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Editorial by Angie Many
From My Desk…
The beheading of Nick Berg, American civilian who went
to Iraq to help its citizens, was not a quick and merciful (if there is such a
thing) killing. It was a brutal, sadistic act by madmen convinced that they are
the right arm of a god who demands that the world convert to radical Islam or
die. Berg’s head was not chopped off in one fell blow. It was carved from his
body while he screamed. We at Resource Roundup extend our deepest
sympathies to his parents, family, and friends. We are horrified, outraged, and
saddened.
Most of us have no comprehension of the minds of people
who would commit such an act. They are not just religious zealots, or ‘freedom
fighters’, or ‘insurgents’. They are insane murderers determined to show
the world that there is no act too despicable for them to perform to achieve
their goal -- domination of the world by radical Muslims.
There are those, especially the murderers themselves
and our own homegrown blame-America-for-everything crowd, who say that this
horrible act was our fault, for mistreating Iraqi prisoners. How quickly they
forget that long before the Iraqi prisoner scandal, radical Muslims filmed their
grisly murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, crushed, burned, and suffocated 3,000
people on 9-11, and killed American prisoners. Some people in the Twin Towers
jumped from over 100 floors high to escape the flames. Yet we don’t even see
those photos, much less over and over again as we have the Abu Ghraib prison
photos.
The terrorists would have no doubt killed Berg anyway,
and probably in a very savage manner, but the Iraqi prison scandal gave them a
convenient way to stir more anti-American anti-Bush sentiment, and the media -- our
media -- helped them. Democrats, liberals, the media, and radical Muslims have
joined forces to defeat President Bush, discredit Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld,
demoralize our troops, and try to trap the U.S. in a quagmire of indecision.
What a combination of allies.
The Iraqi prisoner scandal has been unfortunate, but
even more unfortunate has been the media’s portrayal of it. The soldiers
involved are quickly being brought to justice, and most of us understand that
this is not how our soldiers usually behave. Our soldiers have rebuilt schools
and hospitals, supplied electricity and potable water, befriended Iraqis,
and asked those at home to send shoes and school supplies for Iraqi
youth. Yet you see little, if any, of this through the major media. Instead, you
see photos of naked Iraqi prisoners, over and over again. The actions of a few
soldiers are portrayed by American media and liberal American politicians as
indicative of major problems within the American military and the Bush
Administration and with the Iraqi war, instead of the aberration that it is.
The prisoners were not subject to the Geneva
Conventions because they were not fighting in uniform or for a country. They
could have legitimately been shot as spies after being captured. Prison guards,
especially the evidently-barely-trained and little-supervised National Guard
MPs, should not have been utilized in prisoner humiliation. Military training
includes instructions to refuse to obey unlawful or amoral orders. Since
Nuremberg, the “I was only following orders” defense doesn’t work. These
guards should have taken prisoners to their interrogators and back to their
cells. Period.
The unpleasant but often necessary (these prisoners
were, after all, some of the worst of the worst. Many were in the ‘54 card
deck’ of Saddam’s top henchmen and could have information vital to saving
U.S. troops) tasks of interrogation, including ‘softening them up’, should
have been conducted only by trained professionals.
The guards were, to put it bluntly, stupid. It seems
that a ‘mob mentality’ took hold, where people in a group egg each other on
and do things that they would never do on their own. How dumb must you be to
take pictures of yourselves doing something that you must know would cause a
furor if discovered? That’s akin to Richard Nixon taping all of his
conversations.
Those photos should have immediately been confiscated
by the military and marked as ‘classified’. Penalties should have been
enforced against anyone who released them. They are deleterious to the war
effort and they do not reflect U.S. policy. They should have been shown to
military investigators and officials, to the White House, and to select members
of Congress. While their existence should have been made public, the photos
themselves should never been released before the end of the war.
(Speaking of photos, very graphic photos of ‘U.S.
soldiers raping Iraqi women’ were published by the Boston Globe on May
12. In reality, the photos were from an Internet pornography site and were
staged, but the Globe thought they were real and jumped at the chance to
publish photos it saw as damaging.)
