This will be an extremely difficult topic

[anastrophe]

Warning up front: i'm going to discuss the beheadings in iraq. move on if this is disturbing to you - it sure was disturbing to me.

[anastrophe]

back in May of this year, i did what many people did who have morbid fascination - i went out on the net and found the video of Nicholas Berg being beheaded. Why? I don't know. well - as i said - it's a morbid fascination. Like people look at a car crash. who knows why we do it.

It was extremely disturbing. extremely. the video quality was poor, you could barely even make out any blood, but there was no question of what you were seeing, and it was shocking.

but here's where i may diverge from many people: i believe this video should have been widely distributed. certainly, keeping kids from seeing it would be good (god knows, a high school teacher actually showed it to a class, unbelievably - i don't know if he was fired or just reprimanded, but that was nuts). but i think it's very important that people see the video. it gives you an understanding - to the core - of just how deeply sick and twisted the islamic extremists are. they will stop at nothing. and it has nothing - and everything - to do with 'our' being in iraq. we are infidels, and infidels are not allowed in holy islamic lands. at the same time, we could be living our peaceful lives with no presence in the middle east, and i think 9/11 would still have happened. it is our way of life that they reject, and reject totally, to the level that annihilating us isn't good enough for them. this is religious intolerance at its worst. killing peaceful people in the name of god - can you imagine?

seeing the beheading video made this very, very real. we are far too sheltered by the news - everything is soft-focused, black-barred, or simply not shown, for fear of offending someone. this was something that was offensive, and deserved to be seen because of that!

for more than a month after watching the video, each night as i fell asleep, it replayed in my mind. it is that disturbing. it changed me to some degree.

[Serenity]

there was a fake beheading circulating the internet too. wonder if that was the same one.

you know.....i'm with you in the same way that i've a great respect for life.
I think we have to go one step further in this case, because we're not just dealing with an act of violence, so much as the reasons behind that act of violence. Sometimes acts no matter how gruesome, have justification. It may not seem right, but fear takes people to extreme measures.

while the person who was beheaded may be innocent himself to a higher degree then a millitary officer (depending on how you look at it), we've still got to question who's opinion holds validity.

We talk about terrorists in america, but we're terrorists to the fellas on the other side of the fence.
it seems we get mixed up in a argument over who's being the bad guy.

Let's deal with the facts. Our presence in the east is over oil. we don't care about people lives and how their aunt sally is. we simply want the damned oil and all of it, already.
We're a people of different beliefs and values introducing only the familiarity of fear and death to the people of anti-compliance.

I'm yet to see iraqi's controlling the borders of Idaho over potatoe extraction, or farmers being beheaded over fruit in the orange state.

We've got different ideoligies then the islams. Doesn't make anyone more so correct then another. fact is, if you want to try and play "keep-away" on someone else's turf then don't be surprised when the rules aren't the same.

i can't justify what the islams do, but what's to look forward to when you're informed you can give up the only thing other then sand your country posesses...or die of course.

I would imagine that it goes a stage deeper then that too. If you're part of the saudi royals or anyone else that gets a dividend from oil production, you'd be welcoming militia control.....if you're some lesser-being being pushed by your country and some white dudes with hummers playing AC/DC sporting M-16's you're day's have got to be getting increasingly less interesting to the point where a public beheading is a last resort to get people to stop ****in around with your backyard.

[plazul]

I know that there was a lot of morbid curiosity about the beheadings and I'm not going to pass judgement on the people who sought out the videos. But I don't think Americans need to see beheadings to strenghten their resolve any more than they need to see video of rape or murder to feel moral outrage.

However, having said that, it might be good for Americans to see uncensored video of what war is really like, particularly in light of the fact that we might soon be engaged in a wider war in the Gulf. That's the ultimate in graphic violence.

[Warsai]

Originally Posted by Serenity

We talk about terrorists in america, but we're terrorists to the fellas on the other side of the fence. It seems we get mixed up in a argument over who's being the bad guy.

Well said. Everybody in America has the mentality that Islamic extremists are terrorists, but then take a look at what we've done in Iraq.

Originally Posted by Serenity

Let's deal with the facts. Our presence in the east is over oil. we don't care about people lives and how their aunt sally is. we simply want the damned oil and all of it, already.

