Sebby, your allusive contention that US black ops killed Nick Berg for a propaganda video sounds like the tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory moonbattery crowd, whose single rule is if something bad is done by the US, it must be actually worse, but if something bad is done by anyone else, it must actually be the US who did it.  Next you'll be telling us that supersecret NAS air controllers, under presidential order, commandeered and flew those planes into the buildings on 9/11

Puh-LEEEZE!  Hatred of a man can justify only so many ludicrous assertions about a country.

I'd also like to remark to Rhino that the biases of the writer do not alter the facts of the case; two teachers showed their students the Nick Berg beheading video, and were suspended for doing so.

Leftists and "Humiliation"
By Phyllis Chesler
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13508

Given that we are under attack and at war, a certain fraying of nerves is understandable, but outright insanity is not. Lately, I have observed some fairly psychotic behavior in public places, mainly among the chattering classes, not among ordinary civilians who better understand that the terrorists mean to kill us and that appeasement is not an option.

For example, in the midst of a quiet cafe dinner, a soft-spoken artist friend suddenly began screaming: "I hate President Bush, I wish he was dead." Her face got red, and she screwed up her eyes. I was taken aback. Her rage was irrational and out of context; we had not been discussing the upcoming election or the ongoing war in Iraq. And, how could anyone be so angry, or rather so irrational, about a political figure?

Once, while lecturing in England, I found myself dining out with an anti-Apartheid activist at the very moment that Nelson Mandela was released from jail. This scholar literally climbed onto the table and roared for more than 5 full minutes. She kept pumping the air with her fist. Her voice became coarse. I could not understand such ferocity and pent-up emotion unleashed so bizarrely in public.

I can understand marshalling arguments, point by point, against a particular political policy. I can understand faulting President Bush for either not going far enough to win the war in Iraq or daring to begin that war at all--as long as the person is speaking in a reasonable, rational way. I can respect a balanced analysis--such as the recent one by Mark Helprin in the pages of the Wall Street Journal (5/17/04) in which he describes "the Democrats (as) guilty of ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and both... for subjecting the serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship."

But I cannot understand what is going on when presumably enlightened artists and scholars reduce complex realities to slogans, and create straw men against which to vent vast, irrational rage. This is precisely what frenzied Islamist mobs do when they burn the American flag and lynch and mutilate corpses of American soldiers.

The western multiculturalists insist that we have dangerously "humiliated" the Iraqi male prisoners because we put women in charge of naked men and then subjected those naked men to further humiliation by posing them in pornography-like photographs, and forcing some men to wear pink women's undergarments.

In my view, this is possibly the result of a culture saturated with runaway pornography. It is disgusting and I oppose it, but it does not compare to the be-heading of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg or to the real torture practiced by Saddam Hussein in Abu Graib and most Arab and Muslim despots against their own people.

The multiculturalists do not protest at all when male Palestinian terrorists dress as women in order to kill Israelis (which they have done at many an Israeli checkpoint). They did not condemn the Palestinian terrorists who shot and killed an eight-month pregnant Israeli woman and her four children, aged 2 to 11 at point-blank range; rather, they blamed the woman for "provoking" her own murder by living in Gaza. The multi-cultis did not cry "humiliation foul" when two other Palestinian terrorists dressed as women in order to shoot down the mourners at this poor woman's funeral.

The left-liberal Western media (heavily influenced by the Left Academy) is not behaving objectively or rationally when it not only fails to note that "pornography" is really "torture," but ardently defends the rights of pornographers and traffickers; our Talking Heads worship the First Amendment and are "sex-positive" in outlook. They do not condemn torture when Arabs or Muslims practice it, only when it is practiced, even to a much lesser extent, by America. (By the way, I oppose torture in all but the most extreme of circumstances. I am demanding that our intellectuals eschew double standards and be even-handed with their condemnations).

Something has gone very wrong in America among its Thinking Classes who hate the very country that allows them to publicly criticize its policies and who love those countries in which dissent is punished by torture and execution. Stalinism, Hitlerism, totalitarianism--long nurtured by the former Soviet Union through both the United Nations, the Arab League, and the PLO--are living and breathing among our intellectuals, academics, and left-liberal media. American intellectuals also slavishly follow the lead of their European counterparts.

