"Abuse
Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed"
"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'" (Charles A. Graner Jr.)
News and commentary on the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq and the beheading
of Nicholas Berg.
2004/05/10 - 2004/05/29
2004/04/29 - 2004/05/09May 2004
Saturday, May 29, 2004
"Private Dick" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/05/29)Friday, May 28, 2004
"Torture, or 'Good Old American Pornography'?" (Susan J. Brison, The Chronicle Review, from the 2004/06/04 issue)Wednesday, May 26, 2004
"Double messages at the mosque" (Salam Karam, Svenska Dagbladet/Watch, 2004/05/23 [2004/05/26])Tuesday, May 25, 2004
"Picture Frame" (Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 2004/05/25)
"Bravery, Blood & Lies" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/25)
"The trouble with Sontag's story" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/05/25)Monday, May 24, 2004
"The Abu Ghraib Obsession" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/05/24)Sunday, May 23, 2004
"THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE US" (The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23)
"Regarding the Torture of Others" (Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23)
"Iraqi abuse scandal filters through to hermit state" (AFP/Channel NewsAsia, 2004/05/23)Saturday, May 22, 2004
"Punishment and Amusement" (Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, 2004/05/22)Friday, May 21, 2004
"TO ALL PEOPLES SOON...FREEDOM ON THE AMERICAN WAY" (Mohamed Azakir, Reuters, 2004/05/21)
"Survivor Freak Show" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/05/21)
"Many Iraq Prison Abuses Occurred in Nov." (Matt Kelley, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/21)
"Iraqis Arrest Four in Berg Beheading" (Saber Baban, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/21)
"This poll suggests..." (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/05/21)
"Porn Again: Nothing sells like kinky sex" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2004/05/21)
"Hussein-Era Videos Released to Contrast Prison Scandal" (Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, 2004/05/21)
"Iraqis Provide New Details of Abuse: Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings" (Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, 2004/05/21)Thursday, May 20, 2004
"Reuters Stands by Iraq Abuse Reports, Releases Timeline on Incident" (Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher, Reuters, 2004/05/20)
"Abu Ghraib Worse Than 9/11?" (Joseph D'Hippolito, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/05/20)Wednesday, May 19, 2004
"More Photos Surface: Soldiers Shown Giving Thumbs-Up Sign
By Body of Dead Iraqi Prisoner" (Brian Ross, ABC News, 2004/05/19)
"U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to a Year in Prison for Iraq Abuse" (AP/The New York Times, 2004/05/19)
"Stop the Moral Equivalence" (Garry Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/05/19)
"Soldier arrested over hoax photos" (BBC News, 2004/05/19)Tuesday, May 18, 2004
"What Went Wrong: The flaw in Seymour Hersh's theory" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/05/18)
"Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq" (Andrew Marshall, Reuters, 2004/05/18)Monday, May 17, 2004
"Lessons of Abu Ghraib" (Mark Bowden, The Atlantic, from the July/August 2004 issue)
"Tolerating evil" (Fred Gedrich, UPI, 2004/05/17)Sunday, May 16, 2004
"Private First Class Lynndie England" (AFP/Getty Images, 2004/05/10)
"Prison Guard Calls Abuse Routine and Sometimes Amusing" (Kate Zernike, The New York Times, 2004/05/16)
"Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/16)
"Powell: Arab Response to Berg Insufficient" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/16)
"Now's not the time for Bush to go soft" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2004/05/16)
"Why America can't cope with these images" (Anne Applebaum, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/05/16)
"'Culture' is no excuse" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2004/05/16)
"There's No Escape When War Turns Ghoulish" (Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times, 2004/05/16)Saturday, May 15, 2004
"The Gray Zone" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/05/15)
"It's America's War" (David Gelernter, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/05/24 issue)
"Who Is Abu Zarqawi?" (Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/05/24 issue)
"SORRY.. WE WERE HOAXED" (The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/15)
"Stunned staff mourn loss of editor who 'told the truth' about Iraqi abuse" (Sandra Laville, The Guardian, 2004/05/15)Friday, May 14, 2004
"The Real Picture Show" (Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com, 2004/05/14)
"Editor sacked over 'hoax' pictures" (BBC News, 2004/05/14)
"Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed" (CNN.com, 2004/05/14)
"American Cannibalism" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/05/14)
"Why the big media continue to lose their audience" (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/05/14)
"Chopping Heads" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
"Rooting For The Enemy" (John Podhoretz, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
"Why The Troops Don't Trust Rummy" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
"The Abu Ghraib Panic" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/05/14)
"Sick Romps At Porn Prison" (Bridget Harrison, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
"Abu Ghraib Guard Paints Harrowing Portrait of Abuse" (Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times, 2004/05/14)Thursday, May 13, 2004
"CIA Says Al-Zarqawi Beheaded Berg in Iraq" (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13)
"Rumsfeld Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq" (Robert Burns, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13)
"Britain says prisoner abuse photos 'not taken in Iraq'" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13)
"The War of Images" (Lee Harris, Tech Central Station, 2004/05/13)
"Saddam lawyer to file war crimes suit against Britain" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13)
"Reporters are big on asking other people for apologies..." (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/05/13)
"The images we see - and those we don't" (Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, 2004/05/13)
"Leash Gal's Sex Pix" (Vincent Morris and Deborah Orin, New York Post, 2004/05/13)
"Lawmakers Say New Abuse Photos Even Worse" (Pauline Jelinek, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13)Wednesday, May 12, 2004
"U.S. Denies Holding Beheading Victim Berg" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/12)
"Female GI In Abuse Photos Talks" (CBS News, 2004/05/12)
"Beheaded hostage 'had been warned to leave Iraq'" (The Guardian, 2004/05/12)
"The Beheading of an Innocent" (Walid Phares, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/05/12)
"Hold Fast, Idealists" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2004/05/12)
"Not Just Following Orders: I'm ashamed of the unit I once commanded" (James D. Villa, The Washington Post, 2004/05/12)Tuesday, May 11, 2004
"A frame grab taken from website video footage..." (Reuters, 2004/05/11)
"An Insane Spin" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/05/11)
"Arab Street Erupts in Rage Over Beheading Video" (Scott Ott, ScrappleFace, 2004/05/11)
"Pa. family angry with American government over son's brutal death" (Jason Straziuso, AP/pennlive.com, 2004/05/11)
"Video 'shows US man beheaded'" (BBC News, 2004/05/11)
"BUSH KLUX KLAN" (Le Monde/Merde in France, 2004/05/11)
"Chaos control is the aim in Europe" (John Vinicur, International Herald Tribune, 2004/05/11)
"Abu Ghraib Lessons" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/05/11)
"Look Who's Crying 'Abuse'" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/11)Monday, May 10, 2004
"Rumsfeld Must Stay" (David Frum, National Review, 2004/05/10)
"Rumsfeld Should Stay" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2004/05/10)
"First Trial Set to Begin May 19 in Abuse in Iraq" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2004/05/10)
"Private Dick" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/05/29)
"You’ve probably come across various Nicholas Berg conspiracy theories online — arguing, say, that the white plastic chair Berg was seated on is identical to chairs at Abu Ghraib prison (or, to give the place its full name, notorious Abu Ghraib prison) — which proves, I don’t know, that the whole war was driven by greedy US chair cartels. Owned by Dick Cheney.
