So I see that Nick Berg, the guy from Philadephia whose videotaped decapitation has been in the news this week, was in fact killed not by terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda, but by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, at least according to Michael Berg, Nick's father, in this story. I guess that's possible - after all, the sword-wielders were masked and hooded, so it could have been Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for all I know.
I suppose it's the charitable thing to make allowances for the remarkably stupid things people do when grieving, but I'm not shooting for charitable today. Let's face a few facts:
Nick Berg went to Iraq, not because his country asked him to serve, but because he was trying to make a buck building and servicing cellular telephone towers, according to this story. There's nothing wrong with earning money, but let's not compare his motives with the true sacrifices our military makes every day.
Unless Nick was mentally defective, he was well aware of the risk he was taking. And in fact, he thought of being in Iraq as an adventure, according to this story.
Not only that, but the U.S. told him he should leave, and even offered him a flight home a month before he was kidnapped, but he didn't take the offer.
Does this mean Nick deserved what happened to him? Absolutely not - and if we can track down and capture Al Garzawi, the guy the CIA thinks was behind it, I hope he gets lavishly tortured before he's executed. But for Michael Berg to try to use what happened to his son as a polemic against the Bush Administration is repulsive - and no different than the right-wing crazies who personally blame Clinton for 9-11. He should be ashamed.
