Posted on 05/14/2004 12:11:42 PM PDT by Eurotwit
The horrific slaughter of Nick Berg should be compulsory viewing for those who seem to have forgotten who our real enemy is.
IT took a long, long time to saw off the head of Nick Berg, and for nearly a third of it you could hear the 26-year-old American screaming and gurgling. I know that because I saw the video his five killers – Islamic terrorists – made of his murder.
It is God-awful to watch, and ends with one of these animals holding up as a trophy Berg's severed head, eyes staring in shock. The video was then rushed to an al-Qaida-linked website, which gleefully published it.
The ABC seemed annoyed to have had this interruption to its wall-to-prison-wall coverage of the "torture" of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
"Beheading deflects focus from Iraq prison scandal," sighed the headline of the ABC Online report.
Sorry, but shouldn't that have read: "Beheading puts Iraq prison 'scandal' in focus?" After all this hysteria over pictures of Iraqi prisoners being made to pose naked, there's nothing like a live-on-video decapitation to remind us what real evil looks like, and to make us ask if a media that forgot the difference helped to kill Nick Berg.
It was probably about the very time this video of Berg's murder was being sent to the al-Qaida site that I found myself in a heated argument on ABC TV's Insiders program.
I'd dared to say that much of the coverage of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail was an irresponsible attempt by anti-war commentators to use the, yes, disgusting behaviour of a few out-of-control American soldiers to vilify not just the US army, but America itself, and to discredit the liberation of Iraq.
And I asked whether it was dangerous for media outlets to so lavishly run photographs of that abuse if they honestly believed what they were saying – that these pictures were a recruiting tool for al-Qaida.
After all, the Age's Washington correspondent co-authored a piece that approvingly quoted a critic saying: "If you want recruitment tools, these are the best anyone could imagine."
The Australian's Washington correspondent exclaimed: "What a recruitment poster for the Iraqi resistance, never mind Osama bin Laden." ("Resistance"? These throat-cutters are to be honoured as the "resistance"?)
Yet what do these and so many media outlets from London to Sydney do with their "recruitment posters" for Osama bin Laden?
Why, they run them again and again. They run them huge on their front pages, and put them on their websites. And their commentators droolingly describe them as horrific, proof of Yankee bestiality, and ample excuse for the Iraqi "resistance" to strike back.
Islamic terrorists got the hint. Berg's killers read out a long statement as he sat on the floor before them, waiting to die, saying they were about to punish the US for its sins at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by the pictures in the Western media.
"How can a free Muslim sleep as he sees Islam slaughtered and its dignity bleeding, and the pictures of shame and the news of the devilish scorn of the people of Islam – men and women – in the prison of Abu Ghraib," their leader shouted.
So, was it worth publishing those photographs now that Nick Berg has had his head hacked off? And remember, these photos were first published at least three days after the US army publicly revealed details of the abuse and charged – as is necessary – the allegedly guilty soldiers.
Of course, when I suggested on TV the media reconsider the wisdom of repeatedly publishing their "recruitment posters for al-Qaida", I was shouted down by the other panellists. That's the way a free media in a free society works, I was instructed.
Actually, it's not the way the free media works if the facts don't fit their agenda.
The media didn't endlessly show the video of the 2002 beheading of reporter Daniel Pearl by al-Qaida operatives, or scream for apologies from al-Qaida's backers in the Saudi Arabian Government.
Nor did they endlessly run the video the Iraqi "resistance" made last month of Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi being shot in the head by his captors.
Why weren't we shown it? Too shocking? Too likely to get us angry with the Iraqi "resistance"? Too likely to give us the "wrong idea"?
That last excuse, by the way, was the one SBS gave us for not screening the tape it shot of the Grand Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilali, praising suicide bombers in his mosque.
Nor did many Western correspondents in Saddam's Iraq bother us too much with the ugly truth.
The admired John F. Burns of The New York Times last year accused correspondents who reported alongside him from Saddam's Iraq of having "behaved as if they were in Belgium", rather than in a tyranny: "The essential truth (about Saddam's genocidal regime) was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here."
As CNN executive Eason Jordan admitted only after Saddam was toppled, his network refused to tell us of staff who were tortured, of assassinations planned by Saddam's sons, and of a woman torn apart "limb from limb" by police, and then dumped in bits on her father's doorstep. None of this CNN had reported, Jordan said, because "doing so would have jeopardised the lives of Iraqis".
But there's no such fear of telling the dirty truth – painted in darkest black – about the US. And there's sure no concern that "doing so would have jeopardised the lives" of not Iraqis, but Americans like Nick Berg. Or that exaggerated criticism of America would give us the "wrong idea".
