# Nick Berg



## Greg (May 11, 2004)

Hannity.com has a link to the actual beheading. I haven't viewed it and I'm not sure I need to. My only inclination for viewing it would be to further solidify my views on why we need to defeat these barbarians, but I really don't think I need to view it to understand that. Has anyone else viewed it? If so, why?


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## Stephen (May 12, 2004)

Notice how the media now refers to the prision abuses as just that? Within an hour, ABC NEws radio went from "atrocities in Iraqi prison", then the beheading story brokeat the bottom of the hour, and it became "abuses in the Iraqi prisions". By the top of the next hour it was "unprofessionalism in the IRaqi prison."

Now we've been reminded what a REAL atrocity is.

ANother note on liberal news media bias, in case you doubt it's there: CNBC does a 30 minute special on the power of images in the news. They take an AP Photo editor, and he shows photos of the Iraqi prisoners, then goes to Vietnam footage, the shooting of the VC, etc. 

30 minutes on the "power of images in the newa" and not ONE photo from 9/11.  Is there any doubt to the agenda. I"m just amazed that it's gotten that blatant... :angry:

-Stephen


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## riverc0il (May 12, 2004)

Stephen, liberals say it's a conservative media...  conservatives say it's a liberal media.  We all view it through our own colored glasses and BOTH sides have statistics and examples to back up their arguement.  Saying the media is biased is true, but not liberal or conservative.  They are biased to the presentation of the news that nets them the most advertising dollars.  Sometimes that means bringing in the liberal agenda, sometimes the conservative.  Which ever makes more people watch and more people pay attention.

For myself, I normally see the media bias as conservative...  BUT i keep reminding myself it's not the case.  They are biased by a capitolist society that makes the media bias their reports both ways depending upon how well they can draw in views and ads and revenue.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for capitolism and it's benefits.  However, the current system has gone amuck especially when you look at so called news sources.  It's just one of the many reasons I do not own a TV, so much of it is just sensationalism to sell you images and feelings instead of news.  Read an unbiased report online from unbiased sources and make up your own mind.


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## SilentCal (May 12, 2004)

Don't really need to see it.   They burned and hung some other Americans from a bridge a few weeks ago.   You have to feel for this guys family.  Nobody needs to see a family member die this way and then get it played through every media outlet.   I'm afraid it will be front page news for awhile until the media gets something more disgusting to show us.  What a mess this search for weapons of mass destruction has become.


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## Greg (May 12, 2004)

I'll probably get flack for this, but what bugs me most about all of this is that no one in the Muslim-American community ever stands up to denounce such atrocities or other acts terrorism ('93 WTC attack, embassy bombings, Cole, 9/11, Daniel Pearl, hung Americans, Nick Berg, etc...). Why is that? Perhaps they are afraid of realizing the same fate as Nick?

Oh, and SilentCal - I don't get the link between what some psycho extremist barbarians did and the search for WMDs.

BTW, I still haven't watched the video.


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## skican (May 12, 2004)

I am not watching...I have seen enough. I saw that poor guys dad collaspe into the grass. I could almost imagine what he was feeling. My heart just breaks for all the families. I have tears in my eyes right now just thinking about it. 

I await the big Parking Lot! I pray for the parking lot. When I we really going to get mad! The whole world I mean. Good point about the muslims. How can they possibly figure that sawing off a civilians head is payback for the abused or whatever they were prisoners! 

I have had the feeling of disgust all day!


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## SilentCal (May 12, 2004)

The reason that many Americans are over in Iraq were based on weapons of mass destruction.   We need to go back to the root cause of why we are there is the first place.   Are we truly going to make Iraq a better place and leave it better than we arrived?  I don't believe so.  The Middle East has been the center of religious conflict for hundreds of years.  We would have been foolish to think that such barbarian atrocities would have never happened.   It happened to Daniel Pearl, It happened to Nick Berg and will continue to happen to Americans as long as we stick our nose into other people's affairs.   Sorry if it sounds Un-American but can we start just taking care of our country for once.    Maybe I just see this all differently....that's all.


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## Stephen (May 12, 2004)

Um.... anyone remember 9/11? What did we do to cause that one?

Going to Iraq, Afghanistan, or even the prison misdemeanors are not the cause for Nick Berg's death. Twisted Islamo-facist savages are. :angry:

Sometimes the truth is harsh, but it's the truth nonetheless.


