Is this REALLY the REAL WORLD Forum? What happened to the Nick Berg thread?

Champie why are you talking that way about Devlin???

What the hell is this supposed to mean?

That is about bait.

bait?

what is wrong with you people?


have fun, i'm out of here.

lol. I also have no idea what that means but I guess I'll stay. lol

The disturbing irony is that whilst America claims that the war is about doing the Iraqis a favour - helping them to democracy - very many Americans seem to have very little respect for the Iraqis, to not particularly like them, and to feel that they are less than human.

It may be a crazy guess here, but I cant help thinking that there are two big reasons why Americans are in Iraq:
- fear
- control

Now I wouldnt say you're wrong for invading Iraq. If I was an American citizen it's totally possible I'd be in favour of carpet-bombing the world too. That said, it's perhaps a little unreasonable to be surprised when those "benefitting" from your help are less than grateful.

Also, bear in mind that George Bush and his cronies are not actually America. What is best for them might be what is best for you and your friends and family, but it might not be.

Azelda

So are you going to tell us where you're from Azelda??

Cronies?! Watch how you talk about our President's administrators.

Fear and control are arguably two reasons why we are in Iraq but they're certainly not the only reasons and not the biggest reasons.

And where do you get the notion that "very many Americans seem to have very little respect for the Iraqis, to not particularly like them, and to feel that they are less than human?"

It doesn't matter which nation Azelda is from, really. For the past fifty years, just about all of the European countries have sat back and enjoyed free education, health care and extensive social welfare programs while we slaved to pay taxes to support hundreds of thousands of our troops in Europe - the only thing that kept out the Soviet Union for all of those years. Even now they beg us not to pull out of Germany because the Germans can't be trusted not to pull their slimy shit again.
I have a lot more respect and liking for Iraqis than I do for the backbiting and treacherous French and Germans and I'm sure a lot of US citizens feel the same way.

That's a fact Europe likes to forget, David. Thank Reagan for the Cold War ending (accepting he had other faults), but he did outspend them into the ground (by the way, thanks John Kerry for opposing military spending at every opportunity). The Germans and Russians aren't HALF as bad as the French have been though. Not even close! The Germans and Russians may not have supported the Iraq war--that's fine--but they didn't actively attempt to undermine our efforts, either. France fights us every step of the way--they are on the enemy's side pretty much every time.

Did I mention how there was only one story about Nick Berg in France, and that it was essentially "Nick Berg will distract Americans from the Iraqi prisoner abuse."? Which it won't do anyway, because the left wing won't allow it, and because it has the capability to drag on for ages where a video can be forgotten. So that conclusion is completely wrong. (duh)



Ahhh...you mean the guy that, twelve hours after his son's death is discovered, starts to use his fifteen minutes in the spotlight to make his own political statements (attacks) undermining the very things his dead son believed in? The guy may be grieving, but that crosses an obvious line in my book. If your son was killed, even if you disagreed with him so drastically, would you do the same thing? Look into the crazy (International ANSWER) people the father has been associated with. Act now to stop war and end racism! Because everyone KNOWS that the US is only in Iraq because we hate Arabs.

Since I just paid my $75 in subscription and land fees, I'll stay around for a little longer. In the meantime, I'll ignore Azelda's posts, ignore the drive-bys and thank god that there at least a few reasonable people still in this thread.

I've stayed out of this long and meandering thread until now. I just found another log for the fire. Stuff like this undermines the nation building efforts in Iraq MUCH more than the words of Ted Kennedy or Nick Berg's greiving dad. Rumsfeld has to go now, Dubya in November.

oh c'mon Teeny. . .nobody's taking these so called news seriously because it was written by Seymour Hersh and published by The New Yorker magazine.

That story may or may not be true, but saying it's just the result of a few rogue soldiers is crazy... unless GI's make a habit of packing black hoods and robes in their kit. Someone had to supply those things. It many not go all the way up to Rummy, but it definitely goes up the chain of command a few rungs... probably all the way to the CIA and Pentagon.

Well, its not Al jazeera either. Like Chip said, a few soldiers didn't just pack their S&M stuff with their combat gear before they shipped out. Someone had to have ordered these people to torture their captives. It was also Rumsfeld's responsibility to be on top of this. He clearly either ignored it or secretly approved it. Either way, the he needs to go. His participation or indifference to the problem has undermined everything the Bushies hope to accomplish (this week) in Iraq.

I agree with you that these MPs were probably instructed by superiors to abuse these prisoners but I don't think Rumsfeld has to go. There's only so much micro-managing he can do. But we'll see what happens in the next few weeks. Bush was and should still be angry at Rumsfeld.