So who does the Sydney Morning Herald choose to investigate these theories? None other than Richard Neville, who, we’ve learned, isn’t exactly your go-to guy for online detective work. Neville’s history of getting things wrong is apparently a qualification at the Herald. His revelatory probe begins:Iraq in flames, Washington an object of disgust. What to do? At this pivotal moment, CNN and Fox News are tipped off to a clip of an American citizen being beheaded. ...
The timing of the video was brilliant for the West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who? Surely not Uncle Sam. That's too dark, even for the CIA. ...
According to a blogger (internet diarist), Nick Possum, "this footage was subsequently modified frame by frame to make Berg's body move very occasionally". Apparently, this can be achieved with "commonly available software".
Possum believes "the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a 'black operation' by US psychological warfare specialists ... to provide the media with a moral relativity argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib". The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives.
I do not know who killed Nick Berg, or how he died. But there's something fishy about this video.
In the end, the question is: who killed Nick Berg, and why?"(See also: "Who killed Nick Berg?" (Richard Neville, Sydney Morning Herald, 2004/05/29) and "The Nicholas Berg execution: A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery" (Nick Possum, brushtail.com.au, 2004/05/23))
"Torture, or 'Good Old American Pornography'?" (Susan J. Brison, The Chronicle Review, from the 2004/06/04 issue)
Brison's blending of the two characterizations of unpublished photographs and videos in the first paragraph is a little bit problematic, as they probably refer to different sets of material: one with documented abuse of Iraqi prisoners and another one documenting explicit sex acts (i.e. the dictionary definition of "hard-core porn") between England and other soldiers. But, on the other hand, she also reportedly "engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners":
"As commercial porn was being mistaken for photos of real torture, the photos of actual torture at Abu Ghraib were being equated with porn. The day U.S. lawmakers viewed the roughly 1,800 still photos and an undisclosed number of videos from Abu Ghraib that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had warned were "sadistic, cruel, and inhuman," CBS News reported that the images "amounted to hard-core porn." Given that the Abu Ghraib photos depicted acts of sexual abuse including Iraqi men forced to masturbate and Iraqi women commanded to expose their breasts, that characterization seems apt. ...
Why should it be cause for international alarm when sexually degrading, dehumanizing things are done to Iraqi prisoners (and photographed) when doing the same things to women around the world (and photographing them) for a multibillion-dollar pornography industry is considered entertainment — the sort of all-American fun enjoyed by U.S. troops and available to anyone with access to the Internet?
An obvious response is that it makes all the difference whether the pornographic images are real or faked — that is, whether or not the people who are apparently being abused agreed to be depicted as humiliated and degraded for others' fun and profit. But as we've recently learned, given today's cybertechnology, it can be impossible to separate fact from fiction in photos." (See also:"Sick Romps At Porn Prison" (Bridget Harrison, New York Post, 2004/05/14), "Leash Gal's Sex Pix" (Vincent Morris and Deborah Orin, New York Post, 2004/05/13) and "Boston Globe publishes bogus GI rape pictures" (Sherrie Gossett, WorldNetDaily, 2004/05/12))"Double messages at the mosque" (Salam Karam, Svenska Dagbladet/Watch, 2004/05/23 [2004/05/26])
Translation of a revealing report from the largest mosque in Stockholm on the difference between the Imam's speech in Arabic and the Swedish translation:
"'America rapes Islam,' the Imam roars in Arabic from the platform.
The interpreter translates to Swedish:
“We condemn USA:s torture of Iraqi prisoners.”
It is Friday prayer in the mosque on Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm. Every week some 2 000 Muslims gather here to listen to Sheik Hassan Mousas sermon. He is the highest Imam in the mosque.
Friday May 14, when SvD visited the mosque, the Imam was talking about the torture pictures of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghair prison. Hassan Mousa speaks formal, classical Arabic and roars into the microphone.
“What's wrong with you grandchildren of Mohammed? How long will you endure this humiliation of Muslims without reacting? American and British soldiers, grandchildren of Hitler, are torturing Muslims in Iraq.”
The words sink like a carpet bombing over the hall. Everybody feels them. Many have tears in their eyes. Heads are sunk and eyes are lowered onto the the blue coloured soft carpet.
Minutes later the Swedish translation of the speech is read by an interpreter. In Swedish, the American torture of Iraqi prisoners is condemned, but at the same time the translator emphasizes earlier good works for Muslims done by the US, among others in Bosnia. Not a word on how America is raping Islam, is the enemy of Islam and wants Muslims to be humiliated and under submission.""Picture Frame" (Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 2004/05/25)
Sullivan on Susan Sontag's latest essay: "It seems to me that Sontag wants to intervene to prevent American culture from glorifying violence or from Jerry-Springer-style prurience and shamelessness. In this, she is on the same page as the religious right. Here's Robert Knight, from Concerned Women of America, echoing Sontag's view:We were told pornography is liberating, and that anyone who objects is a narrow-minded Puritan who needs therapy. We have been flooded with porn imagery on mainstream television and in magazine ads. Where did those soldiers get the idea to engage in sadomasochistic activity and to videotape it in voyeuristic fashion? Easy. It's found on thousands of Internet porn sites and in the pages of 'gay' publications, where S&M events are advertised alongside ads for Subarus, liquor and drugs to treat HIV and hepatitis.
Here's Sontag:
What formerly was segregated as pornography, as the exercise of extreme sado-masochistic longings ... is now being normalised.
Knight and Sontag differ, of course, on who is to blame. Sontag sees the "new, bellicose America" as the source of this cultural corruption. Knight blames it on decadent liberalism. ... And placing the blame entirely on the broader American culture is not just crude; it also mitigates the responsibility of the actual soldiers who committed the abuse and those who did nothing to stop it. If anything, the bromides of the far left and far right are the real sources of this problem. They seem to be looking for ways to exploit the baffling and revolting scenes in a single prison to advance equally broad but remarkably similar indictments of America as a whole. But the crudeness sinks the analysis. And Sontag's hyperbolic politics sinks her essay." (See also: "Regarding the Torture of Others" (Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23))
"Bravery, Blood & Lies" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/25)
"Increasingly, our enemies make sophisticated use of our own roundheels media — which is always ready to credit evil men with virtue, while assuming that American soldiers are wrong.
Recent press and broadcast stories have focused sympathetically on the plight of military deserters. Ludicrous stories of abuse told by Iraqis looking for a cash handout are presented without the least skepticism. And in the most disgraceful essay of this new century, Susan Sontag, writing in The New York Times Magazine, associated the prisoner-abuse affair with the massacres in Rwanda and the Holocaust.
Really? Does Ms. Sontag truly believe that Abu Ghraib equals Auschwitz? Does she know a single American soldier? How simple the world must look from behind her desk . . .
