Taped voice purported to be top militant justifies beheading of Berg

[seemslikeadream]

By Associated Press
Wednesday, July 7, 2004

CAIRO, Egypt - The militants who beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq said they had rejected ransom offers and killed him to avenge Muslims who suffered at the hands of American-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new audio tape.

The 60-minute recording, which was first posted on Islamic Web sites Tuesday, carried a voice purporting to be that of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His Tawhid and Jihad Movement has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on American-led coalition troops.

The voice said there had been attempts - including offers of ransom - to save Berg's life, but the speaker did not identify who was behind the rescue bids.

``They were ready to give us whatever sums of money we asked ... to save this infidel's life, but despite our desperate need of money to fund our jihad, we preferred to take revenge for our sisters and our nation,'' the voice said.

The speaker attacked Islamic clerics, in particular top Iraqi Sunni cleric Harith al-Dari, for criticizing Berg's killing rather than supporting ``Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Indonesia'' and ``stopping the rape of our Muslim sisters in Abu Ghraib prison.''
more
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=34722

[leesa]

1. Is this the dead al-Zarqawi or the live one?

What a bunch of BS.

[radwriter0555]

2. The CIA black ops stirring the flames of muslim hatred... it was waning

apparently.

[struggle4progress]

7. It's apparently the one with the bad sinus infection ...

... not the amputee.


<snip>
During the summer of 2002, he underwent nasal surgery at a Baghdad hospital, officials say. They mistakenly originally thought, however, that Zarqawi had his leg amputated due to an injury.
<snip>
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/zarqawi_hunt_040525-2.html


Since this medical intelligence info was all allegedly based on intercepted conversations, you'd think we'd know better. On the other hand, the "intelligence" agencies, and their translation services, nowadays seem more or less determined to say whatever POTUS tells them to say ...

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Has this Zarqawi regained his Jordanian accent since the Berg video?

Maybe the boys are giving a little more attention to post-production. But why should they? It's not like the media pays attention. Only those conspiracy theorists. And nobody takes them seriously.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Invitation to a Beheading Redux

Invitation to a Beheading Redux
by Mina Hamilton
www.dissidentvoice.org
July 7, 2004
We shudder. The hairs on the backs of our necks rise as we confront the ghastly fate of Daniel Pearl, Kim Sun-il, Paul Johnson, Nicolas Berg, and other victims to come.

Decapitation harks back to barbarous times, as when Herodias severed the head of St. John the Baptist or Henry the V111th dispensed with his unfortunate wives.

Here is the cranium, the seat of human intelligence. Here is the astounding culmination of billions of years of evolution and it ignominiously sits on a platter for all to see. Here are the optic nerves, the delicate interface between external data and a myriad of synapses and neurons. Here is the noble forehead. Here is the mouth, the portal for language, song and love. All reduced to a bloodied hunk of meat.


In 2002, when the Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl was beheaded we gasped in anguish and horror, not only at his and his family's suffering, but at a new 21st century manifestation of human depravity. Beheading as political statement. Beheading as threat and revenge. Beheading as public execution.

Enter the case of Nicolas Berg, the 26-year-old Jew decapitated in Iraq sometime in early May, 2004. Our hearts recoiled. There was an outpouring of public outrage. Bush denounced the savage act.

End of story. Not end of story.


more
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Hamilton0707.htm

[seemslikeadream]

5. End of story. Not end of story

Soon cyberspace was flooded with websites claiming that the Berg decapitation video was a fake, a "classic CIA-Black Op." (1) The theory is this: parties unknown killed and decapitated Berg, but the video was a fraud. It showed the staged decapitation of an already dead man. And the CIA/Special Forces are responsible?

These grisly theories spring, in part, from the near-perfect timing. The video hits the airwaves smack in the midst of the Abu Ghraib scandal. As photos of naked, hooded Iraqis parade across the media, as US support for the Iraq war plummets, the man in an orange suit is cut down by al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaeda operative.

Just when the Pentagon and the President is wrestling with the question of whether to release more Abu Ghraib torture photos the supposed perpetrators of Berg's decapitation say the torture in Iraqi prisons prompted their horrifying act. The Berg video provides a compelling reason to withhold additional photos.

Fast on the heels of the May 11 Berg video, the right wing goes ballistic: stop whining about Abu Ghraib and refocus on the war. Even the New York Times criticizes the rhetoric, "hard core supporters of the American war in Iraq…are cynically trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe awaay the images of Abu Ghraib." (2)

Perfect timing doth not a false video make. It's a motive, not a proof.

The questions being raised on the internet, however, are serious ones. One has to overcome a visceral disgust and review the frames of the Berg decapitation video. Few want to enter this hideous terrain. Yet, if one assumes the act was a fake, it's less painful to probe the evidence. Then, one is analyzing an appalling PR stunt, not an in-real-time atrocity.
more
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Hamilton0707.htm

[Name removed]

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