[Marxism] RE: Nick Berg's family firm on right-wing "Enemies" list

["Tony Abdo" <gojack10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brian, I find that this rumor-mongering that the US military might have
secretly did Nick Berg in, or even that the video was all CIA staged, to be
the exact mirror image of how Right Wingers all wanted to believe that the
accounts of US military atrocities were entirely enemy propaganda, and
falsifications. The Right repeatedly said that Americans couldn't be doing
such things, that the military taught soldiers about the Geneva Conventions
and that they knew that their relatives and friends who wrote to them while
on military duty were all decent folk, etc. And then the picture of the Abu
Ghraib prioson tortures were released... and the Right were all caught with
all their rationalizations and excuses hung out as naked as the pileup of
Iraqi POWs were in those photos.

Inventing all this CIA conspiracy stuff, without the slightest real
evidence, does not do Leftism too good.  That's why antiwar.com and Common
Dreams both are tending to shy away from these current 'Left'  conspiarcy
threads regarding Nick Berg's death. These major sites are too saavy to be
burnt by running wild with the themes that some of the blogs are publishing
now about Berg and the beheading.  The fact that the blood did not gush, and
that Berg had a prison uniform on, and sat in a certain type of chair, is
pretty little to be running so wild with so many conjectures that the video
was a CIA fake to counter the torture photos with.  It is possible, but
there is no hard evidence at all at this point so why run wild with the
imagination here?

This is a total war and so called atrocities will be done on both sides,
same as in Palestine. Just as Osama tried to use terror to make his point,
there are others who will also use those techniques in war, no matter how
just their side may be about the essentials. The US is an occupying army,
and one can expect that all Iraqis may well not use peaceful disobediance at
all times to resist that occupation.  And when US soldiers or contractors
get torn apart from time to time, there is no reason to immediately run off
the loose end and imagine CIA photo fakery behind it all.

It would be nice if the Left crowd would resist the temptation to call this
video CIA faked, unless there is much harder evidence than there is
currently to come forth.  Because if the video is actually confirmed in some
way to be totally real, then many liberal minded types are going to be left
feeling just as compromised in their paranoia about our enemy(Bush and
Rumsfield), as all those mainstream flagwaving Americans that believed that
their side (the US military) doesn't torture, and was genetically incapable
of such crimes against humanity now is.  In fact, ALL now know that the
Iraqi POWs have been getting tortured, and being paranoid that the
supposedly evil Arabs were  making all this stuff up previously just to
slander the good hearted US army, has left many a pro-war American eating
crow.

It's best to not go immediately go following and chasing and automatically
believing all rumors in this sort of propaganda warfare.  I think that the
US military pretty much had figured out that the jailed Nick Berg was not a
dangerous subversive, which is a conclusion far different than that found
below on the breakfornews.com site.  He appears to have been no more than a
politically naive world wanderer, of which there are many.

Tony Abdo
``````````````````````````````````````
from the breakfornews.com site article that Brian sent..
<<But there are much graver aspects to all this. Another chilling
perspective is best summarized by the wry cynicism of Michael Rivero at
WhatReallyHappened.com

In a commentary on the beheading of Nick Berg, Rivero writes:

"How wonderfully lucky for Bush and the NeoCons that such a great piece of
pro-war distract-from-the-torture-scandal event happens at this particular
moment."
Rivero's world-weary realism strikes a chord with his popular website's
visitors, but will undoubtedly shock unseasoned observers. However he is far
from alone in questioning the official line. Others have noted the too-white
hands and military at-ease stance of the hooded captors in the video.

The killing has certainly eased the international discomfiture of the US.

The problem with assumptions that al-Queda is responsible for Berg's
beheading, is that Musab al-Zarqawi is mentioned in a caption on the
videotape of the killing.

Al-Zarqawi came to our attention in January, 2004 when the US military
claimed to have intercepted a letter of his written to the al-Queda
leadership. But the content of the letter read like a US military propaganda
statement on the situation in Iraq.

In the letter al-Zarqawi wrote of Iraqis coming to welcome the US presence
in Iraq, and about how al-Queda was loosing ground in it's war against the
US.

In February, 2004 an article "The Zarqawi Gambit," by Greg Weiher on
Counterpunch was deeply skeptical of the letter:

"..if you were Karl Rove, you couldn't design a better scenario to validate
the administration's slant on the war than this. That's a good reason to
maintain a healthy skepticism. In fact, there are a number of good reasons
to take this story with a grain of salt (maybe a three- or four-pounder)."
The US has been keen to paint the opposition to the occupation as composed
of many foreign fighters tied to al-Queda. The letter was clearly fabricated
for propaganda purposes, with al-Zarqawi as it's new al-Queda star.

But if al-Zarqawi is merely a flimsy propaganda creation, then what
confidence can we have in the official line that al-Zarqawi and al-Queda
murdered Berg?

The only plausible alternative is a covert, black operation orchestrated as
part of the seedier arm of US foreign policy --which generally only come to
light when candid photographs, for example, reach the public domain.

But that's an explanation which many would reject on the grounds that no
force allied to the US --no matter how black its operations-- would have
members so callous as to even countenance the cold-blooded beheading of a US
citizen.

However, there is a mindset amplified by war passions and found among the
gung-ho brutes who beat Iraqis to death; found among the thuggish mercenary
death squads who roam to slay at will; and found among the cold-blooded
sociopaths who have planted bombs for political strategic reasons.

It's war. And war begets a wartime mindset.

Nick Berg's detention indicates that authorities regarded him an an antiwar
activist and possibly also as an 'enemy.'

That original post on Free Republic contains a telling indication of a
mindset, which in the heat of war could well kill an American it regards as
the "enemy."

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