This is not an argument for censorship. America needs a free media. But we also need a responsible media. Abu Ghraib was an ugly little story that big media exaggerated into a strategic disaster — with no thought for the consequences for our troops, our country or the people of Iraq." (See also: "Regarding the Torture of Others" (Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23))"The trouble with Sontag's story" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/05/25)
"'The photos are us,' said the cover line for Susan Sontag's G2 essay yesterday. I took this to mean that a much respected writer would demonstrate how the Abu Ghraib pictures told all Americans (and perhaps all Britons too) something about themselves. Good. ...
Sontag didn't write that cover line, of course, but the trouble is that her essay is not about "us" at all. She argues, in essence, that the abuses in Abu Ghraib are the product of a violent society and a corrupt policy. Her essay is an intellectual's version of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. All the blame lies with "them". It's a case of Never On Sontag. ...
But by making this about them and not really about us, Sontag is in danger of making all action impossible. If it is about them, all we have to do is to defeat them. If it is about us, we have to take constant and daily action to notice and to deal with those things in ourselves and our societies that humiliate others. We have to be always vigilant, always re-examining, always questioning. Which is a bloody and necessary pain." (See also: "Regarding the Torture of Others" (Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23))"The Abu Ghraib Obsession" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/05/24)
"But the surest sign that the journalistic obsession with Abu Ghraib has gotten out of hand is the way news stories on unrelated topics ritually invoke it. ...
Here are the first three paragraphs of a May 17 Associated Press dispatch:Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on Monday praised a Supreme Court justice of a half-century ago for his commitment to "intellectual integrity" as chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of accused war criminals.
Rehnquist made his remarks at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute, two days before the court-martial of Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits, the first soldier to stand trial for allegations of abuse of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
Justice Robert Jackson accepted President Truman's invitation in 1945 to prosecute 22 German defendants accused of charges that included conducting harmful medical experiments on humans. Many of the Nazi defendants argued they were following orders from their superiors.
What in the world does the Sivits court-martial have to do with the Nuremberg trials? Well, both were legal proceedings, and both took place in the Northern Hemisphere, but that's about it. Yet not only does the AP's delightfully named reporter Hope Yen feel obliged to cite Abu Ghraib; she does so before she even mentions Justice Jackson, the subject of her article." (See also: "Speaking to the nation" (Michael Barone, Town Hall, 2004/05/24) and "Rehnquist Praises Jackson on Nuremberg" (Hope Yen, AP/Las Vegas SUN, 2004/05/17))
"THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE US"
(The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23)"Regarding the Torture of Others" (Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/23)
Note that the "US" in "THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE US" really means "THEM", as in the Bush administration:
"The issue is not whether the torture was done by individuals (i.e., ''not by everybody'') — but whether it was systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.
Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush adminstration's distinctive policies. ...
Shock and awe were what our military promised the Iraqis. And shock and the awful are what these photographs announce to the world that the Americans have delivered: a pattern of criminal behavior in open contempt of international humanitarian conventions. Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies. Secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to be invited on a television show to reveal. What is illustrated by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. ...
The torture of prisoners is not an aberration. It is a direct consequence of the with-us-or-against-us doctrines of world struggle with which the Bush administration has sought to change, change radically, the international stance of the United States and to recast many domestic institutions and prerogatives.""Iraqi abuse scandal filters through to hermit state" (AFP/Channel NewsAsia, 2004/05/23)
A report from Pyongyang: "State-controlled media here have been making the most of the graphic images to have emerged from Iraq's now infamous Abu Ghraib jail to fuel the propaganda machine aimed at its number one foe: "The US imperialists."
When asked about the hot topic of the day, residents in the North Korean capital failed to mention a visit Saturday by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi or international concern at Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive.
Iraq was their number one concern. ...
Un Kyong-Hi, a college researcher in her 20s, said the abuses reinforced negative perceptions about the Stalinist state's ideological foe.
"Many people have seen pictures of the abuse, which is the top international news here. People's ideas that the United States is a barbarian country are being reinforced." ...
While foreign visitors can watch news programmes through international satellite television channels at luxury hotels, ordinary people here have no such free access to outside information but get their news through the state media, which reflects the policies of the North Korean government." (Hat tip: Best of the Web Today.)"Punishment and Amusement" (Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, 2004/05/22)
"Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post. ...
The documents show that MPs staged the photographs as a form of entertainment or to discipline the prisoners for acts ranging from rioting to an alleged rape of a teenage boy in the prison. ...
Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs.
"I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators.
Instead, Darby viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers.
"It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."
He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: 'The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.''" (See also "Behind the Pictures": "The Naked Pyramid: 'I Was Laughing at Some of the Stuff'" (The Washington Post, 2004/05/22), "The Dogs: 'They Let the Dogs Corner Him'" (The Washington Post, 2004/05/22), "Punches and Kicks: 'Knocked the Detainee Unconscious'" (The Washington Post, 2004/05/22) and "The Leash: 'I Simply Stood With The Strap in My Hand'" (The Washington Post, 2004/05/22): "Graner got out the leash, and they went down to a solitary confinement cell where the detainee was being held, [England] said. The detainee emerged naked but not handcuffed. And after Graner made him lie down on the floor, she said, he loosely looped the strap around his neck and handed it to her.
Then he got out his camera, she posed and he snapped a photo.
"I did not drag or pull on the leash," she said. 'I simply stood with the strap in my hand. Gus started to crawl on the floor and . . . Graner took another picture. We then took the strap off of him and placed him back in his cell.'")
"TO ALL PEOPLES
SOON...FREEDOM
ON THE AMERICAN WAY"
(Mohamed Azakir, Reuters, 2004/05/21)
"A giant banner of a hooded and abused Iraqi prisoner is displayed during a rally in Beirut, May 21, 2004. Tens of thousands of Lebanese Shi'ites in white shrouds marched in Beirut Friday in a collective show of their willingness to die in defense of holy shrines in U.S.-occupied Iraq.""Survivor Freak Show" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/05/21)
"London's Guardian today has an op-ed piece by Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg:People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.
I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.
George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.
Here's what the elder Berg says America should have done in response to the Sept. 11 attacks: "I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them."
This is sick stuff, though perhaps partly understandable as an irrational reaction of a man who's lost his son. Shame on the Guardian for exploiting Michael Berg's grief to further its own anti-American agenda." (See also: "George Bush never looked into Nick's eyes" (Michael Berg, The Guardian, 2004/05/21))"Many Iraq Prison Abuses Occurred in Nov." (Matt Kelley, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/21)
"Many of the worst abuses that have come to light from the Abu Ghraib prison happened on a single November day amid a flare of insurgent violence in Iraq, the deaths of many U.S. soldiers and a breakdown of the American guards' command structure.
Nov. 8 was the day U.S. guards took most of the infamous photographs: soldiers mugging in front of a pile of naked, hooded Iraqis, prisoners forced to perform or simulate sex acts, a hooded prisoner in a scarecrow-like pose with wires attached to him. ...
When Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits tearfully pleaded guilty Wednesday to abusing prisoners, he described fellow soldiers committing an escalating series of abuses on eight prisoners that included stamping on their toes and fingers and punching one man hard enough to knock him out. ...