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## Greg (May 12, 2004)

SilentCal said:
			
		

> The reason that many Americans are over in Iraq were based on weapons of mass destruction.   We need to go back to the root cause of why we are there is the first place.   Are we truly going to make Iraq a better place and leave it better than we arrived?  I don't believe so.  The Middle East has been the center of religious conflict for hundreds of years.  We would have been foolish to think that such barbarian atrocities would have never happened.   It happened to Daniel Pearl, It happened to Nick Berg and will continue to happen to Americans as long as we stick our nose into other people's affairs.   Sorry if it sounds Un-American but can we start just taking care of our country for once.    Maybe I just see this all differently....that's all.


So we sit back and wait for another 9/11? Understand this - these people *hate* us and it's time to do some major clean-up. The whole situation is bad. It's war, it's ugly, but it's also necessary. Iraq is only one part of it.


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## SilentCal (May 12, 2004)

So we should nuke them because they hate us?     Might as well nuke the French, the Germans and anyone else who is anti-american.   9/11 was a lot of different things to different people.    Sure we had every right to go into Afghanistan and bomb them back into the stone age to get at Bin Laden.   When we killed or captured him, our crusade against global terror should have ended.   Instead, an Axis of Evil was created and we had to enter a country that did not even have WMD.   Now we are caught with our pants down and can't escape because we need to democratize these nutcases.   Who are we to think our way of life is the best and who are we to try and push it on everyone.   I don't want to argue with everyone but we really do got ourselves a jolly good mess.


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## Stephen (May 12, 2004)

Iraq was a preemptive strike. THe UN themselves verified he HAD WMDs. The question isn't did he have them... it's where are they now?

The French and the Germans haven't (directly) killed us for about 60 years or so. I'd sooner nuke the Boston Globe as a propaganda machine for Saddam Hussein.

DO you honestly think that if we pulled out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and severed ties with Israel that they would just go away? Fat chance. 

There is only one thing these savages understand... death. The sooner we send them on their way to their 72 virgins, the safer my children become. That's the bottom line for me.

-Stephen


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## riverc0il (May 12, 2004)

_And let's remember what they did on 9/11. They aimed directly at non combatants. Civilians!!!! Why doesn't the media emphasize this just a little more?_

wait wait wait, hold on a damn second!!  which "they" are you talking about?  we're talking about iraq in this thread, right?  name ONE iraqi that was part of the 9/11 plot?  please.  quite frankly, there are thousands more anti-american terrorists in the world now than there were before we entered iraq and over half the world's population now hates this great country of ours.  let's just remember that the (justified and needed) vengence and retaliation for 9/11 ended in afganistan and the iraqi operation is something different.  iraq was pre-emptive action because of fear saddam would supply terrorist with WMD.  though also remember, saddam and bin-laden HATED each other and would never have done business.  there's more to fear in this world than iraqi WMD, it's n.korea and where is bin laden that should be scaring the shit out of us right now.

lets look at middle east history.  go back hundreds and hundreds of years and you'll notice a trend in that country...  every time another country got involved, they walked away hurting.  hopefully things will be different now...  but the seathing hate directed toward the US, especially after the abuse pictures, is only going to get worse and the USA is only going to face higher and higher risks of danger because we create more terrorists daily.  my prediction is things are only gonna get worse in the coming months and years for us... time to buckle down for the long haul regardless of what happens in iraq.


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## Stephen (May 12, 2004)

There wasn't 1 iraqi in that room when Berg was killed, we're talking Al qaeda... In Iraq... where they've been welcome, supported, and harbored.  By that very act, they fall under the "against us" clause of the administration's, thus the people's, policy.

It was a long haul long before Iraq happened.


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## SilentCal (May 12, 2004)

Al-quada is everywhere.  Somalia, Indonesia, Spain, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, Canada and the good old USA have Al-quada cells operating.  THOSE guys are the enemy.   Not Iraqis.  Al-quada is now fostering in Iraq because of the power vaccum we have caused.   ahh dammit this ain't Mountains and Molehills and I'll shut up now.


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## Jaytrek57 (May 12, 2004)

That felt good.

Wrote a page atop my soapbox and then...........I hit the delete button! :wink: Going to do that more often I think.

My prayers to our boys & girls in Iraq and elsewhere.


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## Greg (May 12, 2004)

Stephen said:
			
		

> It was a long haul long before Iraq happened.


Well said. What would the reaction had been in July or August of 2001 if Bush started sending B52s to Afghanistan to drop daisy cutters on the Taliban? Probably would have been criticized like he is now, eh? Look, 9/11 changed some things. The game is a bit different now and I personally don't care what the rest of the world thinks. If Al Queda is in Iraq now, while we are occupying the country, don't think for a second they weren't there when Saddam was in power. The very fact that they were allowed to exist there is reason enough for me to remove Saddam from power.


