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Speaking Ill of the Dead--The Media Treatment of Nick Berg and Pat TillmanPosted by Doc Farmer Wednesday, May 19, 2004 My column last week was written before the news about the horrific slaughter of Nick Berg, an innocent American contractor. I had commented on the stupidity and cowardice of the mainstream (see also: lib/dem/soc/commie) media, their fear of us doing anything remotely discomforting in this, or any, war. However, Mr. Berg’s tragic demise brought into focus the true problem of the media. Their complicity with the enemies of America. I’ve seen the video. I made a point to watch it....

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - A mentally ill killer was executed Tuesday evening after Gov. Rick Perry rejected a parole board's highly unusual recommendation to commute his death sentence or delay the execution. Kelsey Patterson, 50, also lost an appeal to the Supreme Court in the hour before he was put to death. A diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, Patterson was condemned for a double slaying almost 12 years ago. His lethal injection renewed the legal quandary of whether it is proper to execute someone who is mentally ill when the Supreme Court says it is unconstitutional to execute someone who is mentally...

I once enjoyed an hour-long debate with Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz – with whom I often disagree. But I thoroughly agree with his April 22 statement that killing terrorists is legal. He writes: I challenge Jack Straw to distinguish Israel's killing of Rantisi from the targeting of Al-Sadr, Saddam's sons, or Osama bin Laden. The United States Army was recently given a highly specific military order. According to the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the mission is to kill radical Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This order to target al-Sadr for extrajudicial killing is perfectly...

It's easy to say he should not have been in Iraq, but Nicholas Berg was a type familiar to all danger zones: an adventurous and naïve young man who was perhaps keen to do a bit of business, but keener yet to test himself; old enough to understand the danger, but young enough to defy it. It is impossible not to feel grief, and horror, at his terrible end. The claim of this young American's murderers that they were retaliating for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is a cruel ruse. They killed him out of the same madness that drove...

For those who are avoiding the video of Nicholas Berg's Execution, I say, "All Americans should watch...and remember." I watched it yesterday. I didn't want to watch it: I derive no sense of voyeuristic pleasure from such things. Yet I forced myself to watch it because I want to know our enemies. I don't want to understand them; I want to know them, so that I know who they are and what they are. I want to know those who will brutally kill us without hesitation or remorse. I want these ugly and horrifying images burned into my memory so...

Kristinn just called me and asked me to post this thread. He just called CBS Evening News and asked them if they were going to show the militant Islamists' video of the beheading of American Nick Berg.The woman who answered the phone said that they were going to do a story on it, but they were NOT going to show the full video.He asked them, "Why not, since you had no problem showing the pictures of the Iraqis being abused by our guys in the prison. Don't you think turnabout is fair play?"The woman got mad and said, "Thank you...

DUBAI, May 6 (Reuters) - Dubai-based Al Arabiya television aired on Thursday what it said was a videotape showing an American engineer working for the Pentagon held hostage in Iraq. The network said it had received the tape from a group calling itself The Islamic Rage Squadrons which said it had kidnapped the man on May 3. He was shown blindfolded with a chequered Arab head scarf and wearing an olive green jacket.

Arabiya TV Airs Videotape of 'American Hostage' Thu May 6, 2004 08:51 AM ET DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai-based Al Arabiya television aired on Thursday what it said was a videotape showing an American engineer working for the Pentagon held hostage in Iraq. The network said it had received the tape from a group calling itself The Islamic Rage Squadrons which said it had kidnapped the man on May 3. He was shown blindfolded with a checkered Arab scarf and wearing a jacket. "My name is Aban Elias from Denver, Colorado," an Arabiya transcript quoted the man as saying. "I am...

Brewer pushes for death date By JACQUELINE LANEThe Enterprise 04/15/2004 Lawrence Russell Brewer is one of three men convicted of killing James Byrd Jr. Brewer has been on death row since 1999. One of the men convicted in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. wants his execution date set. Lawrence Russell Brewer has written to District 1-A Judge Monte D. Lawlis, making the request. Lawlis was the trial judge in Brewer's case, which was heard in Bryan. Brewer and John William King have been on death row since 1999 for the June 7, 1998, murder. A third man,...

HAVANA - One year after a firing squad executed her son and two other ferryboat hijackers, Ramona Copello says there is nothing left for her in Cuba. Her 31-year-old son, Lorenzo Enrique Copello, was among a group of armed men who seized a ferry full of passengers on April 2, 2003, and tried to force it to sail to the United States. "I keep asking myself why they executed him," Copello told The Associated Press Thursday night. "I want to leave this country." But she wants to exit legally, as a political refugee to the United States. Her paperwork was...

