So they've succeeded in making the American abuses- for which the president has apologized, and which is being investigated, and courts-martial convened small by comparison.

Beheading Adds New Twist to Scandal
By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; 8:34 AM

The murderers changed the subject yesterday.

Just when the frenzy over American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was spinning out of control, we got a reminder of what we're up against.

The pictures (with the really bad stuff still to be released, we're told) of prisoners being sexually humiliated and led around with dog leashes has shaken the Bush administration to its core. But the videotaped beheading of an American contractor, posted on what's being called an "al-Qaeda-linked Web site," is something else entirely: The calling card of brutal killers who delight in murdering innocents, as the world learned anew on 9/11.

Suddenly, everything was put into perspective.

(Did the networks have to play the gruesome video, except for the final act, thus handing the terrorists the propaganda victory they wanted? A still shot, a snippet, and a description wouldn't have been enough?)

If this was an old-fashioned propaganda war, this sickening decapitation tape would never have been released, since it trumps a story that was making the United States look very bad. But these killers don't care about that, or apparently about human life itself.

So they've succeeded in making the American abuses--for which the president has apologized, and which is being investigated, and courts-martial convened--small by comparison.

source...

Name:

Smedley

In response to:
So they've succeeded in making the American abuses--for which the president has apologized, and which is being investigated, and courts-martial convened--small by comparison.

Message:
The real news is that the "American abuses" are for the most part incredibly trival.

Arab "Justice": Civilian worker helping to repair Iraqi infrastructure beheaded.

Fantastical Occupation

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A23

Back when he was running for president, in 2000, Sen. John McCain routinely referred to Bill Clinton's handling of world affairs as a "feckless photo-op foreign policy." Four years later, Clinton's foreign policy seems fairly filled with feck when contrasted with his successor's.

Has any official United States policy in recent memory been as feckless as the Bush administration's for postwar Iraq? Can we, for a moment, recall just some of the assumptions that the administration announced or embraced? That Americans would be welcomed as liberators? That we could secure the nation with a force of a little more than 100,000 troops? That Iraqi oil revenue would be such that the occupation would pay for itself? That, in accord with our assumptions on troop requirements and postwar financing, we didn't really need the kind of international cooperation that the nation had historically sought for this kind of venture? That, in accord with the same assumptions, there was no reason not to enact more massive tax cuts for the rich?

With the revelations that have emerged of the degradation and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, it's become particularly clear that the administration gave no real thought to the challenges at the very heart of occupying another country. Occupations can be relatively benign, but only when the occupier is viewed by the occupied as a temporary, legitimate expedient, concerned with and able to enhance the occupied nation's reconstruction. If that perception begins to crumble, and if resistance erupts, occupations turn brutal, no matter how noble their goals may be.

That hasn't always posed an immediate problem for many of history's leading occupying powers: Imperial Rome and, until its latter days, imperial Britain weren't troubled very much by the opinions of a resentful public. But the United States, and the entire Western world, are engaged in a long-term battle against fundamentalist Islam, a battle that ultimately and immediately has as its goal the Islamic public's support. At times that battle must be military, as was the case in Afghanistan after the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the time, however, that battle will be fought in the social, political and economic spheres, and it is on that terrain that the liberal democratic model will -- or should -- triumph.

Which is why military occupations offer the worst possible terrain on which to fight the battle of ideas. From the French in Indochina and Algeria to the British in South Asia and the United States in Central America and Vietnam, occupations are where liberal democracies go to betray their ideals -- if not as a matter of intent then, inevitably, as a matter of execution. One way or another, it becomes necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.

But if one thing is clear beyond dispute in the muddle of post-Saddam Iraq, it is that the Bush administration gave no thought whatever to the problems inherent in occupation. No one thought to protect Iraq's cultural treasures. No one thought to secure the nation's power grid. No one thought to enlarge our own armed forces, so that we weren't sending civilian National Guard troops and private contractors to do a soldier's job, with a clear chain of command in place.

And clearly, no one sought to train those Guardsmen assigned to duty at Abu Ghraib prison in the rudiments of the Geneva Conventions and our Army's regulations on the treatment of prisoners. Instead, they were thrown into a system that was being redesigned to "Gitmo-ize" the treatment of detainees there -- that is, to deal with prisoners the same way we treat the al Qaeda prisoners and others at our Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, free from prying eyes and the codes of either civilian or military law. And Gitmo-ize the prisoners is just what some of our guards at Abu Ghraib did. Some prisoners, apparently, were Gitmo-ized to death.

It defies all belief that the young women and men of an Army Reserve unit from West Virginia were some kind of sadistic cult just waiting to be called away from their civilian lives to torture prisoners in Iraq. I doubt they brought the hoods, the dogs, the nightsticks with them. They were doing the very dirty work of an occupation that, as it's developed, could hardly be more counterproductive to our ultimate goal -- the liberalization of the Islamic world -- if we'd planned it that way.

But then, at the White House and at the highest (that is, civilian) levels of the Pentagon, every assumption about the occupation was rooted in fantasy. And on that topic and its role in the affairs of the occupiers and the occupied, I defer to Ireland's great poet, William Butler Yeats. "We fed the heart on fantasy," he wrote, "the heart grew brutal on the fare."

meyersonh@washpost.com link

Left Wing Extremists, which is the worst atrocity. Will the Democrats response be as strong as their attempt to get Bush via the Iraqi prison hazing?

