May 12, 2004
The beheading of Nick Berg
Admiral Yamamoto warned his Japanese colleagues against attacking Pearl Harbor. Hollywood has him saying in two movies, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
With similar prescience, Yamamoto could have warned Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi against putting the video of his preening enjoyment of the butchering of Pa. resident Nick Berg on the Internet.
For Zarqawi has blundered terribly with his merry display of barbarism. Pearl Harbor girded the U.S. for war. Nick Berg's beheading reveals Islam's extremists as savages. With clearer eyes, the West can see what it is up against in the Middle East.
I cannot recall ever sobbing at any photos in career as a journalist spanning four decades (starting with my high school paper) until seeing the few stills of Nick Berg's exceptionally cruel slaughter on the Drudge Report today.
On Fark.com yesterday, posters made it clear that watching the full video was an exercise that might shake the viewer for hours, days or longer:
Everyone taking comfort in a quick painless death afforded a beheading need[s] to take a gander at the video. He screams. Beheaded people don't have time to scream. His head was sawed off from the adams apple back to the spine.
More from the same thread:
Perhaps NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS will air the video of the American getting his head sawed off with a large knife (he is heard screaming and gurgling in the video) before they show the new photos of the "horrible" atrocities a few of our guys committed.That way Americans will know what "real" abuse/torture is.
And finally:
Something that struck me almost as much as the brutality of seeing a human head separated from a live human being and the resulting screams of pain and death were the reactions of the Islamists doing the cutting all the while groaning allah akbar in an almost sexual manner. It had an almost orgasmic quality. I've noticed it before in the Islamist recruiting videos. It isn't the screaming passion of the battle field that all soldiers exhibit, this is something totally different. It is a deep joy an almost sexual release they get when they cut throats, torture and otherwise engage in cold blooded murder. They truly and deeply enjoy it. It appears to be a quasi-sexual experience that is ingrained in their religion and cultural psyche.In the popular vernacular - They get off on it. Religiously and sexually.
I'm sure we can peacefully co-exist with people like that. I'm sure if we are just nice to people like that they will leave us alone.
Callers into the Ron Smith show on WBAL here in Baltimore similarly had said the screams of the victim were close to unbearable.
As an inveterate newshound, I had thought to take a look, but ran into technical problems using my dial-up connection. Perhaps its just as well.
So here for others in a similar boat -- prevented from watching the video by a technical problems or squeamishness -- a description follows.
Rush Limbaugh devoted an uninterrupted stretch of nine minutes on the radio today to a description of what occurs on the video. He said he watched Nick Berg sitting with his hands around his knees, naming his family members. "Five hooded cowards" stood behind the young man, Rush said, "and I hated 'em. I hated these bastards, 'cause I knew what was coming:"
I brought to the witnessing of this video [knowledge of the prison photos at Abu Ghraib] and I was just enraged.I was angry that this was a Jewish man.
I couldn't tell if he knew what was coming.
There was a sudden lunge for the neck of Nick Berg ...
And I ... I've seen the [Daniel] Pearl [decapitation] video too ... but this is not like that if you've seen this.
This took multiple swipes, 'cause this is not a sharp knife.
I was mesmerized, I admit I couldn't turn away from it, but I couldn't watch it ... I'm already angry as hell (because) of the moral equivalencies going on. ...
I wanted to personally go in and level those guys [to rescue Nick Berg]. I felt a flood of powerlessness.
This was not a beheading. This was ... um ... folks, cattle have it better. This was not even a slaughter. This was slow, this instrument, saw, whatever it was, was not sharp. The screams that emanated with each stroke of this instrument were just shocking because you know that Mr. Berg felt everything happening to him
and he looked surprised.It was a combination of numbing and heart palpitations at the same time. And then these cowards at the conclusion of it display their work, I thought I saw a couple smiles thru the mouth holes of the mask.
And I at that instant I wanted to call George Bush and level the place. Turn it 20,000 degrees and let's start over. You're not dealing with human beings, you're dealing with human debris ... they don't deserve to live.
