- Our initial reaction to the killing of a human being
as a public spectacle is one of shock and revulsion.
-
- The words uttered by President Bush are dripping with
hypocrisy, however, coming as they do from a president who has signed more
execution warrants as Governor of Texas than any other governor in recent
history; and not a few of them have been filmed for the benefit of television
documentaries.
-
- Moreover, how many World War Two executions did the Americans
photograph and film, often in excruciating detail?
-
- Let us however stand back and review the few facts that
have so far been entrusted to us by the authorities, and on which the scared
media have so far breathed no comment.
-
- First, the man was executed wearing an orange jump suit:
I have long been wondering, and expressed to colleagues the opinion, that
Iraqi resistance would gain maximum global propaganda effect by putting
their captives through the same humiliating and painful hoops that the
Americans use in Camp Delta at Guantánamo.
-
- We British are unfortunately accomplices (even if unwilling
ones) in the atrocities at Camp Delta.
-
- Second, it was Donald Rumsfeld who announced or implied
when he and his cronies embarked on their "war on terror" in
the Middle East that the United States did not intend to abide by the Geneva
Conventions.
-
- Third, was this latest victim of Washington's folly the
same kind of "American" as Wall Street Journal writer Daniel
Pearl -- i.e. a 100 percent Israeli citizen, merely working in or from
America, and probably a Mossad agent? We still remember the fury (1) of
the Pearl family, living in Israel, when an Israeli newspaper blew his
cover.
-
- The clue to this, apart from the obvious ones, is that
"Philadelphia businessmann" Nick Berg is said to have been a
"civilian contractor".
-
- Most of the Israeli assistance to the Coalition Forces
in Iraq is in the form of civilian contractors -- i.e. hired mercenaries,
supplied to operate in the fields of prisoner of war interrogation (Abu
Ghraib!), Intelligence, or contract killings.
-
- It is remarkable, is it not, that Berg was captured on
April 9, over a month ago and yet not a word of his capture was breathed
in the US media about it until now, when he has met his savage end. Nor
do I recall any reports on the discovery of his body on Saturday.
-
- So: remember -- you read it first here. If he was a naive
and luckless Philadelphia businessman, trapped and mangled by the Moloch
that his bellicose regime have created in Iraq, then truly our hearts go
out to his family; if he was however a hired mercenary engaged on some
covert plain clothes operation, and captured by his enemies and dealt with
as a spy, this must mitigate our feelings of compassion.
-
- That said, in a civilized society it is justice that
must be seen to be done, not execution.
- http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/04/05/Beheading_1.html
-
- 1. Pearl's father: 'Israeli connection' could hinder
investigation
- http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=133733
&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
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- Last updated 12/05/2004
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