The abuse came during Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and reflection. The abused Iraqis, Sivits said, had been suspected of taking part in a prison riot that day. They were held at Abu Ghraib on suspicion of common crimes, not attacks on U.S. forces, said Col. Marc Warren, the top legal adviser to Iraqi commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.""Iraqis Arrest Four in Berg Beheading" (Saber Baban, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/21)
"Four people have been detained in the killing of American Nicholas Berg, whose decapitation was captured on videotape, an Iraqi security official and a U.S. military official said Friday. The Iraqi official said the group that killed Berg was led by a relative of Saddam Hussein.
The suspects were former members of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary organization, the Iraqi security official said on condition of anonymity. Iraqi police arrested them on May 14 in a house in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. The province includes Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. ...
The group that was involved in the killing of Berg was led by Yasser al-Sabawi, a nephew of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi security official said. He said American intelligence had asked Iraqi authorities to hand over the suspects, but they were still in Iraqi hands." (See also: "Four detained over Berg beheading in Iraq: US military" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/21): "In Baghdad ... coalition forces conducted a raid to capture four individuals suspected of involvement in the Nicholas Berg assassination," [US Brigadier General Mark] Kimmitt told a press conference Friday, adding the raid took place "two days ago".
"Four persons were detained and questioned, two personnel were released and the other two are still being questioned."
He did not provide details on the identities of those arrested and cautioned that it may be shown that they had no association with the murder, which was filmed and shown on an Al-Qaeda linked website earlier this month.")"This poll suggests..." (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/05/21)
"This poll suggests that the media really are out of touch on Iraq. Note these questions:20. On the situation in Iraq today, where do you think most of the problems are being created?
1. In Iraq 23%
2. In Washington, DC, or 18
3. In the news media 27
4. (Combination) 21
5. (All) 8
6. (None) -
7. (Not sure) 327. Which of the following news stories upset you more?
1. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners
by U.S. soldiers 8%
2. The beheading of an American
civilian by Muslim terrorists 60
3. (Both equal) 29
4. (Not sure) 328. Do you think the media spent an excessive amount of time covering either of the following news stories?
1. The Iraqi prisoner abuse story 34%
2. The beheading of American Nick Berg 9
3. (Both were covered excessively) 35
4. (Neither was covered excessively) 15
5. (Not sure) 7Seems like my emails are more reflective of general sentiment than the front pages of major newspapers." (See also: "Poll: Little Movement in Bush-Kerry Matchup" (Dana Blanton, FOX News, 2004/05/21))
"Porn Again: Nothing sells like kinky sex" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2004/05/21)
"Just ask the BBC, Sky News, France 2, and the rest of the EuroPress today. The release of new images from Abu Ghraib have gone around the world in minutes. They tell us nothing we didn't already know about the treatment of some detainees by some soldiers. Publishing yet more photos of S&M excess does nothing but titillate and excite the passions. Out there someplace are a group of sad souls aching for more such leaks, because hitherto forbidden pleasures they bring. We call those people "the editorial board of the Washington Post." The photographs they publish lack, in the words of the famous formulation, "redeeming social value." In fact, they even lack simple news value. ...
The Abu Ghraib story, like none other, proves that pornography sells, and that more pornography only sells more. In this case, it sells a hatred of America that is already well-entrenched, one that takes a toll in treasure and in human life. Lacking a cogent response other than weird, abject apologies from anyone in the U.S. administration, the prevailing view of America, as described in this leader from the Guardian, is as a nation of presumed war criminals. The crime is that the present U.S. administration is so inept at defending idealistic policies against a cynical media onslaught. So deafening now is the hysteria in Europe concerning these photographs that virtually no other news from Iraq matters. I doubt that the reputation of the United States has ever been so gleefully trashed as it is now in Paris, London, and Berlin, thanks largely to a stack of dirty pictures published without context or conscience. That's how pornography works." (See also: "Iraqis Provide New Details of Abuse: Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings" (Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, 2004/05/21) and "Lies about crimes" (The Guardian, 2004/05/21))"Hussein-Era Videos Released to Contrast Prison Scandal" (Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, 2004/05/21)
"Video images of brutal treatment of prisoners by Saddam Hussein's government resurfaced this week as part of an effort by some members of the Bush administration and Congress to remind viewers in Iraq and the United States of the previous horrors. ...
Al Hurra, an Iraqi television station backed by the U.S. government, broadcast video excerpts on Wednesday. They included commentary from former Iraqi prisoners, plus a discussion of the Hussein era and what one guest called "most despicable" acts by U.S. forces. ...
The excerpts on Al Hurra showed prisoners being punished or tortured by black-masked members of Saddam's Fedayeen, an elite militia controlled by Hussein. Prisoners were shown being flogged and having fingers chopped off. One is shown being thrown from a roof, another about to be beheaded by a man wielding a sword.
The full video shows the beheading and a man placing the severed head on the victim's prone body. Another scene shows a man's tongue being cut out." (See also: "The Real Picture Show" (Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com, 2004/05/14))"Iraqis Provide New Details of Abuse: Statements Describe Sexual Humiliation And Savage Beatings" (Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, 2004/05/21)
"Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets. ...
"They forced us to walk like dogs on our hands and knees," said Hiadar Sabar Abed Miktub al-Aboodi, detainee No. 13077. "We had to bark like a dog, and if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard on our face and chest with no mercy. After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything." ...
The disclosures come from a new cache of documents, photographs and videos obtained by The Post that are part of evidence assembled by Army investigators putting together criminal cases against soldiers at Abu Ghraib." (See also: "Videos Amplify Picture of Violence" (Josh White et al., The Washington Post, 2004/05/21): "The video begins with three soldiers huddled around a naked detainee, his thin frame backed against a wall. With a snap of his wrist, one of the soldiers slaps the man across his left cheek so hard that the prisoner's knees buckle. Another detainee, handcuffed and on his back, is dragged across the prison floor.
Then, the human pyramid begins to take shape. Soldiers force hooded and naked prisoners into crouches on the floor, one by one, side by side, a soldier pointing to where the next ones should go. The grainy video stops.")"Reuters Stands by Iraq Abuse Reports, Releases Timeline on Incident" (Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher, Reuters, 2004/05/20)
"Despite official military statements denying any wrongdoing — and an announcement today that the case is "closed" — Reuters is standing by allegations that three of its employees were abused by U.S. soldiers while confined near Falluja in January. ...
On Wednesday, General Ricardo Sanchez reiterated his belief that the investigation of this case was "thorough" and he stood by the military's conduct in the matter. (The official military report on the incident was posted today at Raleigh's newsobserver.com.)
"Our investigation found no abuse of any kind," Maj. Jimmie Cummings, spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, which was responsible for detaining the Reuters' employees, told the Associated Press today. "This is a closed case."
Reuters told E&P today that it had "no reason to doubt" the testimony of its staffers." (See also: "Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq" (Andrew Marshall, Reuters, 2004/05/18))"Abu Ghraib Worse Than 9/11?" (Joseph D'Hippolito, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/05/20)
The easiest way to test the level of double standards in a given statement is simply to invert it: "The overwhelming majority of Westerners cannot but feel aversion and hate for the Arab and Muslim world growing inside themselves."