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## pedxing (May 13, 2004)

I don't think the Iraq war made sense in terms of the war on terror.  Iraq hadn't been involved in terror since 1993.  What we've done is heighten anit-American tensions and created fantastic recruitment tools for Al-Qeda.  The Iraq war has also sucked energy and resources from the real war on terror and kept us under-manned in Afhanistan (which is important in the war on terror).

The Berg thing was an atrocity - no doubt about that.  The monsters behind it need to be stopped, no question.  Same with the monsters behind 9/11.   It's just that I'm convinced, along with Richard Clark - who understood Al-Qeda long before most anyone else - that we are not fighting smart.  We won the cold war through toughness, patience and intelligence - the same things need to be in place here.

By the way - anyone remember the intense criticism of Clinton when he tried to take out Bin Laden? 

That and the impeachment crisis gave Clinton cold feet and kept him from pushing the Bin Laden hunt as hard as it should have been pushed - for that Clinton deserves some criticism, too.


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## Stephen (May 13, 2004)

Ah, but don't forget, he didn't go after Laden before he went after him. :lol:


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## pedxing (May 13, 2004)

uphillklimber said:
			
		

> I don't really know what the answer is, but i hate to keep hearing about our boys getting killed while on patrol. The "picture" I get is that they are sitting ducks and (my perception) little is being done to prevent them from continuing to be sitting ducks.



I definitely agree with this.  I think we needed more people in Iraq (given that we were going in, which I do think was a mistake) - remmebr the dipsute over how many troops were needed?  Rumsfeld and crew say it was far less than some of the top military brass said - and Rumsfeld got his way.

I gotta add, we've got a lot of quality people on the ground in Iraq and most of them pretty young.  If not for the quality of the people there, things would be much worse.  We've seen what a few messed up folks can do, we owe the vast majority of our miilitary people much gratitude and respect.

Mebbe I shoulda just said "I agree with Silent Cal."


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## pedxing (May 14, 2004)

Bob, I checked it out and it looks to be for real.  The man is definitely a credit to his uniform and his country. See the official version at: http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/lookupstoryref/200456162723

Rolling Stone carried a story about the heroism of Private Piestewa. who lost her life in the attack that resulted in Jessica Lynch's caprture.


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## ChileMass (May 14, 2004)

Wow - a big ooo-rah for Brian Contosh and his Marine unit.  I am 100% in support of our troops and am trying to remain 100% in support of W and the Defense Dept., but these days it is getting tougher.  I am in complete accord that somehow, some way, we need to HELP bring those reactionary elements of the Islamic world into the 21st Century.  I'm sure many will say this is blood for oil, and it doesn't suck that for the next little while we get to direct the future of the world's 2nd-leading oil producer.  But this is about security.  None of us are secure until the last of these Al-Qaeda motherf-----s is stamped out.  OK, we can't prove Saddam had anything to do with 9-11, and it looks like he may not have had any WMDs when we went in there last year.  But - given the opportunity, he would have been involved in either or both, and there are 150,000 murdered Iraqi political prisoners in the last decade alone who would stand up and applaud the US Marines, except they can't because they're dead.  

Proof of Saddam's WMD intentions - for those of you who may have forgotten or were too young at the time, look on CNN.com sometime at the archival info about the 1980 Israeli Air Force's surprise bombing of the Iraqi "nuclear power plant" (built by our allies the French, btw) which destroyed Saddam's attempts *24 years ago *in developing nukes to use aginst the Iranians, the Israelis, the Kurds and the Turks.  Combine that with a disastrous 10-year war against Iran, repeatedly gassing Kurdish areas, invading Kuwait, etc., and then tell me there was no reason to go in and dig that murdering pig of a dictator out of his spider hole.  

The majority of Iraqis, and the majority of Muslims want to coexist peaceably with the West.  The problem is that if moderate Muslims are seen as soft on non-Muslims, they are persecuted (or worse) by the radicals, who are actually a tiny minority.  Note that when the statue of Saddam fell a year ago, there were hundreds of Baghdad policemen who showed up to work (they needed a paycheck, too) but had to soon stop publicly cooperating with the Allies because they and their families became targets.  If the US can root out the radicals and create some semblance of normalcy (utilities running, schools open, police functioning, local government) the majority of the Iraqis will once again publicly support the invasion.  However, they're like anyone else - if the nicest army in the world was parked in my neighborhood, I'd still be counting the days until they left and I could run my own affairs.......

This isn't our grandparent's world where we can sit here in North America and ignore the issues of people in the Middle East.  And the Internet has made us even closer.  Personally, I am *amazed* that there hasn't been a wave of suicide bombings here in the States.  Truly, Al-Qaeda is everywhere, and since they are in Iraq now (re: Nick Berg), they are fair game, and we will take the battle to them.  This is a fight worth taking on.