There you have it. Our purpose in the Middle East, what it's been (Desert Storm), what it is ("Iraqi Freedom"), what it will be (Iran).

Originally Posted by Serenity

We've got different ideoligies then the islams. Doesn't make anyone more so correct then another. fact is, if you want to try and play "keep-away" on someone else's turf then don't be surprised when the rules aren't the same.

i can't justify what the islams do, but what's to look forward to when you're informed you can give up the only thing other then sand your country posesses...or die of course.

I would imagine that it goes a stage deeper then that too. If you're part of the saudi royals or anyone else that gets a dividend from oil production, you'd be welcoming militia control.....if you're some lesser-being being pushed by your country and some white dudes with hummers playing AC/DC sporting M-16's you're day's have got to be getting increasingly less interesting to the point where a public beheading is a last resort to get people to stop ****in around with your backyard.

Yes. We have different ideologies, and now that we've gone into Iraq, and killed millions, we've made them angry and afraid. Turn the tables around a minute, if an overwhelming Iraqi force came into America and murdered millions, destroyed our government, replaced a fascist dictator with another one, then what would you have done? Yes we can be angry at the Iraqis that have taken and murdered hostages, because they've taken innocent American lives. But how many innocent Iraqi lives have we taken?

[Warsai]

Originally Posted by plazul

I know that there was a lot of morbid curiosity about the beheadings and I'm not going to pass judgement on the people who sought out the videos. But I don't think Americans need to see beheadings to strenghten their resolve any more than they need to see video of rape or murder to feel moral outrage.

However, having said that, it might be good for Americans to see uncensored video of what war is really like, particularly in light of the fact that we might soon be engaged in a wider war in the Gulf. That's the ultimate in graphic violence.

This war is wrong, I would encourage any footage that comes out of Iraq. In any time of war, it is necessary for the people to see the horrors of war, to see that war is something that should happen only because it must, only as a last resort.

[jwolf7722]

i wounder why americans wanted to see the video. i still remember that day i was at work and all that was talked about was the beheading of nick ______. i think the reason americans wanted to see the video so bad over the internet is the news,talk radio stations, newspapers blew it out of the water. people get killed almost weekly at over the rine in cincinnati but they do not talk about it for days and days. it was a horrible event but there was no need for it to be discussed so much in are daily news.

[anastrophe]

warsai wrote:
and now that we've gone into Iraq, and killed millions

i think you're off by several orders of magnitude. even the most biased sources state the number as 'possibly ten to thirteen thousand civilian casualties'.

obviously, one is too many.

[homer]

It's quite easy to label the perpatrators of these horrific acts as evil, sadistic, satanic scum. And they are; I've seen most of the execution videos. I was left feeling a sense of disillusionment with all things Islamic after seeing them. However, I realised that they DON'T represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims. They're doing more harm to the Muslim world than they are to the West! Due to the comteporary popularity of Islamo-facism in Western media, it's very easy to look at a simple, normal Middle Eastern man walking down the road as a potential terrorist. When in actual fact, the likelyhood of this is simply miles from the truth!

There is no doubt - these terrorists need to be finished ASAP. But there's a better way to do it then launching massive military offensives against countries, like Iraq, that have very little to do with Al Qaeda or the global jihad! By attacking Iraq, America gave these low-life butchers all the excuses they needed to carve the heads off innocent Westerners. Oh dear! 12 dead innocent Nepalese as well as countless other in Iraq. Two Frech innocents stand the chance of meeting the same fate. I'd love to become enraged with Islam over this whole horrific sharade. But I really blame that tosser George Bush. Because it's his fault.

Remember: the people of Ireland were evil terrorists 20 years ago. Not anymore though. Despite the fact that they haven't changed one iota since their days of the armalite, we love them now! Why? Because we had the decency to give them their freedom back and some sense of a future (or most of them anyway!)

The lesson to be learned here? Stop raping the Middle East. Then the terror will stop. Keep raping the Middle East in the name of "freedom" (hahaha)... and you will reap the whirlwind of the sadistic "terrorist"

Peace out.

[capt_buzzard]

I don't know what you mean by Irish Freedom? We were not slaves,as the black was in 1800s. And I don't back IRA SINN FEIN. They were certainly were not fighting on my behalf any Irish people I know. They were from Ulster in Northern Ireland,part of the United Kingdom. And long may it stay part of the UK.