Theresa at Heart Of Canada;

All those site hits on Heart of Canada coming over from Wizbang. How pleasant. Perhaps people coming here will get some perspective on why they shouldn’t watch, link to, or upload the snuff video of Nick Berg’s murder.
It’s interesting that people think watching the video or enabling others to watch it protects their freedom. You know, just because you’re free to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. You have the freedom to engage in ethical decision making and personal restraint, too, and doing so in no way compromises your freedom. In fact, deciding not to do something can be an act of freedom as much as deciding to do something might be — the freedom is in the capacity to decide. People who post the snuff video argue that everyone should have the freedom to decide on their own. Let’s explore that idea.

I couldn’t agree less.
The hosting of the video has little to do with “freedom”.
We are currently witnessing a breathtaking double standard in the media. It is not about the images. It is about the perpetrators. If it were not, there would 30 headlines about Berg in the NYT and WaPo, as there have been about prison abuse. The prison abuse story was broken in January. They reported it then, deep in their pages. There has been no new information that can be revealed by photographs, but it hasn’t stopped them from exploiting them. They weren’t concerned about the allegations of abuse, or the clamour would have started 4 months ago when the DoD announced the investigation.
It’s all about the “dirty” pictures.
a) The Berg video is not a “snuff” film. Stop minimizing its importance and misrepresenting why it was made. Snuff is created for sexual gratification. This is a taped execution, committed for political purposes, by an established group, who have take responsibility for it. Who we are at war with.
b) The argument being put forward by the media over not airing or publishing stills is shown to be lie through their endless parade of prison “porn” photographs. That the Boston Globe and others have been eager to display genuine porn and misrepresent it as American and British misconduct gives proof to that. Most of what has been released amounts to nothing more than different camera angles. This is a feeding frenzy – not responsible journalism.
c) The argument about viewers seeking the video having “honourable reasons” for seeing it is irrelevant – or equally applicable to the prison photographs. They make “prison porn” for sexual gratification too. You cannot have it both ways.
d) Dignity in death. There was no dignity in Nick Berg’s death. None was intended. He was a political sacrifice. Hiding that truth, attempting to create dignity where there is only barbarism and subhumanity is dangerous and naive.
If this were a single, isolated murder by an outraged lover or sadistic serial killer, the argument not to show the video would be sound.
In this case, it is not. This is the face of our enemy and we need to see it.

Oh, that’s still on?

With just 11 weeks to complete a full account of the worst terrorist attack in American history, the leaders of the 9/11 commission say they have had unprecedented access to classified documents – and are planning to question suspected members of Al Qaeda being held by the US government.
“We have had access to documents that nobody has ever had access to before in the Congress or investigatory committees,” said Thomas Kean, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, at a Monitor breakfast Tuesday. “We have gotten in the end every document we have requested…. We have also been able to interview every single person we requested.”

I wonder where the press is on this. Why, just a few weeks ago we were being blanketed with wall to wall criticism of the Bush administration “stonewalling” over Condi Rice’s testimony. Followed of course, by the endless replays of 7 second sound bites from her appearance.

The commission has won access to several copies of the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), the top secret intelligence report that the president and a few top officials receive each weekday morning. One such report to President Bush was declassified and released to the public.
At the breakfast, commissioner Kean said the panel has asked the White House to release a Clinton-era PDB concerning Al Qaeda for its report. The public may be surprised when the document is released, Mr. Hamilton noted. “The product of intelligence, which I think many people expect to be very precise and very accurate and very unambiguous, is anything but,” he said. “The product of intelligence raises as many questions as it answers.”

An ambiguous intelligence report about Al Queda from the Clinton era?
I can see the headline now.
On page 17.
Under the Toyota Sales Event ad.
via Drudge