Name:	You Suck
To:	Editor
Re:	big ole delete button

In response to:
one way garbage

It's time to put up or shut up. Last week I wrote a column saying that CBS should have thought twice before showing the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. The response from readers and even some journalists was like I'd proposed banning the printing press. Numerous e-mailers said I'm no different than a Holocaust-denier who'd ban photos from Auschwitz.

Well, now we have the horrible news that Nick Berg, an American contractor, was beheaded by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group explicitly in response to the release of the Abu Ghraib photos.

I say in response to the release of the photos — and not the abuse — because that's exactly what I mean.

The Iraqi insurgents had to have known that there were abuses taking place in Abu Ghraib before those images were released. Enough prisoners had been released for the New York Times and CNN to report on the allegations, long before the photos came out. The revelation of those humiliating pictures and the political opportunities they created lead to Berg's beheading.

So now we have an opportunity to see firsthand whether the media is willing to hold to its new standard on gratuitous and sensational images, showing them no matter how offensive and no matter what the consequences.

CNN's Aaron Brown defended the release of the first wave of pictures, in response to my column, saying, "You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

Maybe so. But that is a new standard for the media, one that is rarely applied evenly in all cases. If showing snapshots and images reveals the truth better than words, then why do networks refuse to show "so-called" partial-birth abortions? After all, that whole debate is over the nature of the procedure. Going to the videotape would surely settle it better than any news anchor.

The Abu Ghraib images are so shocking, so offensive, and so sensational they will in all likelihood make America's job in Iraq and the Middle East immeasurably harder for a long time to come. That means more American deaths — such as Berg's — more Iraqi deaths and a diminished future for that country and that region.

I don't support censorship. The government has almost no role in this. But if CBS showed the same self-restraint it did for, say, the Danny Pearl video, it could still have reported the story shedding light instead of heat.

I originally wrote that CBS should be "ashamed" for airing the photos. I now concede that might be too harsh. But, in conceding that, I'm showing more reflection and self-examination than I've seen from the entire media establishment amid the Abu Ghraib hysteria.

Instead, the major news networks tripped over themselves to celebrate their courage for broadcasting the images. The Washington Post received its own set of pictures, including an incendiary photo of an American female soldier parading an Iraqi prisoner on a leash. The Post's only nod to journalistic context was their admission that they weren't sure if the photos were staged or not.

If the Abu Ghraib scandal is the metaphorical — or perhaps literal — rape of the Iraqi people so many claim it to be, why isn't there just a bit more media ethics thumb-sucking over a major American newspaper publishing photos it can't confirm are real?

Obviously, very real abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib, but news operations don't show pictures of rape victims, never mind actual rapes, even when they're sure they're real and the consequences for doing so are comparatively meager.

Peter Preston, the former editor of the Guardian, once told his reporters that there would be no bonuses for producing a scoop that got somebody killed, according to the Newseum's website. "It is not necessarily a question of patriotism, it is a sense of realism that you don't want to put the lives of your fellow countrymen at risk."

Well, CBS' scoop has gotten someone killed and there will be more deaths, on both sides, as a result of this story before it becomes history.

Now we're hearing demands that all of the photos collected by the Pentagon be released immediately. Never mind that if the U.S. government releases pictures of POWs being humiliated we'll be violating the Geneva Convention — again.

More to the point, releasing more photos won't advance the story any better than words would, and new photos would do even more damage than the first batch.

But, as I said, it's time to put up or shut up. If the media wants to advance the Abu Ghraib story rather than wallow in it, its course is clear. It can help Americans "appreciate" the Nick Berg beheading by showing it over and over. I don't know if that would be a good idea, but at least the press would be consistent.

Name:

Liberal

Message:
Why do they hate us? We've only screwed up the education system, created a dependent class, made their insurance rates skyrocket with our unholy alliance with the trial lawyers, want to give up sovereignty in favor of the corrupt UN, convinced them that they are miserable and a victim, wage wars on individuality, glorify dengenerates and criminals, pick their pockets when we can, and then talk about them like dogs.

Name:	Left Wing Extremist Hate on Parade
Re:	Clearly ErrAmerica learned nothing from Rush

Message:

The United States "is on the slippery slope to theocratic fascism." "The Catholic Church has been secretly encouraging oral sex for years."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "ought to be tortured." President Bush should be taken out and shot.

Those are a few nutso nuggets from the hosts of Air America Radio, which calls itself the new liberal voice. The fledgling network is carried in New York on WLIB, 1190 AM. With the Iraq torture scandal everywhere, I tuned in, expecting to hear sober policy analysis mixed with glee over President Bush's political pickle.

Instead, I got 10 hours of rancid venom directed at the President, Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, the Catholic Church and anyone else the hosts felt like slamming. If you're a card-carrying lib who likes crude sex jokes and a cartoonish echo chamber, Air America is for you.

Take one host's linking the talk of "pulling out" the troops with the claim that "that's what the Catholic Church says about premarital sex." Ha, ha.

The network aims to give Dems a media organization to counter Limbaugh and others on the right who dominate talk radio. (What, National Public Radio and The New York Times aren't enough?)

