalition troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, gave an interview to ABCNews in which he “dismissed criticism” over the profuse American apologies over the Koran burning in Afghanistan.

“Why wouldn’t we [apologize]?” the general asked. “This is the central word of God for them. Why wouldn’t we? We didn’t do it on purpose but we should apologize and we did.”

Interestingly, when the US military burned the central word of God for Christians, on purpose, it didn’t apologize.  In fact, it defended the need to put the Bibles in the trash.  Why wouldn’t we apologize?  Good question.

Meanwhile, other reports indicate all US troops have been given “mandatory refresher training” on handling Korans.  Few reports seem to note a key point of the briefing, which is publicly available:

You will likely not be able to read the highly decorative script in Arabic.  Use your interpreter to identify Qurans or Quranic verses.

In other words, troops are required to handle Quran with care — even though the military acknowledges they probably can’t even tell whether something is a Koran or not.