These images were made possible only because "President" George W. Bush and his cabal of warmongers and war profiteers lied about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction as a justification for the "preemptive" invasion of the sovereign nation in March 2003. From the top, down: Two American military personnel give the thumbs up while they humiliate naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib are forced by their American captors to simulate oral sex. Yet another naked Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib cowers in fear as American military dogs lunge at him. The corpse of an Iraqi detainee suggests that things at Abu Ghraib went further than just harmless fraternity pranks, as Rush Limbaugh and other nutcase apologists for the Bush regime would like you to believe. (The Los Angeles Times recently reported that "25 Iraqi and Afghan war prisoners have died in U.S. custody in the last 17 months, including two Iraqi detainees who may have been murdered by Americans." While Limbaugh and other American Nazis, such as Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, would have you believe that the Iraqi detainees are all murderers and rapists and such and thus deserve abuse, the L.A. Times also recently reported that "70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year 'had been arrested by mistake,' according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year.") At bottom, Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old American civilian who was kidnapped in Iraq, is shown surrounded by his captors in a still from a video. The captor standing directly behind Berg reads a statement and then produces a knife with which he decapitates Berg. Another of Berg's captors then holds Berg's head aloft for the video camera. In the video Berg does not appear to be aware that he is about to be executed. In the video the captor reading the statement states that the captors had tried to trade Berg for prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but that the trade was refused. Berg's body was recovered in Baghdad on Saturday, the day he is believed to have been murdered.
Bush & Co. are responsible
for this fucking horror show
I just watched the disturbing ("disturbing" is putting it mildly) video in which 26-year-old American civilian Nicholas Berg is decapitated in Iraq by his Middle Eastern captors. (I watched the video on ogrish.com, which baitingly asks, "Can you handle life?" A longer version of the video is available here, but I warn you, it's unsettling.)
Berg's gruesome murder -- which his captors said was in retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi detainees by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad -- is likely to make many Americans and allies of the United States hate the Iraqis and Middle Easterners in general (even more than many of them already do).
Their outrage is natural.
But their outrage is largely misplaced.
Fact is, Americans shouldn't be occupying Iraq. Culturally, it's like mixing oil and water. Politically, it's an explosive combination, so it's a combination that should have been made only if it had been absolutely necessary.
It was absolutely necessary, George W. Bush and his associates repeatedly told us Americans and the rest of the world. During the lead-up to his regime's illegal, immoral, imperialistic and unprovoked invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Bush and the members of his warmongering, war-profiteering cabal told us that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the United States and its allies.
Bush and his cabal fucking lied. More than a year later, thousands of people are dead but not a single weapon of mass destruction has been found.
The man who severed Berg's head and his accomplices are responsible for Berg's murder, even though Berg shouldn't have been in Iraq. There is no question about that.
But there also is little to no question that Berg wouldn't have been in Iraq -- to make money or to help out the Iraqis or whatever his motivation was or his motivations were -- if "President" Bush and his warmongers hadn't shoved their bogus "preemptive" invasion and occupation of Iraq down the world's throat. Nor would we have Torturegate, probably the blackest stain on the United States' international reputation during my lifetime.
What were the chickenhawks' motives for this phony war?
Well, take a close look at the fact that about the only thing that is going right in the Bush regime's occupation of Iraq is that U.S. "Vice President" Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp are successfully pocketing billions and billions of American taxpayers' dollars through those no-bid, Iraq-war-related government contracts, as planned. (Had only the rest of the invasion and occupation of Iraq been nearly as well-planned!)
So go ahead, hate the Iraqis (even though 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and not one was from Iraq, and even though not one WMD has been found in Iraq). Hell, hate all Middle Easterners while you're at it.
That's exactly what George W. Bush and his fellow warmongers and war profiteers want us to do -- while they laugh all the way to the bank with billions and billions of our tax dollars, while we cry at our young people's funerals, while iraqbodycount.net tries to keep up with the Iraqi civilian body count that the U.S. military refuses to keep, and while the terrorists of tomorrow are being created today for the personal fortunes of a few.
8:48:50 PM 
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