This statement would almost certainly be criticized as bigoted, "racist" or hate-mongering if made by a Westerner. It would not make a popular Indykid slogan.
But if you turn it around it is suddenly very "liberal" and politically correct:
"The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, became the latest prelate to embarrass himself and his superiors with absurd public remarks. On May 12, Lajolo told the Roman newspaper La Repubblica that the Abu Ghraib scandal hurt the United States more than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“The torture? A more serious blow to the United States than Sept. 11,” Lajolo said, “except that the blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by Americans against themselves.”
Lajolo also called the abuses “a tragic episode in the relationship with Islam,” and suggested that the overwhelming majority of Arab Muslims “cannot but feel aversion and hate for the West growing inside themselves” and added that “the West is often identified with Christianity.” ...
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, focused on Abu Ghraib in three of its five editions between May 6 and May 10. “Horror and Shame,” blared the front-page headline on May 8. “Mankind Has Been Scarred,” shouted another front-page headline.
“The abuse and cruelty against the prisoners,” the newspaper stated, “represents the radical denial of human dignity and of fundamental human values.” Yet as of May 17, L’Osservatore Romano had said nothing about the gruesome beheading of Nick Berg.
New York Congressman Peter King, a Republican and a Catholic, offered the perfect rejoinder.
“This is the height of hypocrisy,” King told the Associated Press on May 13. “Whatever the United States has done to prisoners in Iraq is nothing compared to what priests and nuns did to Catholic kids for decades while the Catholic hierarchy covered it up.
'Think of the thousands of kids in the U.S. and Ireland who were abused by priests and nuns. You wonder where the Vatican’s moral compass is.'""More Photos Surface: Soldiers Shown Giving Thumbs-Up Sign
By Body of Dead Iraqi Prisoner" (Brian Ross, ABC News, 2004/05/19)
"ABCNEWS has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harman posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison's showers. The detainee's name was Manadel al-Jamadi.
According to testimony from Spc. Jason Kenner, obtained by ABCNEWS, the man was brought to the prison by U.S. Navy SEALs in good health. Kenner said he saw extensive bruising on the detainee's body when he was brought out of the showers, dead.
Kenner says the body was packed in ice during a "battle" between CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose of the body.
The Justice Department opened an investigation into this death and four others today following a referral from the CIA.
The photos were taken by Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick , who in e-mails to his family has asked why the people responsible for the prisoner's death were not being prosecuted in the same manner that he is.
Frederick, Graner, and Harman are among six reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company who are facing charges in the abuse scandal.""U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to a Year in Prison for Iraq Abuse" (AP/The New York Times, 2004/05/19)
"Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits received the maxium penalty Wednesday — one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge — in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Sivits, who pleaded guilty to four abuse charges, broke down in tears as he apologized for taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.
"I'd like to apologize to the Iraqi people and those detainees," he said in his statement. "I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos." ...
In an emotional description of events at Abu Ghraib prison on the evening of Nov. 8, Sivits said he was asked by Frederick, of Buckingham, Va., to accompany him to the prison facility.
Pausing in his struggle to speak, Sivits told the judge he was on detail outside Abu Ghraib and had done some maintenance work on generators when Frederick approached him. Sivits took a detainee with him, and when he arrived at the scene where the crimes took place, there were seven other detainees.
"I heard Cpl. Graner yelling in Arabic at the detainees," he said. "I saw one of the detainees lying on the floor. They were laying there on the floor, sandbags over their heads."
Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland, and another soldier, Pfc. Lynndie England, 21, were "stamping on their toes and hands."
"Graner punched the detainee in the head or temple area," Sivits said. "I said. 'I think you might have knocked him out.'"
Sivits also said: "Graner complained that he had injured his hand and said, 'Damn, that hurt.'"
Sivits said all prisoners were then stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.""Stop the Moral Equivalence" (Garry Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/05/19)
"It is said that to win a battle you must be the one to choose the battleground. Since the Abu Ghraib abuses were revealed, the battleground has been chosen by those who would blur the lines between terrorists and those fighting against them. The Bush administration has contributed to the confusion with its ambiguous "war on terror." You cannot fight a word. You need targets, you need to know what you are fighting for and against. Most importantly you must have beliefs that enable you to distinguish friend from foe.
While al Qaeda may not have a headquarters to bomb, there is no shortage of visible adversaries. What is required is to name them and to take action against them. We must also drag into the light those leaders and media who fail to condemn acts of terror. It is not only Al Jazeera talking about "insurgents" in Iraq, it is CNN. Many in Europe and even some in the U.S. are trying to differentiate "legitimate" terrorism from "bad" terrorism. Those who intentionally kill innocent civilians are terrorists, as are their sponsors. No political agenda should be allowed to advance through terrorist activity. We need to identify our enemy, not play with words. ...
In this fight the enemy does not play by our rules, or by any rules at all. WMD will be in terrorist hands eventually; conventional wisdom recognizes this reality. Concessions and negotiations at best only delay catastrophe. Europe and its people are in this war whether they acknowledge it or not. Those who would appease terrorists must realize that by pretending that this battle does not exist, they will soon have blood on their hands — both real and metaphorical." (See also: "The War Is Not Yet Won" (Garry Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/05))"Soldier arrested over hoax photos" (BBC News, 2004/05/19)
"At least one soldier has been arrested in connection with faked Iraqi torture pictures published in the Daily Mirror, the Ministry of Defence has said.
A spokeswoman said it was a "routine" part of the investigation.
The newspaper apologised for publishing the hoax pictures on Saturday following the sacking of editor Piers Morgan.
The Sunday Telegraph said Trinity Mirror executives planned to reveal the identity of its sources for the story to the Royal Military Police (RMP).
An MoD spokeswoman said: "At least one soldier was arrested to be questioned under caution in connection with the Mirror photographs."
She said no charges were brought." (See also: "SORRY.. WE WERE HOAXED" (The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/15))"What Went Wrong: The flaw in Seymour Hersh's theory" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/05/18)
"I remember a debate I had with Michael Moore — the newly crowned king of the Cannes Film Festival — at the more modest location of the Telluride Film Festival in 2002. Ridiculing the Bush administration's policy, he shouted that it had gone into Afghanistan to get Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. "Mission NOT accomplished!" he added, to roars of easy applause. I asked myself then, and I repeat the question now: Would the antiwar camp have approved the measures necessary to ensure those goals? If they will the end, will they will the means? Would they taunt that lawyer in Tampa, as they taunt the supporters of regime change, with living a quiet life at home while others die in the field? Isn't the refusal to take out the leaders of al-Qaida a bit of a distraction from the struggle against al-Qaida?
As it happens, dear reader, I know the answers to those questions as well as you do. And that is partly why the Abu Ghraib nightmare is such a source of demoralization and despair. Thugs and torturers, who are always on tap in limitless supply, do their work in the dark and, when caught, plead exceptional circumstances. It's as if they are on an urgent self-appointed mission. But the battle against Islamic jihad will be going on for a very long time, against a foe that is both ruthless and irrational. This means that infinite patience and scruple and intelligence are required, as well as decisiveness and bravery. Given this necessary assumption, all short-cut artists, let alone rec-room sadists, are to be treated, not as bad apples alone, but as traitors and enemies. If Rumsfeld could bring himself to say that, he could perhaps undo some of the shame, and some of the harm as well." (Also: "So a Sarin-infected device is exploded in Iraq, and across the border in Jordan the authorities say that nerve and gas weapons have been discovered for use against them by the followers of Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad well before the invasion. Where, one idly inquires, did these toys come from? No, it couldn't be. …")"Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq" (Andrew Marshall, Reuters, 2004/05/18)
"U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday.