The signing of comedian and best-selling author Al Franken gave Air America a liberal drawing card. But if his three-hour show on Monday was typical, he could sink the ship instead of saving it.

Two attempts at humor were offensive. In his "oy, oy show," set to Israeli music, a sidekick reads news reports - in this case, the murder of the Russian-backed president of Chechnya. Franken's role is to pipe up with a lighthearted "oy, oy, oy." Yep, nothing tickles the ribs like assassination.

Franken also imitated a priest giving Communion, saying "Body of Christ" when an imagined pedophile priest was in line but "not for you" when pro-choice politicians came up.

The church was a day-long obsession, as was Limbaugh. He is an "awful man," "a " and "a Nazi."

Color me confused. If Franken & Co. hate the pill-popping Limbaugh so much, why imitate his tarpit tone? Sounds like Limbaugh has simply driven them nuts.

Missing was the tension that comes from honest debate. Only Franken had guests voicing even slight distance from the party line, which is that John Kerry is perfect except he should attack Bush more.

The queen of venom, Randi Rhodes, followed Franken in the host slot. Her imitation of a cracker military type telling a soldier to "insert this fluorescent light bulb into that man's buttocks" was revolting. She compared U.S. prisons in Iraq to the "Nazi gulag" and said, "The day I say thank you to Rumsfeld is the same day I'll say thank you to the 12 people who raped me."

Rock bottom came when she compared Bush and his family to the Corleones in the "Godfather" saga. "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw," she said, imitating the sound of gunfire.

During a day of torture by radio, I heard ads for Hewlett-Packard, Greyhound and, especially, General Motors. I asked GM why it appeared in such shows.

Ryndee Carney, GM's manager of marketing communications, said the ads were wrongly picked up from an earlier deal with WLIB. She said the station was ordered to "cease and desist" yesterday, and added: "GM will not advertise on any Air America affiliates."

Name:

Bystander

In response to:
Ryndee Carney, GM's manager of marketing communications, said the ads were wrongly picked up from an earlier deal with WLIB. She said the station was ordered to "cease and desist" yesterday, and added: "GM will not advertise on any Air America affiliates."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An American soldier's video diary showing her disdain for Iraqi detainees who died in her charge is to be broadcast by a U.S. network on Wednesday in a further escalation of the prisoner abuse scandal that has shaken the Bush administration and provoked world outrage.

CBS, which two weeks ago broadcast the first pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, said on Tuesday its "60 Minutes II" program would show video footage depicting conditions there and at another U.S.-run prison in southern Iraq called Camp Bucca.

Name:	ME
To:	FORUM
Re:	NEWSMAX ARTICLE

In response to:
I know you may not want to see this but it's worth knowing if only to keep your eyes open about whats really going on.

Message:
Congress Ignored Reports of Prisoner Abuse Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Democrats howling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for not informing them of reports of prisoner abuse in Baghdad are ignoring the fact that concerned parents of an accused soldier informed 16 members of Congress - top Democrats such as Senators Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy and John D. Rockefeller - and the governor of Virginia of the burgeoing scandal as far back as February 26th of this year.

None of these people acted to disclose the detailed information contained in the letters.

While the media has created a firestorm about the abuse allegations at Abu Ghraib prison, only one TV network, MSNBC, disclosed the names of the members of Congress when one of the letter writers, William Lawson, mentioned them during a telephone interview.

Otherwise, the mainstream media has circled the wagons in a blatant attempt to protect their Democratic allies in the Senate from charges of hypocrisy in condemning Secretary Rumsfeld for not informing them of what they already knew, through both Army press releases and the letters.

Lawson, the uncle of one of the accused soldiers, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, gave NewsMax.com the names of the members of Congress and Virginia's governor as well as the text of the explosive letters in a series of faxes.

Here are the names, all Democrats except for Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Sgt. Frederick's congressman:

Senators Jack Reed, Mark Dayton, Robert Byrd, Bill Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mark Pryor, Edward Kennedy, Benjamin Nelson, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, Daniel Akaka, Paul Sarbanes, John D. Rockefeller, Governor Mark Warner and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett.

Senator Byrd's office would not even accept the letter e-mailed to him on the grounds it was too long.

Senator Joe Lieberman is the only one of these members of Congress who has defended Donald Rumsfeld and the world's mission in Iraq.

In fact, Senators Reed and Dayton were nearly abusive in holding the feet of Sec. Rumsfeld, Gen. Myers et alii to the fire last week - and here we find that they knew of the abuse allegations months ago.

They could only have been feigning outrage, since they have been long aware of what was going on at Abu Ghraib; the e-mail letters fully alerted the 16 Democrats and Governor Warner of the prisoner abuse accusations.

Moreover the U.S. Central Command told the media of an investigation into abuses on Jan. 16, just days after a report by a whistleblower.

"They told everyone in the world there were allegations of abuse and they were being investigated," Secretary Rumsfeld told reporters. On March 20, he added, Central Command "announced not only allegations, but they listed the types of abuses."

Lawson, a 23-year Army veteran, and other relatives of Sgt. Frederick, told those he wrote that they feared he and the other accused MPs were being made scapegoats "to save some general's carrer."

SO THEY ALREADY KNEW! THEY KNEW EARLY ON, AND PLAYED STUPID JUST TO MAKE POLITICAL POINTS!! I'M ASHAMED OF EACH OF THEM AS ANY ONE OF THEM COULD HAVE BROKEN THE STORY WIDE OPEN WITH WHAT THEY ALREADY KNEW!