Maybe he should go, but it's too early to tell. It sure as hell would be weird for someone that religious to be OKing stuff like that...it's an odd accusation. I'm not sure I believe what that story is trying to imply (unless I'm remembering it wrong, didn't just read it). I could easily see how information may have been left out, and so on. Just like how Richard Clark seemed like he might have some points before he turned out to be a liar. Actually I have an idea what the other side of this story might be...

If Donald DID order this exact type of thing to be done, HELL yes he should be gone--because that's not how we're supposed to be doing things here. That kind of crap is for governments like North Korea and Iran.

But it's a little hard for me to swallow that the high-ups were giving orders like this:

"Okay guys, what we want you to do is, take a bunch of Iraqis...strip'em down naked, and pile'em up into a pyramid!"

"Then we want yas ta give'em a free porno show...and make'em pleasure themselves! ahaha...that'll make'em crack and give us all kinds a info...."

Heh...okay, seriously, I think we have yet to find out the majority of the information in this story.

You guys might be interested in this.
Apparently there is something fishy about the whole affair.
This article details a horribly long list of anomalies in the video. There is no graphic or offensive content as far as I could ascertain.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/5/15/22827/0477

If you try hard enough, I'm positive you can find experts who'll testify it was Santa Claus and his elves who cut Bergs head off.

In fact, yeah, I read that somewhere. Very suspicious.

What makes that guy a forensics expert???

I can't say if there was something fishy about the video, because I still haven't seen it. Maybe things aren't what they seem. I'll wait and see.

Right...I've heard about this crap. Alot of what I heard was off of web BLOGS. Is that where this "analysis" came from? Did they manage to get some actually credible sources, or should I just ignore that entire load of crap? Needless to say I'm pretty skeptical of this.

Hell even I can discredit some of that crap, much of it is dubious at best, some of it is just grasping at straws, some of it makes perfect sense based on the other information we know, blah blah blah, and so on. Some of them are VERY...laughably weak, it's obvious they were just grasping at straws so they could reach that nice round 50.

I mean:
"Iraqis who have seen the videotape on Arabic news broadcasts are universally saying the men in the film are not Iraqis."

Well DUH, al-Quaida isn't made up entirely of Iraqis.

But if it was fake (which I doubt, but I suppose there could be a chance in hell), think about the implications of it. That means either the US military, US intel, or somebody is purposefully decieving the world, and all the conspiracy theorists are right.

It's going to take a little more than "Woman's scream, instead of Berg?" to prove this. Wasn't it found on a known al-Quaida connected arabic website, anyway? (I could be mistaken.)

Get me a tin foil hat, because I'm taking out the "chance in hell" from the above post and I'll just say I have my doubts now. Jury's still out, I suppose. I'm dizzy.

I didn't see the tape, and don't want to. But I did read the article, and there were two things which seem to demand an explanation. The lack of movement in the body while the execution was carried out, and the lack of blood afterwards. If these are both true, then it does indicate that the decapitation was carried out on a corpse. Certainly, decapitation normally produces vast quantities of blood.

I suppose if nothing else, it does indicate that the terrorists weren't quite as bloodthirsty as they wished to appear.

That's a possibility, they may want us to think they're worse than they are. But...Islamic extremists have done this kind of thing before so who knows. I heard there's a video of a Chechen soldier like this that's even worse, and there's Daniel Pearl also. There's no doubt in my mind that people like that are that brutal.

If we take "internet message boards and blogs" as credible sources of information, there are those that said there's alot of blood on the ground at different points. As for lack of movement, I've also read that four people were holding Berg down. Kinda hard to move, you know..

There's only a few things that seem a little odd and each one has a counter argument. The fact that this moron tried to point out FIFTY just shows how biased he is and how much he wants to believe that it's fake (not that others aren't biased in the other direction). Makes that evil Bush and America look bad afterall.

If they want to make an argument that this is actually American soldiers, they should at least stick to the stronger points. Not:

"Oh one guy's got a gold ring....that's prohibited by Islamic law!"

(When some people are saying it's not prohibited, and some are saying it is, when it's completely impossible to tell if a ring is in fact gold from a crappy VIDEO, when these bastards pick and choose which Islamic laws to obey in the first place, and when they're also supposedly breaking another Islamic law by doing exactly what they did with a prisoner.......)

or

"Ahh..see they are American troops...they have bullet proof vests on!"

When they're actually wearing AK-47 ammo vests.

or

"OMGOMGOMG the white chair is the same as the prison chairs!"

When chairs like that are all over the place in Iraq to begin with. (It's not like the US where they have 54 different models of chairs to choose from at the local wal-mart. A dood from Hong Kong mentioned how everyone there has the same friggin garden hose because you can only really get one kind.)

or

"Well these guys look fat." (opinion and hard to tell to begin with)

Of course, all Americans are fat, including our soldiers over there...so they must not be terrorists, because they can't be fat. You know, from hiding out in caves all the time...helps your diet.

We could go on but I've wasted enough of my time with this idiotic grasping at straws.