A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site showed the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq and said the execution was carried out by an al-Qaida affiliated group to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit — similar to a prisoner’s uniform — who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.
“My name is Nick Berg, my father’s name is Michael, my mother’s name is Susan,” the man said on the video. “I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in … Philadelphia.”
After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” — “God is great.” They then held the head out before the camera.
Berg was a small-business owner from the Philadelphia suburbs, his family said Tuesday.
Berg’s family said they knew their son had been decapitated, but didn’t know the details of the killing. When told of the video by an Associated Press reporter, Berg’s father, Michael, and his two siblings hugged and cried.
“I knew he was decapitated before. That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn’t want it to become public,” Michael Berg said.
The video tape included a statement by one of the executioners:
“For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused.”
“So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins … slaughtered in this way.”
The video bore the title “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American.” It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi — a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden — was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution.
I guess this puts to rest the meme that the torture was a brilliant tactical maneuver that scared the quivering Arabs into compliance.
But, I fear that not only Iraq is going to end up in a civil war from all these mistakes. The US may end up having another one of its own, as well. I think it’s fair to say that the sadistic wing nut contingent is going to explode over this.
I continue to be amazed at those starry-eyed neocons like David Brooks who aparently made it through half a century on this planet without realizing that a war of choice is antithetical to the goal of spreading freedom and democracy by virtue of the fact that war itself is defined by violence and inhumanity on a grand scale. Why they didn’t see this very elementary contradiction in their grand plan I will never know. (Perhaps it is no accident or conspiracy, after all, that conservative intellectuals aren’t successful in academia. Perhaps it’s simply because they are not very bright.)
We are now into a cycle of revenge that is unfortunately going to be stoked rather than redirected by the moron in the White House.
Get ready for some Western aphorisms. I can feel them coming on. Ride ’em Cowboy.