Paradise is always where love dwells.
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.
Is that for real? The media really have let go of even any pretense of objective journalism, haven't they?
You're not alone.
Paradise is always where love dwells.
The photographs uncovered by WorldNetDaily as fodder for Arab propaganda accompanied an article in the Boston paper about local city councilor Chuck Turner, who distributed the graphic pictures Tuesday at a press conference with activist Sadiki Kambon.
Turner told reporters the photos showed U.S. soldiers raping Iraqi women, asserting, that the American people have a right and responsibility to see the pictures.
The Globe's statement today, listed as an editor's note, merely says the photographs failed to meet Globe standards and had not been authenticated.
The paper chose not to inform readers that its editorial department has known for the past 24 hours that the photos were fake images taken from the pornographic website 'Sex in War'.
The Globe did not confirm or deny the legitimacy of the images or the allegations prior to publication.
The effects of the international scandal over Iraqi prisoner abuse continue to be compounded in the Arab and Muslim worlds by fake images of rape, torture and sadomasochism taken from pornography sites and distributed on pro-Islamist websites – including even news sites
The US is trying to export democracy throughout the Middle East. There is no chance of that, says the Egyptian newspaper editor and democracy campaigner, Nabil Zaki.
"Now anything connected with the Americans is disliked," he told me, "Ninety nine per cent of the people of this region hate the Americans. They consider them aggressors."
Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya have both been criticised by the coalition, accused of hostile, inflammatory and inaccurate coverage. In common with the rest of the Arab media, they say the photographs show they were right all along.
Damage done
The Iraqi newspaper al-Bayyinah carried a 2,000-word article, under the headline "Homosexuals Abuse Iraqis", which said that Abu Ghraib had been turned into a "cowboy night club".
"US soldiers drink alcohol over the prisoners' bodies while the minarets make the call to prayer," it said.
And another set of photographs is circulating on Arabic-language web sites. It apparently shows two Iraqi women, both wearing traditional black robes, being raped at gunpoint by men described as wearing US Army uniforms.
These pictures do not seem genuine: the uniforms do not seem right. The pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqis might not be genuine either. But the damage has been done.
"The time will come when Iraqis will react to this," said al-Jazeera. In Kuwait, one of America's friends in the Arab world, al-Watan newspaper warned of "a gift to Islamic fundamentalists trying hard to defile the image of America".
So perhaps, in the backroom of a mosque in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen, or in Iraq itself, a young Muslim is being shown these photographs - and is recruited for jihad.
Hillary Clinton, in late 1997 chaired a White House conference on the issue of child care, telling Time, "You have to put the issue in front of the American people and get them to look at it honestly."
First Lady, Clinton embraced the Palestinian First Lady Suha Arafat; it was Hillary Clinton who leaned on Janet Reno to order the disastrous assault at Waco.
Gail Sheehy in her book; "Hillary’s Choice" wrote that Hillary persuaded Bill Clinton to bomb in Kosovo, and that Hillary insisted to Bill in phone calls over 48 hours from North Africa in March of ‘99: "You can’t let this ethnic cleansing go on at the end of the century that has seen the Holocaust." But it turns out that was false intellegence, because the original estimates of 100,000 are now reduced to 10,000 by the State Department, and yet the UN inspection team only found 2,200 bodies. The UN spent a lot of time looking for the mass graves. They could only find about 2,200 bodies. Many of those were Serbian bodies.
The State Department revised downward their 100,000 figure of dead Kosovar Albanians to 10,000 even though the UN only said 2,200. Do 2,200 bodies justify bombing an entire nation into the stone age?
How it is that Hillary Clinton could take a figure like 100,000 people, push the president into bombing Kosovo, and get away with it? How is it that she is now sitting in judgment of president Bush and blowing this prison scandal entirely out of proportion, sullying America in the world's eyes, and risking not only our military peoples lives by instigating more violence, hate and disrespect against them, but also putting the whole of America at more intense risk of another terrorist attack.
This attacking our ability to get information about terrorist plots and conspiracies before they happens actually makes them coconspirators to the terrorist plots by aiding the terrorist in not be caught before they put their murderous conspiracies into action.
Just as Jamie Gorlick built a wall between communication between the CIA and FBI so that information about international terrorist was not shared with the domestic agency, allowing CIA known terrorist to operate here on our American soil against us; so those who are now dragging this country through the mud for a 'scandal' that is not institutionalized, but rather the work of individuals, at a time of war, are knowingly compromising our national security for the sake of their own greedy political aspirations.
"The bottom line is that leadership has to be responsible and held accountable and that is not just in the prison in Baghdad," Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"That goes all the way up the chain of command," she insisted.