ROME - The scandal of prisoner abuses by U.S. soldiers in Iraq has dealt a bigger blow to the United States than the Sept. 11 attacks, the Vatican foreign minister told an Italian newspaper.

In an interview published Wednesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo described the abuses as "a tragic episode in the relationship with Islam" and said the scandal would fuel hatred for the West and for Christianity.

"The torture? A more serious blow to the United States than Sept. 11. Except that the blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by Americans against themselves," Lajolo was quoted as saying in La Repubblica.

Lajolo said that "intelligent people in Arab countries understand that in a democracy such episodes are not hidden and are punished ... Still the vast mass of people — under the influence of Arab media — cannot but feel aversion and hate for the West growing inside themselves."

The remarks were not the first by Lajolo on the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In the wake of the scandal, he had said that a democracy should punish those responsible and their direct superiors.

The Vatican paper, L'Osservatore Romano, has also run some harsh comments in the past days. On Monday, it criticized what it called a Pentagon cover-up and took sharp aim at the photograph of a soldier holding a prisoner by a leash.

In Wednesday's interview, Lajolo said the coalition's priority should be "putting as soon as possible at the head of the Iraqi executive an Iraqi leader who speaks to the Iraqis in Arabic and not in English."

President Bush is scheduled to hold talks with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican on June 4.

Name:	VOTING RIGHTS ARE PRECIOUS
To:	--- & the Loss of them is SLAVERY

In response to:
THOMAS PAINE wrote about America during the Revolution, in 1776, and tells us about the BASIS of our Democracy--

NOTE: Our voting rights were "usurped" away from us in 2000 (Florida), & what does this mean ----

But WE believe in "Govt founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal PEACE, on the hereditary rights of man, which promises a new era to the human race." (p. 115)

[About the PATRIOT ACT changes to the govt following 9/11 -- (ie: Homeland Security]:

Thomas Paine said: "A Constitution is the property of a nation, & NOT of those who exercise the government"---[it is] established on the authority of the people." "The govt officials, by whatever name they are called, have NO authority to add, alter, or abridge the original articles. It is only to the constituting power, (the people), that this right belongs". (p. 141)

"---Govt without a Constitution is power without a right." "All power exercised over a nation must be either delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and ALL ASSUMED POWER IS USURPATION." [illegitimate seizure of power by force, without any right]. - (p. 134)

"---such is the nature of representative govt, that it quietly decides all matters by Majority." (p. 140).

"---Exclusion from the right of voting implies a stigma on the moral character of the persons excluded,...no external circumstance can justify it; wealth is no proof of moral character, nor poverty of the want of it." (p. 164)

"To take away this right [to vote] is to reduce a man to slavery, for SLAVERY consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives, is in this case. " (p. 165)

The best policy for the security of a govt is in ing "equality of rights", -- "It is possible to exclude men from the right of VOTING, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that"

-- "When all other rights are taken away, the RIGHT of REBELLION is made perfect". (p. 165)

[On AMERICA being a DEMOCRACY] such as George Bush says it is, and that we are happily engaged in a War to give Democracy to Iraq:

"--- Retaining then, Democracy as the ground, ...the representative system naturally presents itself...." [ skip 2 short paragraphs] "It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is REPRESENTATION INGRAFTED UPON DEMOCRACY." [unquote] (p. 130)

ABOVE QUOTES are all from a hard cover book ----- "PAINE: Common Sense and other Political Writings" (1953, copyright by McMillan Publishing Co., N.Y & London) ---- Library catalog number: 320.973 P 16 co

The Punisher, Marvel Comics’ avenging vigilante, has become a radical. As well as taking out organized crime kingpins and thugs, he’s now taking on U.S. Intelligence and undermining support for the War on Terrorism. The publication of these comic book polemics coincides with the April release of the feature film “The Punisher” starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta.

Leftist propagandizing is not new to Marvel, nor to the author of the Punisher series, Irishman Garth Ennis. Two months after September 11th, the Punisher was featured threatening the life of President George W. Bush. The story portrays the President as a slobbering belching incoherent drunk, gleefully itching to launch nuclear missiles. The Punisher breaks into the Oval Office, tosses a nine-millimeter bullet before the President and warns ominously, “I can get in anywhere …Nine millimeters. I’m never further away than that.” Yes, you’ve got it right – Marvel published a threat to George W. Bush the President of the United States, only weeks after September 11th. Even viewed as sick humor, the tenor and timing of this piece was inexcusable.

Garth Ennis and I addressed the issue of anti-American comic book propaganda in an April 2003 white paper for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Marvel is now using its most recently spotlighted icon, the Punisher, to spread the same message of self-doubt and self-hate, this time published under its new MAX (explicit content) label.

In the new series, U.S. intelligence agents are vilified as the bad guys, selling heroin from Afghanistan to covertly finance assassination squads. Ennis shamelessly writes that “the smack comes packed in body bags along with dead GI’s.” A CIA operative tries to convince the Punisher to “hunt Bin Laden.” In response, the Punisher crudely spits back: “F-ck you.” [fully spelled] None of us realized that the Punisher was actually a closet leftist until, for Garth Ennis, we hear him inarticulately condemn the War on Terrorism: “Fighting for the people who run the world gets you stabbed in the back. You fight the wars they start and feed. You kill the monsters they create. You die from handling depleted uranium, while they get rich on oil. I’m not going back to war so Colt can sell another million M-16s. I had enough of that in Vietnam.” He then desecrates the memory of the 60,000 brave Americans whose names are carved in the black wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by stating that they bear silent witness to this twisted viewpoint.