The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday.
Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture.
All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse.
The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods.""Lessons of Abu Ghraib" (Mark Bowden, The Atlantic, from the July/August 2004 issue)
"The fact that the pictures were taken at all, and the cheerful expressions on the faces of the American bullies, suggest an atmosphere in which these soldiers had no reason to fear being punished for their behavior. It seems doubtful that the photos were meant to be used later to intimidate other prisoners, as has been suggested. If that had been so, the guards would probably have tried to look threatening. These photos have the appearance of grotesque souvenirs. The smiling faces of the tormentors suggest that apart from lacking moral judgment, these soldiers felt licensed to abuse.
Why? By all accounts, military and CIA interrogators at the prison were using coercive tactics — sleep deprivation, deception, fear, or drugs — on large numbers of prisoners, and even recruiting prison guards to assist them. ...
But when a prison, an army, or a government tacitly approves coercive measures as a matter of course, widespread and indefensible human-rights abuses become inevitable. ...
There are reports that Administration lawyers quietly drafted a series of secret legal opinions last year that codified the "aggressive" methods of interrogation permitted at U.S. detention facilities — which, if true, effectively authorized in advance the use of coercion.
Perhaps the most disturbing evidence of this mindset was Donald Rumsfeld's long initial silence on the Abu Ghraib photos. His failure to alert the President or congressional leaders before the photos became public — and he knew they were going to become public — leads one to conclude that he didn't think they were a very big deal. If so, this reveals him to be astonishingly tone-deaf, or worse. Maybe he simply wasn't shocked." (See also: "The Dark Art of Interrogation" (Mark Bowden, The Atlantic, from the October 2003 issue))"Tolerating evil" (Fred Gedrich, UPI, 2004/05/17)
"As grisly a sight and outrageous a crime against humanity as Berg's killing is, the world's liberal news media and domestic and international critics of U.S. policy like Ted Kennedy and Nelson Mandela have given disproportionately more attention to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Berg killing just doesn't fit their elitist worldview that it is the United States, rather than the terrorists, that poses the greatest threat to world peace.
The Arab Street has also greeted the Berg murder with relative silence. ... To date, three of 22 governments condemned Berg's slaying, but no Arab leaders have, perhaps fearful that they too will fall victim to the butcher's knife. ...
Annan chose not to appear publicly and, through a spokesman (perhaps not wanting to alienate his supporters or risk hostile questions from the media about the beheading or the embarrassing U.N. oil-for-food program scandal), offered condolences to Berg's family while suggesting that "mistreated prisoners" in the Iraq prison are victims like Nick Berg.
What Annan, and others like him, won't say is that many of the Abu Ghraib prisoners are suspected terrorists, murderers and thugs and that Nick Berg was an innocent man. The same twisted logic that allows Annan to make such an analogy allows U.N. members to place terrorist states like Sudan, Iran, Libya and Syria on the same moral plane, and to prominent positions within the U.N. system, as free and peaceful nations."
"Private First Class Lynndie England"
(AFP/Getty Images, 2004/05/10)
"Undated family photo of Private First Class Lynndie England.""Prison Guard Calls Abuse Routine and Sometimes Amusing" (Kate Zernike, The New York Times, 2004/05/16)
"In a sworn statement to investigators, Pfc. Lynndie England explained the mystery of why soldiers at Abu Ghraib took pictures of detainees masturbating and piled naked with plastic sandbags over their heads by saying, "We thought it looked funny so pictures were taken." ...
She explains how she put a strap around a detainee's neck and forced him and others to run and crawl down a hallway for "approximately four to six hours;" how one soldier would regularly throw a Nerf football at detainees with bags over their heads "to scare them;" how one soldier would kick detainees and cause open wounds, then "would personally stitch detainees if the wound weren't too bad," according to a copy of her statement given to The New York Times.
Asked if she ever physically abused a detainee, Private England said, "Yes, I stepped on some of them, push them or pull them, but nothing extreme."
She described how Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II punched detainees, "and the normal stuff as far as lean on them or push them."
"He also played some mind games with some of them with chemical lights," she added. "He would tell them to lift their legs and place the chemical light under their feet and tell them it was a knife. The chemical light would then be broken and spilled on the ground, the detainee would then be forced to crawl through it and then placed in a dark cell, this would freak out the detainee because they would glow."
"Picture 000015 was basically us fooling around," she said, pointing to a photograph of detainees stacked naked in different positions in 1A, the area of the prison where the soldiers now charged with abuse worked.""Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/16)
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported Saturday.
The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." ...
"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos," Di Rita said in his statement. 'This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense.'" (See also: "The Gray Zone" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/05/15))"Powell: Arab Response to Berg Insufficient" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/16)
"Secretary of State Colin Powell scolded Arab governments Sunday for not expressing more outrage over the videotaped beheading of an American civilian in Iraq. ...
Powell, interviewed from Jordan, said he has told Arab leaders, "When you are outraged at what happened at the prison, you should be equally, doubly outraged at what happened to Mr. Berg."
On "Fox News Sunday," Powell said, "That is equal to any other act you've seen with respect to the need to condemn it, and to condemn it outright, and to condemn it publicly. And we need that same level of outrage and condemnation coming from the Arab world, just as it's coming from us."
The Islamic militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas issued strongly worded condemnations of the killing. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the first Arab governments to criticize the murder after an initial silence throughout the region about the videotape." (See also: "Arab Street Erupts in Rage Over Beheading Video" (Scott Ott, ScrappleFace, 2004/05/11))"Now's not the time for Bush to go soft" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2004/05/16)
"The American people, no thanks to their media, still understand what's real and what's just cheesy Beltway dinner-theater. That's why the Abu Ghraib scandal is dead, even if the networks don't yet know it. It was dead before Nick Berg. It died because the Democrats and their media groupies overplayed their hand, as usual, and so turned a real scandal into just another fake scandal for senatorial windbags to huff and puff over. In the last few days, the Mirror, a raucous Fleet Street tabloid, has published pictures of British troops urinating on Iraqi prisoners, and the Boston Globe, a somnolent New England broadsheet, has published pictures of American troops sexually abusing Iraqi women. In both cases, the pictures turned out to be fake. From a cursory glance at the details in the London snaps and the provenance of the Boston ones, it should have been obvious to editors at both papers that they were almost certainly false.