But that's the Western media, too often aiding al-Qaida by exaggerating the regretted mistakes of the US while going soft on the unapologetic barbarism of its foes.
So should the media keep publishing pictures likely to incite terrorists, both overseas and here at home?
Probably not if they truly believe these are recruitment posters for terrorists who'll kill us in "revenge". Why not just describe the pictures in words? How many beheadings is a lurid photo spread really worth?
But there is one compelling excuse for running the pictures from Abu Ghraib (although without the hype and endless repeats), and it's time more journalists and commentators used it.
The fact is that such photographs in themselves do relatively little to recruit terrorists to al-Qaida, whose members want to kill us no matter what we do. Who want to kill us whether the guards at Abu Ghraib were mean or mice.
If that's the excuse, then let's not have these ludicrous claims that the terrorists kill only because we drive them to it through some wickedness of ours.
Let's not have headlines like The Sydney Morning Herald's yesterday that described Nick Berg's murder as "Chilling pay back over abuse" – falsely implying, yet again, that we just brought this terrorism on ourselves through our sins.
Let's not have Islamic terrorism excused as the understandable acts of men driven mad by American or "Zionist" crimes. Let's not have the Bali bombing blamed on our liberation of Afghanistan.
As we've already seen from the video executions of Daniel Pearl and Fabrizio Quattrocchi, al-Qaida and its allies didn't need the excuse of Abu Ghraib to film its killing of hostages.
As we saw this week from the video of Hamas gunmen posing with the body parts of six Israeli soldiers, and offering to "trade" them, Islamic terrorist groups have invented obscenities that far surpass in evil any offence we may have caused. And we should remember, too, that al-Qaida and its friends have being blowing up people for years – Americans, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Saudi Arabians, Turks, Moroccans, Iraqis, UN officials, Red Cross workers, Jews, Christians, Masons, Australians and so many more.
They started their terror long before the "torture" of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and long before the liberation of Iraq or Afghanistan.
The murder of Nick Berg is just the latest atrocity of an enemy of matchless savagery, and many more people will yet die in this war with a rising militant Islam.
It's time more in the media realised just who our greatest enemy really is – and trust me, it isn't America or a handful of its prison guard bullies.
If the media must publish pictures from this war on terror, let them include plenty of our real enemy and its satanic deeds. Then the abuse at Abu Ghraib will be put in the focus that's been all too deliberately blurred.
Excellent article.
It is a great article indeed.
Thank you. He said it all. Perfectly.
I only wish that Islam were slaughtered and bleeding - beheaded, if you will.
bump for Aussie logic
I just have one problems with it:
The admired John F. Burns of The New York Times last year accused correspondents who reported alongside him from Saddam's Iraq of having "behaved as if they were in Belgium", rather than in a tyranny: "The essential truth (about Saddam's genocidal regime) was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here."
IMHO, Belgium is not the best example. This is the country that tries to ban legitimate political parties, and arrests journalists who investigates corruption in the EU.
Finally...........someone with the courage to call the pot black!
Ping for an excellent article!
Hits the nail square on the head.
Yeah...the US media would not dare to inflame the emotions of Americans towards our enemies by showing the atrocities they committ against us on a "regular basis." But when it comes to the abuse of a few Americans, our media is more than willing to inflame the emotions of our enemies by posting these pictures and harping on it for weeks on-end. The media, in their hatred for Bush, will endanger us all by giving our enemies whatever they need to justify their acts.
It makes me sick to my stomach sometimes to realize that half of the "people" in this country are in league with these degenerate leftist bastards. Its getting to the point that I feel like spitting in the face of any asshole that claims to be a Democrat. It's gotten that bad...
Excellent article! He gives so many good examples of the liberal media's hypocrisy. They are so blinded by their hatred for Bush, and any who would follow him, that they willingly help the terrorists.</p>
That day is coming, as in the Battle of Armageddon!
The Messiah will be triumphant, and standing on Mt. Sinai in Victory over the Anti-Christ (AKA Muslim radicals, and Commies).
Ops4 God Bless America!
Maranatha...
"It makes me sick to my stomach sometimes to realize that half of the "people" in this country are in league with these degenerate leftist bastards. Its getting to the point that I feel like spitting in the face of any asshole that claims to be a Democrat. It's gotten that bad..."
I'm getting the same way.
The press has no compunction about making news and creating attrocities.
During the riots after the Rodney King trials, the press fanned the flames by repeatedly showing the footage of the beating. It was in their best intrest to keep the riot and burning going.
Reginald Denny should have sued the press. They are directly responsible for his beating and head injury.
They sensationalize fly specks and down play mountains. They are as evil as the islamofascists that they whole heartedly support.
Bump for Nick Berg who probably got beheaded because he was a Jew.
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