Last Few Days... Baghdad Burning

Last Few Days...
That video of Nick Berg is beyond horrible. I haven't been able to watch it whole. It makes me sick to my stomach and I can hardly believe it happened. His family must be devastated and I can't even imagine what they must have felt. With all of this going on- first Abu Ghraib and now this, I haven't felt like writing anything.

Ansar Al Islam are a fundamentalist militant group- mostly Kurdish- based in the north of Iraq. They made a name for themselves recently and chose the Kurdish autonomous region as 'home' with the full knowledge of the CIA, who had more control over the region than the former regime. Since the beginning of the war, they have been responsible for various explosions and attacks- or so they say. The beheading has nothing to do with Islam. I'm still hoping- albeit irrationally- that the whole thing was some sort of grotesque setup.

I was sick to my stomach when I first saw the video on some news channel and stood petrified, watching the screen and praying that they wouldn't show it whole because for some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I feel horrible. Was I shocked? Was I surprised? Hardly. We've been expecting this since the first pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners broke out. There's a certain rage in many people that is frightening. There's a certain hunger and need for revenge that lame apologies from Bush and surprise visits from Rumsfeld won't appease.

I think beheading was the chosen method of 'execution' because the group wanted to shock Americans and westerners in the worst possible way. The torturers at Abu Ghraib and other prisons chose sexual degradation because they knew that nothing would hurt and appall Iraqis and Muslims more than those horrible, sadistic acts. To Iraqis, death is infinitely better than being raped or sexually abused. There are things worse than death itself and those pictures portrayed them.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

That's just liberal media propaganda from people who want President Bush to fail! Why yesterday a new kindergarten opened in Baghdad. You didn't see that at the top of the news shows, hmmm?

If you listen to Hannity/Wiener/Limbaugh/O'Reilly and observe the blatant dishonesty and brutality of the Bush regime, the idea of the Berg episode being a setup to me is a perfectly rational one.

photo of Berg and immediately said - this is not the same person allowing plenty of margin for weight loss.

I first saw the photos of the five executioners and said they don't look Iraqi or even Saudi Arabian or Pakistani.

Don't know why.

I just know we're being taken for a ride.

it when the hair on the back of your neck suddenly stands up. It's millions of years of evolution telling you something: be alert, look around.

And I think that's how we (or some of us, anyway) are reacting to the Berg killing: we're on alert, we're looking around.