As much as I like Secretary Rumsfeld, I disagree with
two things that he has said. He called the prison guards’ actions
‘brutal’. Disgusting, yes. Demeaning, yes. Unworthy of U.S. soldiers, yes.
But brutal is slowly carving off someone’s head. Brutal is raping children
while their parents watch, and then slowly killing the whole family. Brutal is
putting people feet-first into shredders to prolong their agony. And Rumsfield
has mentioned ‘compensation’ for prisoners. I do not want to pay these men
who have murdered or plotted murder against my fellow citizens.
For weeks, this scandal absolutely dominated the media.
Human-rights activists and others screamed for ‘justice’, for the
resignation of Rumsfield, for the withdrawal from Iraq. Yet where were those
human-rights activists, the media, world opinion, and the Democrats, all of whom
are now outraged by the scandal of a few U.S. soldiers, when Saddam was
torturing his citizens and murdering hundreds of thousands of them -- for 30
years? (Actually, CNN was there but never aired such information because, its
executives say, Saddam would have ousted the network from the country and
possibly retaliated against CNN journalists. I say that CNN should have pulled
its journalists out first and then aired the stories of torture and murder. Yet
it didn’t. Why not?) How can ‘The Reverend Jesse Jackson’ call our
soldiers ‘murderers’ for killing Iraqis in a war ‘not sanctioned by the
United Nations’ yet remain silent about the murder of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis who were lined up at the edges of bulldozed mass graves and shot? Or the
people who were tied together in twos, and only one of each pair shot? The
others, tied to dead bodies, were buried alive. Saddam had thousands upon
thousands of children killed, for Pete’s sake. He used chemical weapons to
kill whole villages. Our forces liberated emaciated children, as young as five
years old, from prisons where they were incarcerated to punish their parents.
Our enemies look at the outrage expressed by Americans
over the prison scandal and laugh. Brutal? Americans don’t know the meaning of
the word, they boast. Americans are weak. All of their mighty weapons are
useless because they are now afraid to use them.
A caller to a talk show recently asked, ‘Where are
the moderate Muslims? Why are none of them speaking up and expressing outrage
over this beheading?’ (Actually, a couple have spoken up, but the media has
not covered it.)
My question is, where are WE? Where are those of us who
should be standing up and saying ‘Yes, the guards’ behavior was
reprehensible, but it does not reflect on the validity of the war or on the need
to destroy terrorists before they destroy us. I support Bush, Rumsfeld, and our
soldiers’? The ‘other side’ has people protesting in the streets,
bombarding politicians with letters, and commanding media attention. Where are
WE?
If there is a peaceful transition of power to Iraq on
June 30, the terrorists lose. They are thus determined to cause as much trouble
as possible before then. I am writing President Bush, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld, and my Congressional delegation to urge them to go back to being
tough. If it takes bombs to make a country work to stop the killing of American
soldiers and civilians, then let ‘em fly.
Contact information follows. Please send your own
letters to elected officials and to the media today. If you don’t, you are
letting the blame-America-first and
evil-can-be-appeased malcontents be the only voices heard. Step up to the plate
-- or be prepared for your team to lose.
President George W. Bush,
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20500; 202/456-1111 or 456-1414;
FAX 202/456-2461; president@whitehouse.gov.
Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, 1000 Defense
Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 20301-1000; 703/692-7100; website is www.defenselink.mil,
no e-mail address found.
Your Senator’s name,
Washington, D.C. 20510; 202/224-3121.
Your Representative’s
name, Washington, D.C. 20515;
202/225-3121.
Find e-mail addresses at www.conservativeusa.org
Angie
P.S. Since this column was written, the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) obtained real torture photos and videos -- of
guards cutting off fingers, joint by joint, sawing off tongues with razor
blades, and severely beating prisoners, while prisoners in the ‘waiting
line’ often had to chant praises to the leader of the torturers. AEI invited
the mainstream media to view these photos and videos. Only a few people showed
up. Why? Because the scenes depicted were not of American soldiers, but of
Saddam’s henchmen torturing Iraqis. If the media representatives had shown up,
they would have (perhaps!) felt obligated to report on the torture. So they just
didn’t go. What lengths our ‘reporters’ will go to in efforts to oppose
our military efforts and President Bush!
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