Marvel and Ennis don’t stop there. In a just released special one-shot story, this comic book franchise is used to denounce America’s pursuit of the War on Terrorism. In “The Punisher – The End” we find our hero in an America totally devastated by nuclear war caused by – of course – American militarism and corporate greed. We are treated to a pedantic “Progressive” discourse by the enlightened Punisher: “Once upon a time there was a bunch of evil f-cks. [fully spelled] Hardly anyone knew, because they were so good at keeping it quiet. But these particular evil f-cks owned the world. And they made the world a cruel and terrible place. They ran the great industries that poisoned the air. Their businesses turned whole countries into slaves. … They made puppets out of presidents and started wars for profit. Eventually, they came to believe that there was nothing that they couldn’t do. And so one day – inevitably – they pushed the planet’s luck too far.”

The Punisher explains how the end will come, “Ten bad years. Iraq was one thing. North Korea. Even Pakistan. You shout War on Terror at the Chinese and they laugh so hard the world blows up in your face. That’s the trouble with a war you never want to end.”

… a war you never want to end? Do our friends at Marvel really believe this drivel?

How very cold. Were we not attacked on September 11th? Hasn’t our Jihadi enemy unambiguously declared the intention to destroy us? Have we not heard their proclamations of bigotry and religious hatred? Hasn’t the world seen bloody terrorist attack upon terrorist attack? Can any sane person question what they will do if they get their hands on weapons of mass destruction?

It appears that Ennis and Marvel prefer to live in a vulgar world of leftist fantasy, where an evil American government allied with greedy multinational corporations is the enemy of humanity. If such self-hating beliefs are allowed to permeate the popular culture unchallenged, if our strength of will is sapped before we defeat our real enemies, our very survival may be jeopardized.

As if that were not enough – all this is really bad storytelling. Garth Ennis uses the Punisher as a two-dimensional stick figure to spout his ““Progressive”” political platitudes. Very uncreative.

the american people cannot deny that it was the bush/cheney administration who dragged the american military into Iraq

to which the bush/cheney administration responded,"weapons of mass destruction" seem to be hiding in Iraq

and now that no weapons were found and the sons of Saddam Hussein have been assassinated by the our american occupation and Saddam Hussein is himself under arrest

and did not mr. bush think that by inflaming the Iraqi religious entities he would be placing all american troops and civilians at risk?

today our country is not safer when amreicans are being beheaded in an unjust war and george bush places the country more at risk by inflaming terrorism to grow and strike out in the revengeful way as this beheadment of this american who bush in his oil ego war dragged to Iraq to become what this headless body has become today

ANOTHER OF BUSH'S CASUALTIES WHEN MR. BUSH AND HIS TORTURE ARMY PUSHED THE RAGE TO THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF OF SANITY FOR IRAQIS WHO DONT UNDERSTAND WHY IF WE ARE SUCH A GREAT DEMOCRACY

we treated their prisoners worse than animals tying them up like dogs on leashes and using dogs to humiliate this prisoners and electrocuting them in their private parts?

I CAN ONLY WONDER WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND THE LOCKED DOORS OF AMERICAN PRISONS AND BEHIND THE BACKS OF CITIZENS WITH TYRANT REGIMES LIKE BUSH'S IN OFFICE

The beheadment of this american has come as a consequence of the american military abuse of Iraqi prisoners and bush is very lucky they have not crossed into our borders

so we have this republican administration set and intent on making war an issue otherwise on what issue can bush run on?

THE FAILED ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN OUR COUNTRY AND MASSIVE JOB LOSS AND SPITTING BY GEORGE BUSH ON OVERTIME PAY?

Name:	Milan
To:	members of the vertabrate subphylum
Re:	perspective

Message:
Check out this great link about the face of radical Islam in the modern era versus the face of radical Christianity in the modern era:

Teresa Heinz Kerry paid $750,000 in federal, state, and local income taxes last year, roughly 14.7 percent of the $5.1 million in income she received primarily from tax-exempt interest accrued on her vast bond holdings, Senator John F. Kerry's presidential campaign announced in a statement yesterday.

The wife of the presumptive Democratic nominee and heiress to the Heinz ketchup fortune, Heinz Kerry reported a gross taxable income of $2.338 million, primarily from interest and dividends, and tax-exempt interest income of about $2.777 million, primarily from the bonds, for a total income of $5.115 million, according to a summary of her tax information. Final figures were not released because she has sought an extension to file her return in October.

Funny, the middle class does not get this 14.7% tax rate. Guess that is only for -rich leftists

Name:	Oh Say Can You SEE ??
To:	By the Dawn's Early Light ---

In response to:
NICK BERG --- guy who was executed (beheaded) in Iraq, does not look at all like the same guy.

How did this white man, a very pudgey American, with light sandy hair (when young) and totally bald, (as adult), who wears glasses, and has a mark on his right cheek

Suddenly change into that guy who is very skinny, with lots of BLACK hair and beard, who is dark-skinned, with no glasses or mark on his face, and lost 90 pounds?

