Posted on 05/17/2004 2:02:20 AM PDT by Remember_Salamis
Had his son been held a little longer by the Iraqis he might still be alive.
FREEPers specifically mentioned
Micahel Berg say this as if there's a difference on who should be shot on sight. There isn't.
Am I the only one who read this article and can't help thinking that the world on the brink of a massive global war? And I'm not just talking about the Islamic terrorists: I'm also talking about the seemingly inevitable conflict between the rabid Left and the rest of human kind.
A Muslim Leader Speaks Out
By Sam Hamod
Al-Jazeerah, May 11, 2004
Where is the Christianity of America? Has America and the Americans lost their values, their religion, their minds? As an American born of Muslim parents, and as the former Director of The Islamic Center in Washington, DC, I am appalled at the way some of our nation's leaders are trying to speak with forked tongues about the horrible, demeaning, illegal and immoral behavior in Iraq. No matter what President Bush says about being a "born again Christian", I think he is a false witness to Christ, and that God will deal with Mr. Bush in this life and certainly in the next, as he tries to cover up the dirty deeds of Mr.Rumsfeld and his generals, while trying to pin the torture deeds on a few ignorant non-coms, lower level military people in Abu Ghraib.
Any decent Christian would not have allowed the Iraqis to be treated in this way, whether in major office or at the lower levels of the military--but here we have Rumsfeld trying to dodge responsibility for saying in the past, "These enemy combatants, these detainees do not have the protection of the Geneva Conventions." It seems that he and President Bush had come to this decision. Yet he, Bush and our senators and even the public, wonder, "Who was the one who gave permission to these military people to do this, and were they ordered to do it and how severely."
As a Muslim, I am outraged that fellow Muslims in the world are being treated this way. All we have from Muslim organizations, and allegedly "Muslim countries", are weak cries of protest, or none at all for fear the money and the U.S. prostitutes will dry up. Where is the Muslim Ummah in protest? I know most of the Muslim people in the world are upset and want something done--but the leaders of "Muslim countries" have soft-pedaled this whole affair. When Rumsfeld and Bush first started their brutality in prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, they should have stood up at the UN, put ads in U.S. and British newspapers, sent their media people out to condemn this and demand a halt to it. Instead, they went idly by and talked in the double-talk of diplomacy and went to the usual parties and smiled that party smile and nothing was done.
Ironically, it took CBS TV, the New Yorker and some U.S. military people at the lower level to bring the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib to light. Why hadn't the "Muslim nations" done something like this? Why hadn't they asked to investigate the prisons that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyha had reported as torture chambers. But it proves that some parts of our democracy are working when some of our media will stand up. It's too bad that most of our media runs with their tails between their legs when Bush or Rumsfeld bark at them.
Let it be known that this torture will remain for generations in Iraqi and in Arab and Muslim minds all over the world; it will not go away. Remember, in a traditional society, memory is long, very long--hundreds of years, sometime more--and America will be seen and remembered in this way.
And no, not even the Senate Hearings will help the matter, because no one was able to penetrate or get Rumsfeld to come up with responsibility or with the truth. Then, President Bush compounded matters today when he went to the Pentagon and heartily endorsed Rumsfeld--which tortured the Iraqis and all Muslims even more because it made clear that none of the major heads, especially Rumsfeld's, would roll --even though it is clear that Rumsfeld was one of the major perpetrators of these torture crimes.
It is time that Christian leaders, and I don't mean those false chrisitian leaders like Pat Robertson, or Billy Graham Jr., or Jerry Falwell, but the legitimate ones who are real Christians, and who follow the teachings and morality of Jesus Christ, stand up and condemn these hoodlums from Bush on down; that these Christian leaders stand up and condemn those who are not truly Christian but who wear the mask of Christianity and do the deeds of the devil.
If this is not done, then the devil will have his way on the earth, and those who are false Muslims and those who are false Christians will have done the work of the devil, to the detriment to the way of God.
Dr. Sam Hamod is the former Director of The Islamic Center of Wash, DC; professor at Princeton, Iowa, Howard and Michigan (ret.); he may be reached at shamod@cox.net
A Left-wing Nation-State with global reach does not yet exist; the EU's foreign-policy/nationalsecurity apparatus isn't fully-formed yet and Chinese National Socialism hasn't broken out yet. It took a long time from the "trigger" event, the global economic collapse of the 1920s, until the onset of WWII. It took a long time from the passage of the Stamp Act until the onset of the American revolution. If 9/11 was the trigger event this time around, War won't break out for quite some time. Therefore, I don't envision Chinese Troops goose-stepping Hu Jintao's Proclamations of "Long Live The Han Race!" for at east a few decades or so. Nor do I see a threat from Hindu Nationalism, or Hindutva, becoming a global threat within a decade. The time will come eventually, wherein we will cast the next global order.
Who's a REAL Christian, Mr. Samod? Pacifist Jesuits?Catholics For a Free Choice? The United Council of Churches?
I hope insulting the Faith of the only true Christian Leader in the West will make you sleep well.
I don't see the next global conflict as a war between nations per se, but rather a series of simultaneous civil wars and revolutions occurring across the globe. Most will be "seeded" by Islamic terrorism, but will be quickly fueled by the Leftists, who are becoming both increasingly powerful and increasingly radical.
Any relation?
State-sponsored Leftism?
The left has always been committed to the enslavement of the human race and the destruction of their freedoms.
Witness Russia -> Soviet Union, China -> PRC, and so on.
It really does seem that the Islamic Terrorists have found sound allies in leftists all over the globe. I do not see much hope in the future of freedom for mankind. The power of envy and the lust for power is too great..It overcomes the natural need to secure the future for the sake of future generations. My faith states that in the last days of the survival of the earth, "Evil will be called good and good will be called evil." All I have to do is to read much of what the American media (news and entertainment) has to say and I am convinced that day has arrived.
My guess is that his son's death gave Mr Berg the national exposure he probably has so wanted to bash President Bush. I guess it was his way of making something positive out of something negative. And posing for pictures in his front yard exhibiting his grief like a greek tragedy was really genuine<sarcasm
Nick rebelling against his father like a childish 14 year old, his stupidity of roaming the streets alone and at night, his refusal of countless advice on the danger, and purposefully putting his Jewishness out there is what put a huge target on his back. It was all a lark. He shrugged off his 3 week detention and I'm not sure that he also thought his kidnapping was a grand adventure too. I suspect he was one of those kids raised to think everyone had his best interests at heart and that whatever he did was great and wonderful no matter the consequences. We're seeing something similar in Kerry's childish blaming of everyone else for his mishaps and not taking responsibility for his own actions.
Could be a distant cousin.
Any relation?
The lawsuit was filed and Nick released the next day, but how do you know that one caused the other? Everyone is assuming it did, but I have seen no conclusive evidence that it did.
Interesting you should say that. Here is what his father actually said about Nick:
"I am sure that he only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life," Berg said.
Then, referring to his son's executioners, he said: "They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."
Personally, I still think there was something very suspect going on with that kid. I mean, just what are the odds that he coincidentally was on a bus with some Al Qaeda terrorists a few years ago in Oklahoma, and that he innocently let one of them use his email account and password (which was later used by Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 terrorists)?
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