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After the torture pictures that have been released in the media recently it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Nick Berg who worked for a US Telecoms company in Iraq was the victim of a gruesome beheading that was filmed and uploaded to an Arabic website and claimed to be vengeance of some kind for the brutality shown towards the Iraqi prisoners by the British and American soldiers.

I've not seen it and don't really intend on watching it having seen something similar to this before hand that made me feel physically sick. My point is though that the discussions about torture etc have now been pushed to a whole new level. The people that did this are sick individuals. I don't condone the actions of the British and American soldiers that carried out the abuse, beatings and torture of the Iraqi prisoners but this cannot compare in any way shape or form.

Um, at least one Iraqi has been murdered by americans whilst a prisoner. (rather than in combat) They didn't behead him but that doesnt make him any less dead.

Oh and the US soliders shot dead a pregnant woman who they thought might be trying to attack them by walking along the street.

But they didnt cut her head off so this cannot compare in any way shape of form...

The Telecoms market is overcrowded anyway, more beheadings mean more jobs for me.

Okay. So it's a horrible act. And it's really sad. But it's also immediately political. Anyone who tortures or kills someone else in such a manner is probably a 'sick individual'. And obviously you have to look at these cases on an individual basis. You have to condemn whoever did this, just as you have to condemn anyone carrying out acts of torture in Iraq to Iraqi prisoners. But you can't take the actions of terrorists as the actions of a country. This is a brutal murder, or a terrorist act. But to see it as a direct reaction to the 'torture photos' is to take a very basic view of the situation.

You can't have double standards about this sort of thing. Whoever is carrying out this kind of atrocity, you have to condemn them. You can't go "I can't compare the torturing of Iraqi prisoners to the killing of an American telecoms employee in any shape or form." Why? Both of which were documented and shown to the media. Both of which seemed to serve some kind of political purpose. But regardless of whether they were documented, you can't make judgements that "Ohhh, this is much worse than that." based on the nationality of the perpetrators, surely? That's crazy racist talk!

What I'm saying is that they will have been aware that people are looking into the abuse by American and British soldiers. They've just made the situation worse by doing this. Justice will be served on those people that carried out the attacks on the Iraqis, there's no doubt of that. The fact is they took an innocent civilian and beheaded him as an answer to the abuse and killings of Iraqi prisoners.

Alfie my point is that they videoed it and sent it to an Arabic site in order to show the World what their idea of revenge is. It's shocking that they feel this makes things even and that they are justified. Two wrongs don't make a right. I never once said I agreed with or condone the actions of the people that killed the Iraqi prisoners and civilians but this is different from the respect that they actually went out and found a US civilian, held him in captivity then videoed him as they cut his head off.

I'm sure your wishy-washy liberallism will be of great comfort to you when Pizza Hut explodes one day and kills your entire family.

How am I being liberal about this? I'm saying what both parties have done is wrong but there's a difference between taking pictures and video of people being humiliated, abused or beaten and someone having their head cut off. I think everyone knows about how badly trained the US soldiers are and to be honest I'm not surprised it's happened but that's no excuse. Neither is what the Iraqis have done as revenge.

How badly trained are the US soldiers?

Just google it.

ok killing it bad
but till this has been proven to be true - and it hasn't i will hope in my heart it isn't true

Carbonite - you say that justice will be done, but isn't this act just another form of justice?

Although it was individual american soldiers that tourtured the Iraqi prisoners, their superiors should have done something about it, and their superiors superiors, right the way up the chain of command.

An eye for an eye sucks, but it's no different to putting someone in jail for theft, that still a form of revenge, we just call it 'justice'.

Well, can't find anything on Google. were you hoping that it would throw up something to back up your simplistic contratdictory argument?

Just look at all the friendly fire incidents for a start or did you miss that while you were searching for some kind of half-baked personal insult. Even the British army comment on how badly trained they are. There's information sat on the BBC website from ex commanders from the British army talking about it.

Show me some.

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=US+army+fr...

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3691111.stm

www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/07/10...

The US forces are so badly trained...
*How badly trained are they?!*
They're so badly trained that when asked to bomb Baghdad they spent the first 14 days looking for a rapper.
*wucka wucka wucka*

*sigh*

What has any of that to do with 'Badly Trained'? (excepting Sul's excellent joke)

Shooting your allies must involve crap training somewhere, surely?

they doo seem quite good with shooting pictures ;)

Actually, they're pretty good at shooting Allies, you don't hear about near misses very often. So once again, how does this equate to crap training?

He jests?

You jest, right?

Who, Me?

well they did do a nice job of a chinese embassy once

Yes, you!

you, meaning me? ;)

Sorry mate, i thought this was one of our occasional 'lets post an idiot theory' threads and i was just playing along.

I bet the families of the British troops who died at the hands of Americans who can't tell what an allied vehicle/aircraft looks like were pretty chuffed that their sons/daughters/friends got blown up by a 'friendly' missile/bullet/shell!

You think that equates to good training? The inability to be able to tell what is friendly and what isn't?