PLEASE NOTE: that the photos of Nick Berg as American guy who left here to put up telephone poles, or whatever, & ends up in video wearing a pink-orange caftan or jumpsuit, and looking just like a bearded Arab ---

Don't look like the same Dude to me. Looks really weird, --- Like some Photos are being "Faked" ----

Come on now ---- just review and observe, & analyze the "before' and "after" photos for yourself. Don't look at all like the same person. Even when Berg was young, he was pudgey, wore glasses, & had Light (not Black) hair.

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
Re:	REGISTER TO VOTE @ FRIENDS OF HILLARY

Message:
If you need to register to vote, change address information or fill out an absentee ballot click here:register to vote and if you would like to forward a message to any friends you may have that need to register, click here: Tell your friends

Name:	Understanding Middle East Mindset
To:	forum
Re:	Fought like a cornered tiger!

In response to:
The fellow Berg had no connection whatsoever with any US contractors nor the military.

Message:
But Berg obviously was no pushover. The number of people directly involved with the beheading is always exactly the number of people killed by the receiver of the action. Thus we are assured that Berg took out 5 of his enemies and probably wounded several more.

Message:
Thank you for the link from OrthoBlog, and thank you also to the person who put the actual photos on line. This is such a wonderful way of comparing one culture with the other.

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
To:	Democrat
Re:	The moniker the American People

In response to:
Get off this forum you jihadi freak. We were asking questions about the difference in appearance but you are so hateful you refer to asking questions as "Left Wing Liars hit a new low" A new low for asking questions? - What kind of American are you? In America we are encouraged to ask questions. Where were you born? Where were you educated? The American People is like a jihadi and is the OPPOSITE of the American People. American people allow questions without having a beheaded man thrust in our faces and be told that we are "Left Wing Liars hit a new low" INSTRUCTIONS TO THE EDITOR: Get ...

The American people is just another nut we have on here that is so full of hate for anyone that opposes his view on issues. I hope the editor does some serious deleting today!

Name:	Democrat
To:	The American Non-People

Message:
You hateful person trying to blame the beheading on the American left. How low can you sink. You are worse than the jihadis because you are so crazy keen to keep reposting those pictures every time the Editor deletes them. You really love those pictures, I can tell.

You must be the sickest person in America if you blame the left for those atrocities. Berg was beheaded by Muslims. Do you understand that? He was not beheaded by the left. You are a monster for blaming it on us. You are the sickest person in America.

Name:	John McDaniel
To:	Everyone
Re:	Nick Berg's 'Revenge' Murder Website

In response to:
Nick Berg's murder hype.

Message:
Is there really such a website? Is there really a an Islamist website that features a video of the murder of Nick Berg? If this website really exists please tell me what the web address is. Thanx jmcdanie@hotmail.com

Name:

Thank you Editor

In response to:
The answer to this puzzle, it appears, is that the picture you see of Berg when he was still alive, was taken long before he went to Iraq. Apparently he lost 90 lbs and grew his hair.

Message:
Thank you for a civilized answer to the question as to why there is such a difference in appearance between the two photos. Any person with eyes could see that there was a huge difference, and if we did not question it we would be fools.

I am grateful that we finally got a respectful answer instead of the ugly assults the so called "American People" smashes into our faces. We have some very hateful and insane people in this world, and this "American People" person is the most hateful person that ever came on to this forum, and that's saying a lot.

At a time when we are all so horrified at the beheading this very ugly American comes into the forum and blames us for this horrific tragedy instead of the murderers who performed it. This world is getting so sick and hateful I don't know what is going to become of us.

Name:	ET
To:	PWT

In response to:
The real 'loser' is the person who glorifies another person and their successes rather than achieving anything on their own. Mrs. Clinton might have been a good attorney, she might be a great politician but so what. Your pre-teen fan mentality sounds so sad and empty that we should all pity rather than attack you especially because as Nietzche wrote, 'pity is the gravest insult.'

Message:
Don't come here with this crap. Why don't you go to Hillary's Senate website where you will see that she is the "most hard working Senator in Congress" by ALL ACCOUNTS, on the left as well as the right.

Get your hateful crap off this forum. All we are getting today is hateful crap from the right.

Are there any civilized, respectful right-wingers around today? Where are you? We are getting inundated with the most heinous members of your group and we need your help.

Only the respectful members on the right can put these nutcases on the right in their place. They are insane and they are also very hateful to any American that does not believe what they believe. Who does that remind you of?

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
To:	PWT

Message:
^^Your above message just tells me that you know I nailed you guys on the head. I only call it how I see it. GET OVER IT!

Name:	Smedley
To:	Bordertex

In response to:
... KEPT IT ALL TO HIS EARWAX SELF, YES THAT GREED BUSH BY REFUSING TO WARN THE COUNTRY ALLOWED 9-11 TO HAPPEN because on september 10, 2001 the gao had also made strict demands in which the identity ...

Name:	Search 7000, teach 7000
To:	forum
Re:	Taking the lynching upstairs

In response to:
A likely story, you say. But her relatives have said she's an average, normal young woman, not into weirdness or deviancy. Knowing that one must deal with thousands of unwilling foreigners who do not speak English, one would use pictures to convey the message as quickly as possible. Also nude men hide no weopons.

