Qaeda Leader Beheads U.S. Civilian in Iraq

[SlowwHand]

Bush isn't giving field commands.

[Japher]

I googled it

http://buttersquash.net/archives/000014.php

but, what's a nit?

[Sprayber]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=9&u=/ap/20040512/ap_on_re_mi_ea/arabs_american_beheaded

by ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Arab media reacted cautiously Wednesday to the videotaped beheading of an American civilian by Islamic militants in Iraq (news - web sites), with some newspapers conspicuously playing it down or even ignoring it.

The biggest pan-Arab satellite television channels broadcast an edited version of the gruesome video, not showing the actual killing of Nick Berg, 26, of West Chester, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb. The businessman was abducted in April.

In one of the most explicit displays, Kuwait's Al-Siyassah daily ran a photo of a masked militant holding up Berg's severed head.

The video of the execution was released on the Internet too late for some Middle East newspaper columnists to react to it. The killing, attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, appalled many Arabs.

Some opinion-makers condemned the killing.

"This shows how base and vile those who wear the robe of Islam have become," said Abdullah Sahar, a Kuwait University political scientist.

Some said it surpassed the American military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, which has been the top story for the past 10 days in the Middle East.

"We were winning international sympathy because of what happened at Abu Ghraib, but they come and waste it all," said Abdullah Sahar, a Kuwait University political scientist, said of the Islamic militants responsible.

In the video, the masked militants said they were taking revenge on Berg because of the abuses at the Baghdad prison.

Mustafa Bakri, editor of Al-Osboa weekly newspaper in Egypt, said Berg's death will only hurt efforts to expose American offenses against Iraqis.

"Such revenge is rejected," Bakri said of the execution. "The American administration will make use of such crimes just to cover their real crimes against Iraqis."

Bakri spoke as he took part in a Cairo demonstration by about 50 Egyptian journalists and lawyers against American human rights abuses in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the big two satellite networks, aired carefully edited versions of the video. In Al-Arabiya's edit, a militant is seen drawing a knife and jerking Berg's body to one side. The rest is not shown.

"The news story itself is strong enough," said Jihad Ballout, spokesman for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. "To show the actual beheading is out of the realm of decency."

Lebanon's private Al Hayat-LBC station led its bulletins Wednesday with the video. Its news presenter said: "We apologize to our viewers for not showing the entire tape because of the ugliness of the scene."

Kuwait state television broadcast the news of the execution late Tuesday but not the video.

Iraqi newspapers reported nothing about the killing, although it may have broken to late for them.

Egypt's leading daily, Al-Ahram, ignored the beheading Wednesday. Two other major pro-government newspapers ran news agency reports on their inside pages, without photos.

An Al-Ahram editor, Ahmed Reda, said the news came too late Tuesday night for the paper to confirm the video's authenticity with the U.S. government.

Newspapers in Syria, where the government controls the press tightly, did not report it at all.

A professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo, Hussein Amin, said the handling of the story by Egypt's pro-government papers was political and appropriate.

"I think that the government does not want to show this on the front page as a main item because it shows a very poor — poor is not the proper word; disgusting maybe is the better word — example of revenge," Amin said. "There is also the threat that it could be happening to other Americans. If they put it on the front page, (it could be seen as) they are favoring this kind of action."

Jordanian newspapers, state television and radio reported Berg's killing, but without commentary.

Most Lebanese newspapers, such as the left-wing As-Safir, published the report and a photograph of Berg sitting in front of the militants. As-Safir ran the headline: "Al-Zarqawi slaughters an American to avenge Iraqi prisoners."

In many Arab newspapers, the beheading received less display than the news of America's imposing sanctions on Syria and the killing of six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Japher
but, what's a nit?

Hate to be nit-picking, but a baby-louse obviously.

[Japher]

what's even worse is American Media's down play of the story, or less of a play on the story than the prisoneer abuse story.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Japher
what's even worse is American Media's down play of the story, or less of a play on the story than the prisoneer abuse story.

do you live on the moon? all I see is "beheaded" this, "beheaded" that all over the news...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Japher
what's even worse is American Media's down play of the story, or less of a play on the story than the prisoneer abuse story.

Well the sand creek massacre is pretty old......

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Azazel

This is the treatment we give to the Arabs: whenever a person who happens to be Arabic does something barbarous, there's an immediate media attention.

lol: lol:

You're kidding, right?

Glad to see I'm not the on,ly one who types his lols

I'm bolding the trait, but I'm not kidding. There has been media attention about this beheading in the whole west. I have no doubt there are plenty of beheadings currently occuring in Sudan, Uganda, or Congo (and much, much worse). I have little doubt this kind of barbarous acts regularily occur in civil-war torn countries across the globe. But Arabs get a special mediatic treatment.

[Spiffor]

Sprayber for the article. I tried looking at daily newspapers from Arabic o****ries on the internet, but you're never sure how often they are updated, so I couldn't know if the beheading was ignored, or simply not yet online.

[Japher]

It was Sprayber's article...

[Japher]

do you live on the moon? all I see is "beheaded" this, "beheaded" that all over the news...

I saw it once, and it made the front page, or rather the reaction of the media to the media fed video of the incident rather than the implications of the event. Ppl are more mad that this was aired than that it occured.

[Az]

Guess who's doing the decapitating and genocide in Sudan?

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Azazel
Guess who's doing the decapitating and genocide in Sudan?

Bad people?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


Apparently the wrong one unless the Indians converted to Mormonity

Tass are there any Indians in your church?

Smartass -- that ORIGINAL quote had nothing to do with Amerindians, since the murderer stated it when he killed a nine year old white child who belonged to a Mormon family in the 1840s or 1850s.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

You are a piece of work... a soldier in the US armed forces is trained to disobey a superior's order if it violates international covenants on war. If a superior orders genocide, an American soldier has a DUTY to disobey!

Looking at the facts, they definitely need to review their training practices.