Soldier1: Oh look it's a black hawk, only Iraqis use them let's shoot it down!
Soldier2: No wait doesn't Delta Force use them?
Soldier3: Nah dude they totally don't use Blackhawks!
Soldier1: WELL SHOOT IT THE FUCK DOWN THEN!

The difference I see in the case of this current execution, is that it was videod deliberately to be seen on the net to cause maximum outrage. The other pics were not, at least not overtly. Neither is excusable, but nor should we be surprised by them.

The whole Iraq fiasco has been handled badly, and everyone has an opinion as to how it should have been dealt with. I doubt very much that anyone would have done a better job. Different, perhaps, but not better.

I'm sure those families will be comforted by that fact that you are fighting their corner.

Carbonite: It's almost that bad - when that fighter jet that got shot down by the PAMS, something (apparently) like this happened:

(Not to scale, but you can get the jist of it)(Is it jist or gist?)

US soldiers get paid about $15,000 a year
Many are people who take a shitty job that might end up killing them. but they take it becasue it's more than they can ever hope to earn otherwise. is it any surpise things go wrong?

I wouldn't have gone.

Su - that's hardly an excuse.

Abe: K =]

no it' not
it's actually fucking scary

Yup =/

I thought the aircraft incident was because it was transmitting the wrong ident codes, or codes unknown to the anti-aircraft system.

New technology, you see, you can't trust it.

Apparently (according to the news, so could be wrong), the Soldier overrode what the PAMS was telling him.

As far as I know, planes don't need a code because it's an Anti-Missile system.

specially those computer thingys
back in the good old days it was all done with a compass and pencil

But I could be wronger than Mr. Bush senior when he said "No, let's do it without the rubber".

Perhaps not to war, but should the UN have stood by while the Iraqi population continued to get shat on by Saddam's regime? Do you think he'd have finally given in because of sanctions? I'm not saying I know the answer, but surely some kind of intervention was required.

The UN did stand by.
It was only America and Britain that barged their way in, and remember, it had nothing to do with "Saddam's Regime" until they couldn't find any big weapons...

It's so absurd how the American soldiers are seen as the ones killing our Boys with 'friendly fire', when in fact both of them were doing a bit of 'friendly firing'. Why make such an absurd distinction?

Good point about the UN: I stand corrected.

Personally, I'm not worried too much about the WMDs. I think the British and US governments' mistake was saying that was their motivation. I think they'd have got less stick if they'd said it was on humanitarian grounds, but of course a full scale invasion would be hard to justify for that reason.

I think I've just partially defeated my own argument. I think I'll go and paint something.

how about the US of A shouldn't have overthrown musaddiq back in the 1950s.

Hurray for Humanitarian War!

There seem to be a lot more US friendly fire incidents than British. Obviously there will be people shot at/shot down by their own troops, it's only natural to be easily spooked in the heat of the moment, but there are more incidents (and real big blunders like the blackhawk stuff) coming from the Yanks than there are coming from the British camp.

Whether it's because we don't report it or because proportionally we have a much smaller army, I don't know, but the truth is it happens and it's more from the US than ourselves.

WarHead blatently the UN were waiting for Saddam to die of natural causes so one of his nice young sons could take over and make everyone happy again!

i just seen the video, it is fucking horrible

HALLA!

Link it!

Does the Iraqui guy go 'Hi-Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaah'?

And then does one of them say "fatality" under his breath and the rest all giggle a little bit.

You sick fucks!

"Flawless Victory"

Do they then say amusing jokes like "What goes ha-ha-bonk? HIM!"?

RUSS, link it!

no! don't link it! its gross!
don't spread that shit around

LINK THE FUCKER!

I want to see if it's fake or not.

It's what teh interweb is for...

Ooh! Rosie - have you seen it?

Linkity-link link link!

Come on RUSS...link it!!

NO! DON'T DO IT RUSS!

Don't help spread that revolting shite all over the place..

:O

I would have hoped that Chay would back me up on this one...

:(

Anyway I'm off.

See Ya

x

Chay wasn't here, he was finishing up his last uni thing this afternoon :)

Read this if your interested in Mr Berg.

I wasn't here
my friend phil accidentally downloaded a video of a girl being hit by a train
that was baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

:/

Yea. I acidentally downloaded a video of a guy getting run over. The title was "Not funny but you still laugh". He got hit by a taxi, flew into the air and hit another car.

That was wooooooooooooooooorse :/

"He got hit by a taxi, flew into the air and hit another car."

Wasnt that what happened in Meet Joe Black? Or am I confusing reality and telly yet again.

Dunno, but a similar thing happened near me. Motorcyclist pulling out from a side road got hit side-on, and flew off into the road just in time for a car coming the opposite direction.
I walked past on my way into work about half an hour later, as they were washing the blood off the road. Fucking grim.

Yeah, he's a cunt. "ooooh this car needs to go faster, engage hooooooooooge turbochargers *whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooshsplat*.... engage windscreen wipers."

"Fucking grim."

never a good idea

yeah - meet joe black. that scene is really shocking, just because you're utterly not expecting it. great stuff

Turned out alright in the end though, eh?

I've not run anyone over yet, guys.

"He looked at it as bringing democracy to a country that didn't have it," his father told AP. "


Don't remember it personally.