Message:
(CBS/AP) Army Pfc. Lynndie England, seen worldwide in photographs that show her smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, said she was ordered to pose for the photos, and felt "kind of weird" in doing so.

In an exclusive interview with Brian Maass of Denver CBS station KCNC-TV, England also confirmed that abuses worse than those depicted in the photos were carried out at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, but she declined to discuss them.

England, 21, repeatedly insisted that her actions were dictated by "persons in my higher chain of command." CBS News' 60 Minutes II will broadcast home video taken by a soldier working at the U.S. run prisons at Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib, Wednesday at 8 p.m ET/PT.

In the photos, England is seen smiling, cigarette in her mouth, as she leans forward and points at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqis. Another photo taken at Abu Ghraib shows her holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side.

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
To:	ET

In response to:
Don't come here with this crap. Why don't you go to Hillary's Senate website where you will see that she is the "most hard working Senator in Congress" by ALL ACCOUNTS, on the left as well as the right. Get your hateful crap off this forum. All we are getting today is hateful crap from the right. Are there any civilized, respectful right-wingers around today? Where are you? We are getting inundated with the most heinous members of your group and we need your help. Only the respectful members on the right can put these nutcases on the right in their place. They are insane and they are ...

Message:
These hateful right-wingers really know how hard working Hillary really is and they DO take her seriously. They are behaving out of failure to an obsession of theirs to destroy HRC or anyone who supports her and her views. The more hateful they get, the more we know they DO take Hillary seriously!

Name:	HILLARY SUPPORTER
Re:	Freak Republic

Message:
I was perusing the Freak Republic forums today and I see the Freepers have pulled articles off of HRC's senate site to comment on them. It also looks like they pulled some articles that I posted on here to.

Name:	Thank G_d for US Gov't Class
To:	forum
Re:	Otherwise

In response to:
Somebody saves her jumps by not using capatals. Is she multilegged? Or just 2?

Message:
We could have 200 million people who know nothing about the Electorial College which is not a college. Dems tried to publish the names of those selected to the Electorial College in order to threaten them with exposure. They remain anonymous the way the Founders intended. If elected like the Senators who were intended to be appointed by each states' GOVERNOR, the system would be compromised the way the US Senate has been for many years. No one was ever intended to be a Senator for 50 years or for life. The Founders knew that Lords and Noblemen ruled for long periods of time, became corrupted by all that power and generally did as they pleased.

Thank G_d nobody has been able to screw up the Electorial College, which prevents the large populous cities/states from messing over the small, less populated states.

Consequently the system worked in 2001 and 16 states did not rule over the other 34 no matter how many votes were bought with 'walking around money", cigarettes, and free rides, free lessons in Democrat polls on how to vote a straight Democrat ticket.

Campaign Gripped by Iraq Photos

Closing Ranks at the Pentagon
Flanked by Ambassador to Iraq John D. Negroponte, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Vice President Cheney, President Bush on Monday issued a strong endorsement of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Also shown are Gen. Richard B. Myers and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace.

Despite the Bush administration's best efforts to move beyond it, the controversy over the Abu Ghraib prison photos is consuming Washington and has become the latest defining issue of the 2004 presidential election. At the center of the maelstrom are Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and President Bush. Both have been the targets of stinging rebukes from the sharpened pens of pundits, some of whom are conservative. And now some are whispering -- and others shouting -- that Rumsfeld should step down.

In yesterday's Washington Post, three columnists tackled the topic. Here are excerpts from their columns:

George F. Will wrote: "One question is: Are the nation's efforts in the deepening global war -- the world is more menacing than it was a year ago -- helped or hindered by Rumsfeld's continuation as the appointed American most conspicuously identified with the conduct of the war? This is not a simple call. But being experienced, he will know how to make the call. Being honorable, he will so do." | Read More

Richard Cohen wrote: "Rumsfeld is nothing if not smart. He knows what he is responsible for -- and it is not personnel practices and interrogation procedures. It's easy and facile to both apologize and take the blame for them, because they ain't his baby to begin with. What is his baby, though, is the airy dismissal he and others in the Bush administration have given to the Geneva Conventions and the insistence on invading and occupying Iraq with an insufficient number of troops." | Read More

E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote: "The administration's supporters like to ask its critics: So what would you do? It's only a partly fair question because the critics have already said how many things they would have done differently. ... The more relevant question between now and the election is to Bush and his administration: How will they turn this mess into either success or something short of failure? A president asking voters to grant him four more years owes them evidence that the era of recklessness and overconfidence is over." | Read More

In his Outlook column on Sunday, David S. Broder offered this analysis of Rumsfeld's defense of military protocol in investigating the reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq: "This is a true McNamara moment for Rumsfeld, an echo of the technocratic-bureaucratic body-count mindset that blinded Robert McNamara to the realities of Vietnam when he was running the Pentagon. The phrase that became famous back then -- and that undercut home-front support for the war in Vietnam -- was: 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it.' Now, in Iraq, we find ourselves employing former officers in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to quell the insurgents in Fallujah and aping Hussein's brutal tactics to soften up prisoners for interrogation." | Read More

