My guess would be, “I’ll get that pesky Aladdin in this movie for sure,” but you’d have to ask.
Beheading a living human is… inhuman. (All the crap about mutilating the corpses of contractors a few months ago was hugely overblown, IMO; they don’t care, they’re dead) This, though, is truly sickening- much more so than the prisoner abuse scandal, although I doubt it will merit the same sort of coverage.
Fuck Bush.
(that was a semi-related observation but has nothing to do with the beheading story)
I disagree. The torture scandal that so many blood thirsty American savages revel in and excuse away is worse than the beheading of one man because it invloves at least one beating death and a male rape with objects and female rape.
Forgive me for not remembering the source (maybe Larry King Live Tuesday night) or the details, but someone said some sort of “poll” had been done and the “average Jafar” thought the execution was rather out of proportion to the stated stimulus.
Course, even if my memory is dead on, one has to factor in the fact that if you were living in an occupied country and were asked a question relating to the occupiers, you might well pull your punches.
I have to agree. A beheading provokes a lot of attention and outrage, but we shouldn’t imagine for a fucking second that the deaths we have caused to Iraqi prisoners were any less painful or horrific.
Sexually asaulting minors to gather information from other people crosses lines that I’m not even sure beheading a willing occupant of the country does.
Ghastly stuff all around. I pray that we manage to both control our own forces from committing acts of violence and that nothing like this ever happens to another American conractor/soldier/aid worker/anyone again.
Do you speak arabic? How could you know what exactly the Arab world is actually reacting to these events? How do you know that they aren’t as disgusted as you are?
Or is it a typical xenophobic attitude where Arab=Terrorist lover?
Justly condemned? When? And by whom? Were there any trials? Was a case made for their defence? Or were they just nabbed in the wrong place at the wrong time and their guilt assumed a priori?
As others have already pointed out in this thread, one man was beaten to death in Abu Ghraib and at least two other inmates were raped. Others were subjected to chemical burns, threatened with (unbeknownst to them) empty handguns, forced to partake in mock executions and menaced by attack dogs.
Face it, from a strictly humanitarian perspective, the crimes at Abu Ghraib well exceed the beheading of Nick Berg.
That is, of course, unless you subscribe to the peculiarly American flavour of ethnocentricism which axiomatically views Westerners as civilized liberators and Iraqi’s as an uncomprehending, ungrateful subspecies of humanity who can be brutalised en masse with nary a quiver of moral concern. And if anyone does dare to raise such concerns, well hell! We’re liberators Goddamnit! Them sand nigs can suck it up and ask for seconds.
I’d say these acts are equally foul. The fuckers who cut that poor man’s head off were terrorists, who by definition are sadistic and bloodthirsty. And they weren’t Iraqi, BTW.
Welcome, everyone, to the consequences of war. We are now entering the stage of reprisals and everyone loses sight of why the hell this thing started in the first place. Moral high ground will be defended and everyone can get on with what they were doing safe in the knowledge that at least they aren’t as evil the other side. Comforting, isn’t it?
And to think a year ago posters on this Board were crowing victoriously about how the war was over and all those who had opposed it were wrong. The American army had strolled into Bagdad and everyone was delighted to see them. End of story.
Well this is what war is about, people. It’s still there, it’s still messy, ugly, unfair and innocent people get killed. All the shock and wailing over this latest act of barbarity seems pretty hollow. Where was it six months ago, a year ago? And guess what? It’s nowhere near over with yet! See you back here in 10 years and we can total up the outrages. Maybe we can compare them to the grand total of WMDs (remember them?) and see what we really achieved in Iraq!
When are we going to face up to the fact that the idea of a clean, remote, clinical war is a lie? That overwhelming military superority is all you need to get things done is the simplistic reasoning of a moron? When are we going to realise that the guys that sold us this mess are either liars or idiots or both?
Or are we just going to urge on the next round of deaths? It doesn’t matter what excuse is given for the last round, or what will be the reason for the next. This is what happens in war. This is what we let our leaders enter. When are we going to get that through our thick skulls?
[QUOTE=threemae]
The horrific irony in all of this is that he was arrested at an Iraqi checkpoint for not having papers in order in March; presumably the same “crime” of so many of the individuals abused in Abu Gharib prison.
QUOTE]
Hate to say it, but Site? Is there any credible information that any, let alone “so many” of the individuals in Abu Gharib were there simply for not having papers? The impression given has been that the people who were abused were enemy combatants or what ever you prefer we call the people fighting the coalition. If I am misinformed I apologize but if you’re wrong threemae you might consider doing the same.
Sorry, I stand corrected. How about, “I am sickened by the actions of the terrorists in Iraq.”
I agree that AQ are opportunists. They are certainly going to jump on the anti-American bandwagon to further their “cause”. But I can’t help but believe that the death toll will increase as a direct result of the actions of the American MP’s.