He should have claimed he was making "art".

With some humor I read the stories of the American sniper taking some shots at a copy of the Koran. For example SanDiego.com has this story which states:

The U.S. military said Sunday that it disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used Islam's holy book for target practice May 9 in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad. The book was found two days later by Iraqis on a firing range in Radwaniyah with 14 bullet holes in it and graffiti written on its pages, tribal leaders said.

This was such a serious offense that President Bush apologized to the Iraqi Prime Minister as was mentioned on Al-Iraqia television as reported at Yahoo News here. There is another wrinkle though as the story reports:

However, the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Islamic Party headed by Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on Monday demanded government action against the soldier.

The desecration of the Koran was also strongly condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, which claims to represent more than 3,000 mosques, and which held both the US military and Iraqi government responsible.

It said the "heinous crime shows the hatred" that the US military and American leaders had for the Koran and the Muslim people.

It was a heinous crime? Have any of these members of the Association condemned the beheadings of Americans that took place in the past while we helped out their backward country? I think I need to research that. And it is so nice to see that people want to make a bigger deal about this than it deserves.

If only the sniper claimed he was doing "art" in the vein of "Piss Christ" which was photograph by Andres Serrano that depicted a crucifix submerged in a glass of Serrano's urine - Source was Wikipedia.

But oh well - in America we know what Art is...what is wrong with the Iraqis? We need to "modernize" their antiquated notions of reverence to 'sacred objects'. Maybe one day under President Obama.

OS