Members of Congress probing the Abu Ghraib scandal are split mostly along predictable partisan lines. What's unusual is the split within the Republican Party. Some, like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), have voiced their support for the military's overall war effort, but decry the abuses and fault the Pentagon's management. However, one Republican senator said yesterday that he sees little or nothing wrong with what took place in the Iraqi prison. The Post's Charles Babington reports James M. Inhofe (Okla.) said: "As I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners ... I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. You know, they're not there for traffic violations ... they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents." | Read More

Hearing Transcripts:
• Rumsfeld Testimony: Senate Armed Services Committee | House Armed Services Committee
• Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone

The Politics of Abu Ghraib

It was merely a matter of time -- given the current state of American politics -- until partisan acrimony over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal erupted. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie has taken umbrage with Sen. John F. Kerry's petition calling for Rumsfeld's resignation. washingtonpost.com's Chief Political Correspondent Terry M. Neal reports in his Talking Points column today that Gillespie "blasted Sen. John F. Kerry and the Democrats for trying to make political hay over the accusations of prisoner mistreatment in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. ... By Monday afternoon, the Kerry campaign reported that it had collected 275,000 names for its petition, including 150,000 new e-mail addresses that will no doubt be added to future pleas for help from Kerry's camp. Both the letter and the e-mail include requests for donations." | Read More

Neal notes that the Kerry campaign says its candidate has called for Rumsfeld's resignation before, as far back as Sept. 25, 2003.

Campaigning in a Crisis

The Post's Mike Allen and Dan Balz wrote today on the peculiar challenge President Bush faces, thanks to the current crisis: "Bush and his staff face a predicament that in some ways parallels that of President Bill Clinton during the imbroglio over Monica S. Lewinsky that led to Clinton's impeachment. They are trying to get on with the business of government by pushing preordained messages when official Washington and much of the nation is focused on something else." | Read More

And when all else fails, it never hurts to fall back on family. First lady Laura Bush has lent her talent and charm to series of online and television campaign ads on education. Howard Kurtz reports: "In the Internet video, Laura Bush says: 'I've seen the president reading with children, encouraging them as they go through their lessons, talking to them about the importance of going to college.' ... Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean of Boston University's communications school, called the new ad a 'very smart' move." | Read More

- Mike Snyder

But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched?

Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable.

Name:	Richard Cohen
Re:	On the Nature of Evil

Message:
If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary evil.

Name:	David S. Broder
Re:	Rumsveld's McNamara Moment

Message:
This is a true McNamara moment for Rumsfeld, an echo of the technocratic-bureaucratic body-count mindset that blinded Robert McNamara to the realities of Vietnam when he was running the Pentagon.

The phrase that became famous back then -- and that undercut home-front support for the war in Vietnam -- was: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." Now, in Iraq, we find ourselves employing former officers in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to quell the insurgents in Fallujah and aping Hussein's brutal tactics to soften up prisoners for interrogation.

In an important column last week, much noted by other conservatives, George F. Will questioned the moral presumption underlying the administration's "thinking America can transform the entire Middle East by constructing a liberal democracy in Iraq." A few weeks ago, I argued that such "visions, unhinged from strategies and heedless of risks, can lead to disasters." They can also lead -- as they did in Vietnam -- to suffering and death for those we set out to help and revulsion on their part toward their self-righteous rescuers.

The American people are eminently practical in judging such foreign ventures. And the prison photos are likely to weigh heavily with them.

Name:

Jerald Paul

Message:
In fact, when I went to pick her up for our fist date oh those many years ago, I found her reading a book about Chairman Mao. Right then I knew this was going to take a LONG term committment....!

But now she votes for GWB and Ahnold, and even agrees with me that Tom MCClintock would have been even a better choice for Gubner. And she argues with all the rest of her Chinese acquaintances at her work, pointing out whay consevatism is better than liberalism, etc. etc. One of the best lines I suggested to her is, "Conservatism isn't the philosophy of the rich. It's the philosophy of people who WANT TO BE rich!"

Turning point came, I think, when the Chinese fighter whacked the P-3 surveillance plane off the Chinese mainland coast. She was furious, up in arms over the brutal, reckless P-3 pilot who deliberately rammed that poor helpless little fighter that was only doing its duty. I pointed out that a propellor-driven P-3 with twenty people on board, was the LAST plane any aviator would ever choose to chase an armed and hostile supersonic jet fighter with, that the fighter could literally fly rings around the P-3 any time, and in fact was doing exactly that when the collision occurred. She ignored it, saying that couldn't possibly be true, and continued her harangue.

But the next day when Fox aired films of the same fighter doing the same thing to other US planes, she got a lot quieter. I have a hunch that was when she realized that her government (at that time) which swore to be the friend of the ordinary citizen, might not be telling the truth... and just maybe her husband was. Now she consults with me regularly on such matters, and argues the socks off her compatriots at work, who might not have husbands as conservative as she does. And she says they are often left speechless, with no replies to offer for her points.

I haven't seen the Chairman Mao book in quite a while. Progress is definitely being made. :^)

Photographs of Iraqi prisoners being sexually humiliated, threatened by dogs and piled into pyramids as grinning American soldiers look on have been published round the world, dealing a major setback to U.S. attempts to stabilize Iraq.

Name:	George F. Will
To:	Nobody in the Bush Administration is Accountable?

Name:	bordertex
To:	the washington post