Yet they published them. Because they wanted them to be true. Because it would bring them a little closer to the head they really want to roll — George W. Bush's. If you want to see what the Islamists did to Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl or to those guys in Fallujah or even to the victims of Sept. 11, you'll have to ferret it out on the Internet. The media aren't interested in showing you images that might rouse the American people to righteous anger, only images that will shame and demoralize them.""Why America can't cope with these images" (Anne Applebaum, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/05/16)
"No fewer than three visiting Englishmen of my acquaintance have recently expressed astonishment at the level of panic which has prevailed in Washington since the photographs from Abu Ghraib were made public, a panic which doesn't seem to have been properly reflected in the British press coverage. Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the press, and all of the people who go to cocktail parties in Georgetown have talked of little else for two weeks. ...
After the photographs were first published, Mr Rumsfeld's first reaction to the pictures was "This is un-American". Looking at the still-classified videos taken at Abu Ghraib, a Colorado Senator demanded to know "How the hell did these people get into our army?" You can think it naive or you can think it sweet, but American exceptionalism — the belief the US really is morally better than most other places — actually does run very deep here. ...
Don't be surprised if this anger lasts some time, and don't underestimate its power. After all, Watergate, dismissed in much of Europe as a run-of-the-mill electoral scandal, destroyed Richard Nixon. The implications of failure in Vietnam were sufficient to persuade Lyndon Johnson not to run for a second term. If George W Bush is held responsible for the nation's renewed loss of faith in itself, he too may not be president much longer.""'Culture' is no excuse" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2004/05/16)
Add Stalin and the Gulag to the list below: "A man from Maidstone had this letter published in the Independent last week. 'Why is it barbaric,' he asked, 'to decapitate an innocent man with a knife but civilised to do it with a laser-guided bomb?' Or to rephrase the question, is the video executioner of Nicholas Berg in any way morally deficient compared to the general or politician who gives an order that — whatever the intention — will almost certainly lead to the death of an innocent somewhere?
Other, similar, relativities have been knocking around this week. Also in the Independent, former editor Andreas Whittam Smith — infuriated by the government response to the Iraqi prison scandal contrasted the high language of exporting democracy with the accusation that 'the coalition appears to have created a gulag stretching from Afghanistan through Iraq and ending in Guantanamo Bay, where "undesirables" ... can be mistreated for as long as Stalin, sorry I mean Messrs Bush and Blair, decide.' ...
True, an easy assumption of superior virtue can blind you to what is good about others and what is bad about yourself. But do we really believe that it is the same thing accidentally to kill a civilian with a bomb as it is to cut off his head on camera? Or that a society and polity that is rightly horrified by prisoner abuse is to be compared with the one presided over by Stalin?" (See also: "No other prime minister has brought such shame on us" (Andreas Whittam Smith, Independent/christusrex.org, 2004/05/10))"There's No Escape When War Turns Ghoulish" (Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times, 2004/05/16)
No escape from stupid comparisons, that is. An anonymous European cabinet minister likened the prisoner abuse scandal to the Nazi destruction of Guernica. For Le Monde it equaled Ku Klux Klan lynchings. McNeil Jr. is even more imaginative:
"For the most historically imaginative, the pictures of mistreated prisoners of war from inside Abu Ghraib prison recalled the sight greeting Ottoman soldiers when they marched north in 1476 into Romania: hundreds of their captured comrades spiked on poles along the roadside by Vlad the Impaler, the Christian prince who gave rise to the Dracula legend.""The Gray Zone" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/05/15)
"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A." (See also: "Chain of Command" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/05/09) and "Torture at Abu Ghraib" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/04/30))"It's America's War" (David Gelernter, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/05/24 issue)
"The moment we saw those pictures we knew (every last American knew) that the punch in the gut is on the way. People who never cared a damn what Saddam did to his prisoners would be choking back tears of outrage. Americans hold themselves to a higher moral standard, of course. But most Americans suspected that the world's reaction had as much to do with America Hatred as it did with moral standards. We knew that people would forget what we have achieved in Iraq, and what it has cost us in arms and legs and eyes and blood. We knew our enemies would light into America and do their best to turn the world against us and against our troops — whom we had seen risking their lives to liberate Iraq and make it safe — not to mention the
civilians who hazarded life and limb to get clean water flowing, oil pumping, power on, schools open, streets policed, the economy inching forward, and democracy coming steadily closer. We could all anticipate headlines like the one that appeared in the May 8 Irish Times: "The shaming of America. George Bush's boast of shutting down Saddam Hussein's torture chambers in Iraq rings hollow now." We knew our enemies would use those photos to smear our whole Army, our whole Iraq campaign, our whole nation. Much of the world (after all) operates on America Hate the way a car runs on gas or a tick on blood.
"The shaming of America. George Bush's boast of shutting down Saddam Hussein's torture chambers in Iraq rings hollow now." The hell it does. Anyone who equates Saddam's bloody decades of torture and mass murder to the crimes at Abu Ghraib is the same kind of fool who once preached the moral equivalence of America and Soviet Russia, or of America in Vietnam and Hitlerism. Imbecility is eternal, perpetually reincarnated.""Who Is Abu Zarqawi?" (Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/05/24 issue)
"What we know about the terrorist leader who murdered Nicholas Berg": "Zarqawi exemplifies Sunni terrorism after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, what some call "al Qaeda 2.0." The Western counteroffensive decimated al Qaeda's leadership, stripped the organization of safe havens and training camps, and disrupted its command and control. Former al Qaeda subsidiaries became franchises, receiving inspiration from bin Laden's occasional messages but operating independently. Historically speaking, the dynamic of revolutionary movements favors the most radical faction — the Jacobins, not the Girondists, the Bolsheviks, not the Menshiviks. If this dynamic prevails in contemporary Sunni terrorism, Abu Musab al Zarqawi represents the future."
"SORRY.. WE WERE HOAXED"
(The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/15)
(See also: "Sorry.. We Were Hoaxed" (The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/15): "So to you today we apologise for publishing pictures which we now believe were not genuine. We also say sorry to the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and our Army in Iraq for publishing those pictures.")"Stunned staff mourn loss of editor who 'told the truth' about Iraqi abuse" (Sandra Laville, The Guardian, 2004/05/15)
Lies are truth at The Daily Mirror: "Such was the speed of his exit that Morgan had no chance to pick up his coat from the back of his chair.
His crime, colleagues said, was telling the truth. ...
"Everyone who criticised the war has been targeted. First it was the BBC and now Piers. Only the people who have prosecuted this war are still in place," said one reporter. ...
'What do you do when someone comes to you with a story? You ask for pictures. What he's done is expose the cruelty that was going on and told the truth. He has been kicked out by a bunch of faceless American shareholders - and who knows who was lobbying them.'" (See also: "Editor sacked over 'hoax' pictures" (BBC News, 2004/05/14) and "Mirror editor sacked over hoax" (Dan Milmo and Helen Carter, The Guardian, 2004/04/15): "Yesterday morning Mr Morgan was in defiant mood. "All I want to say is we published the truth," he told the ITV News Channel. 'We have revealed a can of worms. If the government chooses to ignore that, it is entirely a matter for them.'")"The Real Picture Show" (Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com, 2004/05/14)
"I don't often get scoops on this site and there is no reason you should trust me, but I have one today. The following events ... light years beyond what you have seen from our troops in Abu Ghraib... are now in the hands of the new Arab-language Television network Alhurra. They are videotapes and, in one grisly case, photographs. These are all acts performed by Saddam's soldiers and police in uniform. I am not sure what Al Ahurra will broadcast, but they will be culled from among the following. I am told that when their people saw these tapes, they were unable to watch them. I can understand why. It is hard for me to type them.
