Reaction to Nick Berg's death on the BBC "Have Your Say" site...

[mrph]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3706763.stm

Now see what the media's fascination with showing only the bad side of this war has done? I blame the media for this death! Show the good that has come about rather than only the bad and help prevent these events!
Tony Kenny, Cumbria, UK

Nick Berg's life could have been saved only if the invading soldiers were prohibited from carrying cameras.
Girish, Cambridge, UK

Oh, FFS. Blame the media. Blame the cameras. Yeah, right.

Because if we didn't hear about the abuses going on, they wouldn't be a problem, would they? Brush it all under the carpet and things would be so much better.

...wouldn't they? I don't think so. The Iraqi people don't actually rely on the Western media to tell them whether or not the war has been good or bad for them, do they?

And the tales about abuse of Iraqis have been circulating in Iraq by word of mouth for at least six months now. The pictures certainly didn't help, but I think the resentment caused by the mistreatment of prisoners was building up anyway - this just caused a sudden leap instead of a gradual rise.

Although despite all of the above, this isn't really about that. It's about a bunch of terrorists/insurgents/whoever wanting to send the USA a very grim message ('Get out of Iraq or there'll be more of this', basically) and thinking this is a good way - and a good time - to do so. Everything else is just excuses and fig leaf justifications.

Comments

[mrph.livejournal.com]

See previous post about some of them being lifted from porn sites...

The US prison ones seem to be real, though - we have admissions from the people involved, for a start.

It's all spinning downwards into a very nasty place, yes. And I can't see it getting any better in the short term. Not good.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

This one:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mrph/431201.html

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

If they were false, the US authorities would be saying so - very loudly indeed. The fact that they are saying no such thing is very instructive.

[markeris.livejournal.com]

??????

I should think the last thing the US authorities want them to be is false. They`d certainly not be at the front of the queue to announce them as such if they were.

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

sorry - I think we must be talking at cross-purposes here - I thought Matt was talking about the photos of Americans torturing Iraqis - but you seem to be talking about yesterdays decapitation video?

In relation to the photos of Americans torturing people, the motive to demonstrate falsity is obvious... in relation to the decapitation video, this, as you suggest, is something they are feeling very thankful for.

Yet again, the terrorists have let them off the hook.

[markeris.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. We`re completley on the same page there then!

[markeris.livejournal.com]

If the timing of this was any more convenient as regards making certain other films / photos a bit less embarassing, i`d swear Bush / Blair had a personal copy of photoshop.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

I've already seen conspiracy theories about this posted by Americans on the Yahoo boards - mostly claiming that the men in hoods were CIA, that he was deemed "expendable" as he'd already been arrested, and that the whole thing was set up to divert attention...

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Sit a monkey in front of Photoshop for long enough and it'll eventually paint the Mona Lisa.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I read the Girish point as sarcasm, myself...

[mrph.livejournal.com]

You might well be right. I suspect my brain is dulled by reading too many comments that clearly aren't...

*sigh*

[zarbi.livejournal.com]

We are in a terrible and complex situation. The fundamental nature of an armed force is that there will be the kind of people who develop a sort of moral blindness and have no problem with abusing civilians - its inevitable. Its a part of supposedly civilised democratic culture that we publicise and abhor such behaviour. On the other hand, totalitarian societies can usually hide such behaviour, and torture and kill tens of thousands, as Saddam did as a matter of state policy. What matters is what the Iraqi public as a whole think is best. I hope we can find out soon. There is no doubt that many in the US army have behaved terribly, and there has almost certainly been a cover-up, but does that mean we should pull out and leave the defenceless Iraqi population to be ruled by militias? Does that mean that it was better when torture was a routine matter of state policy, when vast areas were depopulated using chemical weapons? It was a lot simpler during the cold war, when large areas of the world were potential flashpoints of superpower conflict and had to be left alone.