"Witnesses said they saw militiamen capture a Salvadoran soldier and execute him by forcing a live grenade into his mouth. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50348-2004Apr4_2.html These f**ers must be stopped!!!

One Jolt Instead of Four: Nebraska Changes Electrocution Procedure to Ward off Challenge Apr 1, 2004 By Kevin O'hanlon Associated Press Writer LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska has changed the way it uses the electric chair to head off legal challenges asserting that the procedure is cruel and unusual. Instead of using four jolts of electricity, prison officials will now administer a single dose 15 seconds long, Department of Corrections spokesman Steve King said Thursday. The change was implemented March 15 in anticipation of court arguments later this month involving three men convicted in the slayings of five people inside...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Reuters) - The World Court on Wednesday ordered the United States to review the cases of 51 Mexicans on death row because it had failed to inform them of their right to talk to consular officials shortly after their arrests. The Mexicans, on death row in more than half a dozen states including California, Texas and Oklahoma, should have their convictions and sentences reviewed by U.S. courts because their rights had been breached, the U.N.'s top court ruled. Mexico brought a case at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, last year in...

HAMBURG, Germany, March 29 (UPI) -- China has introduced execution chambers on wheels, according to the Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit. Prisoners are put to death by lethal injection in 19 blue-colored Toyota buses specially outfitted for the purpose. China executes more people than any other nation. Based on estimates by Chen Zhonglin, director of the law institute of Chongqing, Amnesty International puts the number of executions per year at 10,000 -- five times as many as in the rest of the world put together. Traditionally, the condemned are killed in public with shots in the back of the neck. The...

This harsh punishment is for a number of reasons: 1 – This punishment is a deterrent to anyone who wants to enter Islam just to follow the crowd or for hypocritical purposes. This will motivate him to examine the matter thoroughly and not to proceed unless he understands the consequences of that in this world and in the Hereafter. The one who announces his Islam has agreed to adhere to all the rulings of Islam of his own free will and consent, one of which rulings is that he is to be executed if he apostatizes from the faith. 2...

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - A man who confessed to killing a fellow Vietnamese refugee in front of the man's wife was executed Tuesday. Hung Thanh Le, 37, died by an injection of drugs for the 1992 stabbing death of an Oklahoma City beauty salon owner. Le said Hai Nguyen owed him money that he needed to support his family. In a final statement, Le apologized for killing Nguyen with a meat cleaver and kitchen knife. "I can't take back what happened," he said. "I hope my death will replace the hatred ... with love for each other." Le also apologized...

Final appeals to high courts failBy Zane WilsonThe Sun News COLUMBIA - David Clayton Hill neither apologized nor confessed before he was put to death at 6:17 p.m. Friday for the 1994 murder of Georgetown police Maj. Spencer Guerry.Hill, 39, glanced briefly at the witnesses, including Sally Guerry, Spencer Guerry's widow, and smiled. "He just smiled; I don't know who he was smiling at," Sally Guerry said.Last-ditch appeals to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Mark Sanford on grounds that the state's lethal injection methods could be cruel and unusual punishment all failed Friday, and the execution...

(Columbia S.C.-AP) March 19, 2004 -The United States Supreme Court on Friday voted 5-4 to let South Carolina execute a man convicted of killing a Georgetown police officer ten years ago. The ruling erases a reprieve the man received two weeks ago. The announcement came in time for officials in Columbia to move ahead with plans for the 6:00pm execution of 39-year-old David Clayton Hill at the Broad River Correctional Facility. Hill's only hope for staying alive is if the governor steps in to grant clemency. Governor Sanford's press secretary says no repreive has been issued. A federal judge had...

Execution By CAROLYN SUMA (CHINCOTEAQUE, VA -- WMDT) 3/18/2004 Photographer: Michelle Bambary On January 27th 1994, Brian Cherrix lured Tessa Van Hart to deliver a pizza in a remote location on Chincoteague Island. It was there he raped and shot the young mother of 2 in the head- leaving her to die in her car. "And then when they found her, you heart just sank and I couldn't believe it. Disbelief was really big and tension throughout the air and you just wouldn't believe someone in the community could have something like that," says Chincoteague Resident Kelly Fox. Cherrix...

JARRATT, Va. (Reuters) - A man who confessed to luring a pizza delivery woman to an empty house on a vacation island, sexually assaulted her and then shot her dead was executed in the U.S. state of Virginia on Thursday. Brian Lee Cherrix, 30, was executed by injection and pronounced dead at 9:10 p.m. in the death house of the Greensville Correctional Center, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Authorities said Cherrix lured Tessa Van Hart, 23, the mother of a young son and daughter, to her death in an empty house on Virginia's Chincoteague Island...