Above is the headline to a Reuters story. Their caption to the above photo, meanwhile, is:
A video frame grab taken from an Islamist website May 11, 2004, shows American Nick Berg as he is grabbed by one of his captors moments before he was executed. Most Baghdad residents on May 12 condemned al Qaeda’s beheading of Berg, but many said his death was just the latest atrocity in a cycle of violence that is driving them to despair. (Reuters TV/Reuters)
From the story:
Even in the Baghdad Sunni Muslim stronghold of Adhamiya, where there is fierce opposition to the occupation, many residents were appalled by the decapitation of Berg.
“We denounce this act. No-one can accept the killing of another human being in this horrible way,” said Yassir Saleh, a 30-year-old barber. But he too pointed to a tide of violence that has swept the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
“Sometimes I really can’t understand the logic of what is happening, all the violence that I could have never imagined would take place in my country,” he said.
Many Iraqis say they oppose the U.S.-led occupation but also despise insurgents whose suicide attacks, mortar strikes and bomb blasts have killed far more Iraqis than Americans.
Issa al-Khalidi, a 65-year-old pensioner sitting in one of the oldest coffeehouses in Adhamiya, also condemned the killing but looked around nervously as he did.
“It’s a brutal, inhuman act. As Muslims our religion prohibits us from committing such acts,” he said.
Of course. It’s practically obligatory to say this is every story about Islamic terror that goes out to the mass media in the West. But if only he could convince his fellow Muslims of this!
“People with their own interpretations of Islam are coming to this country and killing left and right, and the Americans are just providing them with the pretext to do so.”
But some of the city’s poorer residents said they supported the killing, arguing it was acceptable retribution for the abuses the U.S. military had committed in Iraq.
Yes. It’s only the poor who think this way, isn’t it? If only we could give them a fair shake economically, the whole problem of jihad terrorism would melt away, wouldn’t it?
Aside from this silliness, where was the Reuters story about how the vast majority of Americans, and American military personnel, condemn the Abu Ghraib abuses?