I saw the video shows beheading of American captive in Iraq on local news.
Gees! Call me naive, I just don’t want to see or hear anything like that.
It makes me sad.
Should the media put that video on air, even it’s mosaicked?
But I can hear the screaming clearly. 
I’m glad I am not in charge or the Middle East would be one white hot radioactive zone right now.
I downloaded it at lunch time and can’t bring myself to watching it.
How can you download that video?
I read a comment from the victim’s mother to the effect that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to watch it or not because it sounded so horrible.
WASN"T SURE??? There’s no way in hell I’d watch a video of some lunatics cutting off my child’s head with a saw. I can’t imagine the slightest reason for her to want to see it.
No need to download it. I’ve seen it about ten times now on the local news stations.
Really sad. You can hear him screaming, and crying. Just, really really sad. They should stop showing it.
I found the video online and watched half of it with the sound off. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it to the end. It was just too distressing even without the screams.
I read that the killers held up his head up to the camera afterwards. As MT says, how could his mother even consider watching it?
twocs, I use limewire.
I can see I’m going to be avoiding the news tonight (which I usually do anyway, so no big difference there).
I don’t know how his mother could bear it either, but it’s her son, so who are we to judge? Maybe she can’t bring herself to accept the finality that he’s really gone until she sees it for herself. Maybe she wants to see his last moments, no matter how painful they might be. I would respect whatever she decided for herself instead of questioning her motives.
Nothing new. Muslim terrorists have been beheading hostages for years and years. Just google “kashmir” or “philippines” and “behead”.
They haven’t shown them on worldwide TV before have they?
I haven’t seen it and if I’m lucky I won’t. I can’t even watch Dawn of the Dead. And that’s fake.
[quote=“Richardm”]They haven’t shown them on worldwide TV before have they?
I haven’t seen it and if I’m lucky I won’t. I can’t even watch Dawn of the Dead. And that’s fake.[/quote]
Daniel Perle’s beheading was shown at least on the internet… not certain about television.
Inevitable – this is what happens when you invade and occupy a country. Naturally, your civilians become targets. As inevitable as rain in the srping. One might also note that the military wanted to take these guys out, but the White House didn’t let them.
The saddest part of this is not the dead man, but the fact that Bush’s Iraq invasion has now legitimated Al Qaeda’s terrorist activity against the US and its civilians as a legitimate tactic of resistance.
Vorkosigan
I agree. The US has been far too nice in this war. I would welcome far more brutality. I cannot believe that we stopped the Marines from finishing up in Fallujah.
The rest of what you posted is, IMO, nonsense.
I didn’t realize the prison stuff went this far.
but having said that, i think, in this case, you have to fight fire with fire. doesn’t mean blank check to go out there with total disregard, but certainly on a different level/standard. this also means open discourse about what the troops are getting into, and if the consequences are acceptable which I don’t think has clearly been discussed by the admin.
“The US has been far too nice in this war. I would welcome far more brutality.”
May12, 2004, Forumosa
“Today, Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime is history.”
Vice-president Dick Cheney, May 1, 2003
Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam, 1968:
. . . by March of 1968 many in the company had given in to an easy pattern of violence. Soldiers systematically beat unarmed civilians. Some civilians were murdered. Whole villages were burned. Wells were poisoned. Rapes were common.
On March 14 a small squad from “C” Company ran into a booby trap, killing a popular sergeant, blinding one GI and wounding several others. The following evening, when a funeral service was held for the killed sergeant, soldiers had revenge on their mind.
At 7:22 a.m. on March 16, nine helicopters lifted off for the flight to My Lai 4. By the time the helicopters carrying members of Charlie Company landed in a rice paddy about 140 yards south of My Lai, the area had been peppered with small arms fire from assault helicopters. Whatever VC might have been in the vicinity of My Lai had most likely left by the time the first soldiers climbed out of their helicopters. The assault plan called for Lt. Calley’s first platoon and Lt. Stephen Brooks’ second platoon to sweep into the village, while a third platoon, Medina, and the headquarters unit would be held in reserve and follow the first two platoons in after the area was more-or-less secured.
. . . Thompson repeatedly saw young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range. . .
Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. One who followed Calley’s order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.
By 11 a.m., when Medina called for a lunch break, the killing was nearly over. By noon, “My Lai was no more”: its buildings were destroyed and its people dead or dying. Soldiers later said they didn’t remember seeing “one military-age male in the entire place”. By night, the VC had returned to bury the dead. What few villagers survived and weren’t already communists, became communists. Twenty months later army investigators would discover three mass graves containing the bodies of about 500 villagers.
Those who are ignorant of the history of other downward spirals of hate are condemned to repeat them and all their horrors.
spook… that was my second reference to a desire for more brutality today. However, in my first reference I limited that desire for more brutality to the battlefield and expressly stated that I didn’t seek more brutality with respect to innocents and detainees, even if not innocent.
I should have added the same qualifier here.
Tigerman,
Understood. I believe and maintain though that brutality isn’t something you can contain once you give in to it. Cruelty clouds the mind and leads to a downward spiral in which both sides are convinced they’re the innocent victims and the other side the godless monsters.
That’s the history lesson of Charlie Company which over the months back in 1968 went from being a bunch of decent guys from middle America to a group of brutal killers capable of massacring the children of their tormenters at point blank. They were convinced too their brutality had a justification.
So, beware the trap of righteous hatred because it’s ensnared many a decent man throughout history.
[quote=“spook”]
That’s the history lesson of Charlie Company which over the months back in 1968 went from being a bunch of decent guys from middle America to a group of brutal killers capable of massacring the children of their tormenters at point blank. They were convinced too their brutality had a justification.[/quote]
Check out this made in the USA son-of-a-bitch.
I’m afraid this is just the beginning of a brutality that knows no end, and it could very well end, eventually, with a nuclear bang. The forces of evil have been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, and they cannot be stopped. Berg and Pearl were just the kindling wood for what’s in store for the Western world. I didn’t see the video, and don’t want to, but I did see the still images from it just before lunchtime and…
Everything that the liberal West has worked for for over 5000 years is about to be sabotaged by an evil wind from Muslims. We have no idea what is in store for us, but the Pearl and Berg events should wake people up. It’s beyond words. And it’s beyond stopping.
As for press coverage of the video here in Taiwan and overseas, compare:
Mainstream US news orgs were careful with Berg video
“NBC Nightly News” and “ABC World News Tonight” stopped the tape just as the killer drew his knife, reports Peter Johnson, while “CBS Evening News” went a bit further, showing the killer grab Nick Berg by his hair, slam him to the ground and put the knife to his neck.
Jim Murphy, who produces Dan Rather’s newscast, says: “I just think you really need to let people see as much as they can in a judicious way. By showing even that little bit, you got a better sense of what some very bad people are willing to do to Americans.”