Reminded by Blitzer that interrogation practices like "putting hoods over the heads of prisoners, prisoner sleep deprivation, food deprivation, humiliation . . . have been used for as long as prisoners in wars have been interrogated," [not to mention the Islamic natural love of wearing hoods for masks ~ beau schott] Clinton said that the U.S. needed to be careful not to treat Iraqi terrorist suspects too harshly.
"I don't care whether it's military or civilian," she told CNN. "Anyone acting on behalf of our government is supposed to abide by certain rules and regulations. Clearly, there are interrogation methods that are deemed appropriate but what we have seen on our television screens in no way can be considered appropriate or necessary or frankly even effective."
It's just too bad for the Branch Davidians that she was unaware of the finer points 'certain rules and regulations' then. And we can be certain that she is aware of, and practices as an art, effective interrogation techniques, that is how she knows that the ones that she would allow our military use are ineffective.
"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor bastard die for his" -- General George S. Patton, June 1944
"It's God's responsibility to forgive Bin Laden...It's our responsibility to arrange the meeting." -- United States Marines Corps
Spot on article, thanks for posting it.
Thank you so much for the ping, Beau. Truly *Great* article and pic. Keepers for sure.
"Damage done"... Too true.
Very good. The media will not realize who the real enemy is, to them it is George Bush or anyone else who isn't a leftist. But we know who the enemy is, the media along with the terrorists.
Outstanding article, comments. Thanks for the post, ping.
Thnks for #24. Bookmarked
While there are finer points of distinction,; too many Americans know/see them, only as 'Democrats'.
We are perilously close to 'too late smart'.
Good post..and right on.
While I will always despise what those idiot soldiers did at Abu Gharib...by dishonoring those still serving, I despise more what our media has done. They haven't just reported a news story about prisoner abuse....they've intentionally tarred the entire operation by insinuating what was done there is "normal." Ironic in a way, since it is this same media that minimizes the danger our enemies pose as they downplay just how widespread their terrorism really is, as they do all they can not to implicate the entire Muslim community. They give the enemy the benefit of a doubt, while they've already convicted the entire US military.
If you don't think this isn't dangerous, partisan politics, just recall the media's lack of outrage during the Clinton administrations war in Serbia/Kosovo. While mistakes were reported, the media never dwelled on any of the atrocities US/NATO forces committed...even when intentional. The deliberate targetting of Serbia's state run TV station on April 23, 1999, led to deaths of some 20 civilians. Along with this was the continued targetting, from March 24 to June 10, of 10 more radio and TV broadcasting facilities...as well as 36 transmitters.
Hmm, I wonder if John Kerry had the same condemnation for these attacks that killed civilians as he did for the US forces in Iraq who only shut down the newspaper of the rogue Shi'ite cleric, Sadr. In this case, Kerry condemned the US for silencing the legitimate voice of an Iraqi citizen...even though Sadr did not speak for the Iraqi people, and was calling for the deaths of Americans. This was far different from the state-run TV station in Belgrade that was running interviews between Milosevich and US/NATO officials at the time. I can only imagine the outage if this administration intentionally targetted the propaganda hubs of our enemies who are still calling for the deaths of Americans...or at the least, lying about the war effort.
Where was the media's outrage when a US pilot was ordered to take out the bridge near Belgrade as passenger train No. 393 made its way into the city. From photos taken from the pilots own camera, the train was plainly visible as he fired his missiles collapsing the bridge and destroying the commuter train. Civilians deaths were listed as high as 27...yet I just don't recall the outrage from our media as a child as young as 10 was dragged dead from the debri. Unlike the reporters in Iraq looking to report the latest American atrocity, they were nowhere to be found on the ground in Serbia/Kosovo to show just how much death and destruction was levied on these people.
The stories continued, from the intentional targetting of electrical grids and public untilites, leading to life-providing services being cut off to hundreds of thousands of CIVILIANS within and around the city. These bombings were especially controversial since they were aimed at civilian-supporting infrastructure...which was all off limits according to the very Geneva Conventions that liberals now claims to care so much about. Where was the media's outrage? In fact, where were their calls for accountability for the "higher-ups"...especially on May, 7 1999 when US missiles destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing 3 embassy employees?
I just don't recall the editorializing for Cohen's resignation, as these stories barely made a wimper in the US press. And this was even after the blunder in Sudan, when we destroyed the Al Shifa pharamceutical facility...a target picked by Richard Clarke as a VX nerve plant. Heck, we can even go back to Waco and that disaster if we really want to assign blame...but I just don't recall the media's (and democrats) outrage and obsession over any of these events. Yes, what these soldiers did was disgusting, as it dishonered all those serving. But in no way do these events come close to the death and destruction that we've seen over the last decade. This is evidence that our media will endanger the lives of our soldiers and citizens to advance their own political agenda.
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