First, the photographs. They are of actual live castrations of Kurds.
Now, the video tapes:
Two beheadings, during one of which "Happy Birthday, Saddam" is being sung in Arabic.
Fingers being cut off one by one from a hand tied to a board.
People being thrown off four-story buildings, one forced to wear a Superman costume.
A man scourged ninety-nine times.
Three different instances of gas poisonings (probably employing different types), including dead babies.
There may be more. I don't know. I would like to know if any of these torturers is actually in Abu Ghraib right now. Let's hope they were not among those let out. I also would like to know what Senator Kennedy has to say about the moral equivalence of our actions after watching these tapes. And finally, I would like to know why it took so long for these to come out.""Editor sacked over 'hoax' pictures" (BBC News, 2004/05/14)
"Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been sacked following pressure over faked photos of soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner.
The Queen's Lancashire Regiment earlier said the Mirror should apologise for running the pictures and endangering British troops.
A statement from the Mirror said it had fallen victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax". The Mirror board said it would be "inappropriate" for Morgan to continue. ...
The newspaper released a statement saying: "The Daily Mirror published in good faith photographs which it absolutely believed were genuine images of British soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner.
"However there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that these pictures are fakes and that the Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax.
"The Daily Mirror therefore apologises unreservedly for publishing the pictures and deeply regrets the reputational damage done to the QLR and the Army in Iraq." (See also: "Britain says prisoner abuse photos 'not taken in Iraq'" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/13))"Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed" (CNN.com, 2004/05/14)
"When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.
Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured and killed him.
Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui — the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people — who no one knew were terrorists at the time."
At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.
"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.""American Cannibalism" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/05/14)
"Have we any memory of a man in a suit and tie, nearly three years ago wading through the din and panic amid the morning rubble, assuring millions of stunned Americans that the national headquarters of their armed forces was still intact and capable of defending us after the mass murder of 3,000? And have we no shame in recognizing that should some congressional critics and Washington harpies get their way, Americans will accomplish what bin Laden's suicide bombers could not on September 11: remove America's finest Secretary of Defense in a half century? ...
Rumsfeld and Meyers have presided over two amazingly successful wars. In an aggregate of 11 weeks, and at the tragic cost of 700 combat dead, the American military defeated the two worst regimes in the Middle East and stayed on to implant democratic change where no such idea has ever existed. ...
Indeed, there are two constants in this war: Every time the United States engages the enemy it wins, and every time Iraqis are given a chance at a secure, peaceful local election they act responsibly and eschew candidates of violence and hate. Unless those facts change, America will win the peace. If we will fight more aggressively in the shadows while the new government basks in the light of success, the miracle of Iraq will come to pass — and it simply would not have without the likes of a Donald Rumsfeld." (See also: "Why The Troops Don't Trust Rummy" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/14))"Why the big media continue to lose their audience" (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/05/14)
"Neal Boortz observes:This morning in most of the newspapers I scanned during my preparation for the show the top story was still the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. Nick Berg had already disappeared from many front pages, but the prison abuse stories remain. May I suggest to you that there is a reason for this? Maybe it's just this simple: The prison abuse scandal can damage Bush, the Nick Berg story can only help him. Given the choice many editors will chose the stories that serve their cause, getting Bush out of the White House, rather than one that hurts it.
Such cynicism about the media, these days. But he's right. The Berg video wasn't shown on TV, and — as Boortz notes — the big media leaders seem almost desperate to keep the story on Abu Ghraib, even to the point of running already discredited fake porn photos purporting to be from Iraq. ...
These guys are marginalizing themselves with their agenda-driven coverage. And they're so out of touch they don't realize it. As Andrew Sullivan notes:My gut tells me that the Nick Berg video has had much more psychic impact in this country than the Abu Ghraib horrors. I even notice some small evidence for this. Every political blog site has just seen an exponential jump in traffic — far more than anything that occurred during the Abu Ghraib unfolding. My traffic went through the roof yesterday, and, according to Alexa, so did everyone else's. People who have tuned the war out suddenly tuned the war in. They get it. Will the mainstream media?"
(See also: "Looking at the top stories" (Neal Boortz, boortz.com, 2004/05/13) and "A Blog Jolt" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/05/13) Also: "Boston Globe publishes bogus GI rape pictures" (Sherrie Gossett, WorldNetDaily, 2004/05/12))
"Chopping Heads" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
Systematic Abuse 101. As Podhoretz points out in the column below: "It remains the case, more than two weeks after the public exposure of the Abu Ghraib photographs, that not a single digital photo showing mistreatment has emerged from another cellblock at that self-same prison, or from any of the other 24 prisons in Iraq. ...
The scandal isn't widening. If anything, it's contracting. The focus continues to zoom in on the actual people in the pictures and their disgusting conduct in them."
In contrast, the beheading of Nick Berg is an example of a practice that is truly widespread and systematic:
"What has impressed most people is the fact that the terrorists cut Mr. Berg's head in the way that sheep are beheaded at the annual Feast of the Sacrifice.
Berg is, of course, not the first to be murdered in such a gruesome manner. Nor, alas, is he likely to be the last. For the cutting of heads (in Arabic, qata al-raas) has been the favorite form of Islamist execution for more than 14 centuries. ...
Chopping off heads was widely practiced throughout the Afghan wars of the 1980s. An estimated 3,000 Soviet soldiers, many of them Muslims, had their heads cut off by the Mujahedeen, who at the time enjoyed U.S. and other Western support. (In other cases the Mujahedeen cut off the testicles of the Soviet soldiers and fed them to other Soviet prisoners.)
Needless to say, rival Mujahedeen also chopped off each other's heads. The group led by one Haji Akbari was especially notorious in that respect. One of its members was Osama bin Laden. ...
One Algerian specialist in slitting throats and cutting off heads was known as Momo le Nain (Muhammad the Midget). He was a 20-plus-year-old butcher's apprentice recruited by the GIA for the purpose of cutting off people's heads. In 1996 in Ben-Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, Momo cut off a record 86 heads in one night, including the heads of more than a dozen children.
In recognition of his exemplary act of piety, the GIA sent him to Mecca for pilgrimage." (See also: "The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading" (Andrew G. Bostom, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/05/14): "Reactions to the grotesque jihadist decapitation of yet another "infidel Jew," Mr. Berg, make clear that our intelligentsia are either dangerously uninformed, or simply unwilling to come to terms with this ugly reality: such murders are consistent with sacred jihad practices, as well as Islamic attitudes towards all non-Muslim infidels, in particular, Jews, which date back to the 7th century, and the Prophet Muhammad's own example.")"Rooting For The Enemy" (John Podhoretz, New York Post, 2004/05/14)
"A man has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea — on its front page yesterday — that his death is somehow the fault of the United States.
"The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."
Whatever the circumstances of Nick Berg's detention in Iraq and his family's torment at his unspeakable murder,