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## Greg (May 14, 2004)

riverc0il said:
			
		

> quite frankly, there are thousands more anti-american terrorists in the world now than there were before we entered iraq and over half the world's population now hates this great country of ours.


Some bold and sweeping statements here Steve. Any data or sources to support these claims? I understand the gist of your comments, but this sort of sounds like propaganda to me (I'm not saying you have a political agenda or anything...).



			
				ChileMass said:
			
		

> This is a fight worth taking on.


Well said, CM! We all would like to not have to be in this situation, but we don't have a better choice right now.

Been kind of an emotional week for me. I actually stumbled across stills of the Berg slaughtering. I must say based on the few images I saw I am really glad I didn't watch the actual video. I almost couldn't breath after seeing just the handful of pictures. Sean Hannity is being criticised for playing the audio of Nick screaming on his radio show. His defense is America must know what we're dealing with. I'm glad I didn't hear it, as just trying the rationalize how a man could saw off another man's head in the name of "God" is incomprehensible. That is realization enough that we are dealing with pure evil so I don't need to hear it either. Just sad times right now.

What this week really does for me is makes me even more grateful to the brave soldiers over there fighting for our freedom, and all U.S. veterens for that matter (including my father, a WWII vet, and father-in-law, a 'Nam vet). These men and women's sacrifices let me realize the pretty easy life I have with a good job, a nice little home, and a beautiful daughter and wife. I would like to say *Thank You* to all past and present U.S. Military. God Bless America!


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## SilentCal (May 17, 2004)

Let's just hope that when all of our men and women come home, that they are treated as heroes and don't have to face a negative view of them like many servicemen recieved after coming home from Vietnam.   If you live near a base and can attend a homecoming,  please try to attend and give them a warm welcome home.


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## pedxing (May 19, 2004)

Amen Cal!

The pain of the less than warm homecoming of our troops from Vietnam still lingers.  I worked for many years in psychiatric hospitals and saw got to know a number of Vietnam Vets whose trauma was compounded by the perceived antipathy of the public.


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## jjmcgo (Jul 22, 2004)

SilentCal wrote "Let's just hope that when all of our men and women come home, that they are treated as heroes and don't have to face a negative view of them like many servicemen recieved after coming home from Vietnam. If you live near a base and can attend a homecoming, please try to attend and give them a warm welcome home."

John Kerry played a HUGE role in creating that negative view, telling Congress about atrocities he saw perpetrated by U.S. soldiers. He also confessed to a war crime during his testimony, then participated in anti-war demonstrations and planning with known Communists, as well as Jane Fonda. Seems capitalism has been bery, bery good to Kerry and Fonda.


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## pedxing (Jul 22, 2004)

I disagree with jj on this one.  At the time Kerry began speaking out about the Vietnam war, he and Vietnam Veterans Against the War - reinforced my opinion that we had good people fighting out there who were trapped in a war that made no sense and was being waged in a destructive and disorganized fashion.  He helped many people to separate the war from the people sent to fight it.  It was these folks who convinced me that it would be wrong to duck the draft in any way.  (still, I was glad to see it being phased out by the time I registered)


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## mryan (Aug 2, 2004)

i saw an ad: on one side a photo of bush praying and on the other a photo of a muslim praying. underneath were the words: who is the religious extremist?

in regards to the video: i watched it and do you know what it looks like? A FAKE. there is a stunning lack of blood for a beheading. as a matter of fact, there is none. hmmm....


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## mryan (Aug 2, 2004)

one more thing: i am shocked at the amount of irnorance on display here(i.e.: greg: i'd much sooner nuke the boston globe, that propaganda machine for saddam hussein). it terrifies me that people like you actually think this way.


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## MtnMagic (Aug 2, 2004)

Just one basic point about Democracy: 

Freedom of speech. 

The right to agree or disagree without the threat of retaliation, prison, or death. What do you think would happen if one disagreed with a leader or even a mere viewpoint in a lot of other countries?


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## Greg (Aug 7, 2004)

mryan said:
			
		

> in regards to the video: i watched it and do you know what it looks like? A FAKE. there is a stunning lack of blood for a beheading. as a matter of fact, there is none. hmmm....


Another *conspiracy theory*, eh?  :blink:  :lol:  :roll:


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## pedxing (Aug 8, 2004)

I'm confident that the Berg video was real.  I'd neverr seen anyone claim it was fake - so I went and saw it for the first time.   Yikes!

MRyan are you sure it was the Berg video you saw and not the one referred to in this news story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/08/MNGBN83I3U1.DTL ?


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