[antimedia] antimedia: If you have seen the video....

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Posted by antimedia:
If you have seen the video....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1147147264.shtml


   ....of the murder of Nicholas Berg, then [1]this story will not be
   news to you. But if you, like many, continue to deny the brutality of
   the enemy, perhaps this story will finally rouse you from your stupor.

     Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed
     to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was
     willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been
     shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.
     We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was
     stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly
     so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from
     men other than her father and brother.
     Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the
     shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the
     television cameras must have been removed at some point â it is
     nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone
     who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in
     mortal terror.
     By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been
     blindfolded with a white bandage.
     It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left
     side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of
     what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about
     to be inflicted is unclear.
     Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she
     covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraqâs
     descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution
     embodies the depths of the countryâs depravity after three years of
     war.
     A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches
     from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right
     hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in
     blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from
     side to side.
     Her cries â âAh, ah, ahâ â can be heard above the âAllahu akbarâ
     (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.
     Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner
     suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark
     T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her
     abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood
     from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.
     Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks
     off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and
     perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a
     grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.
     The voice of one of the Arab worldâs most highly regarded and
     outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

   Imagine that was your wife -- or your daughter -- then tell me this
   war isn't worth fighting -- that the Iraqis are not worth dying for --
   that these men would never threaten you.
   This story could be told thousands of times in Iraq. For these are the
   men that Saddam loosed on his country -- the same men who call
   themselves "Al Qaeda", who claim God's sanction on their cold
   brutality -- who insist they are doing Allah's work as they slaughter
   human beings like cattle.
   These men are Ghengis Khan and Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot and Slobodan
   Milosovic and legions more throughout history -- men for whom your
   life means nothing and intimidation through slaughter is their modus
   operandi -- who laugh at death and sneer at negotiation as the resort
   of weak men who can and will be dominated by their power and
   ruthlessness.
   You ignore them at your peril.

References

   1. http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/004507.html