As a psychologist, I must ask: are our intellectuals brainwashed? What cult has done this to them? How might they be de-programmed? Are such accomplished and privileged adults still angry at their parents, spouses, or employers or are they angry at themselves for having failed to "overthrow capitalism" in their lifetime? If so, do they think that we all deserve to die for their failure? Do they honestly believe that the jihadists will provide the socialist or feminist Paradise for which they long?

I do not think I can persuade such intellectuals to understand that their lives and ways of life are in serious danger and that self-defense is crucial; that there is nothing we can do that will "appease" Islamist rage (sacrifice Israel, retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, veil our women, allow Arab honor killings to be carried out in both Eurabia and North America).

It is clear: The terrorists have embarked on a program to kill all non-Muslim infidels--it's precisely what al-Zarquawi said on the video before he be-headed Nicholas Berg--and the danger coming our way is even greater from Muslim Indonesia.

What I can and must do is suggest--no implore--President Bush to send more troops to Iraq immediately and to use all means at our disposal to stop the Islamists in their tracks--at least for another 500 years. Otherwise, we will be annihilated.

...i'll make this brief as possible.  my best 'guess' as to some things that
have happened....

1.  9-11 was known by the bush admin...all they probably knew was that some
planes were going to be hijacked...and maybe knew or guessed they would be
flown into something.  they likely did NOT know how severe the damage would
be.

(Joe) They knew that aircraft hijackings were included in a list of terror plans upon which Al Qaeda was working, but they had no inkling of a potential target, ir even that there WAS a target (beyond the planes themselves).  Al Qaeda had not previously used aircraft as missiles; the US administration most likely surmised that any planes hijacked would subsequently be employed as leverage in an attempt to get the US to release, say, Abdul Rahman, and/or some other terrorists, or to accede to other demands.

2.  they knew this was being planned, and allowed it to happen so as to
create the perfect alibi for attacking iraq...a quick and useless
assault/food drop mission on pakistan...and then the REAL objective.

They knew that many things were being planned, but not any specifics, and, most precisely, not that this specific action was being planned.

3.  the abu-graib prison fiasco was not an expected event...and very hurtful
to our occupation and thus bush's interests.

Rather, it has been hurtful to American interests, and the interests of Iraqis, democracy, and Iraqi democracy (these being the American interests).

4.  berg beheading orchestrated by CIA ops....probably falsified a record
saying they let him out of their custody, in reality just kept him, killed
him (humanely at least) and then made this b.s. video blaming the enemy so
as to swell support not so much for our troops but our very presence there.

(Joe) Simply unbelievable.  Berg was witnessed, by acquaintances, in a Baghdad internet cafe subsequent to his release, emailing his parents (they received the email - we know this because he discussed some of the contents with his acquaintances - like his concern over accepting the US offer of a plane ride out due to his concern over the trip to the Baghdad airport via 'RPG Alley", and his decision to attempt an overland exit through Syria instead)

5.  this whole iraq situation exists primarily to create a large cash flow
for bush's good ol' boy friends and his own long term family dynasty as well
as those in the 'inner-circle'.  parallel interest might be a born-again
christian revival of the crusades. i personally dont like islam either but
there are better ways of dealing with hornet nests than wading into them
with your fists swinging. there ya go...that's what my best guess is.

I actually think that there were many reasons, but none of them have to do with oil (except on the bribed France, Germany and high-UN-official obstructionist side).  Nor do they have to do with fat contracts for Halliburton or Bechtol (who are both out of the top five US corporations in contract value, well below the 5 billion mark combined).  They have to do with:
1) Preserving the credibility of UN resolutions in spite of itself
2) Paying a debt of honor and credibility that the US owed to the democracy-desiring Iraqis who, answering to a US call, revolted in Iraq at the end of Gulf War I and actually seized 14 of 16 iraqi provinces, only to have the republican guard tank battalions that the US let out of the Kuwaiti trap drive back and slaughter a quarter million of them.
3) Preventing Saddam Hussein from attacking the US by supplying terrorist groups with WMD's.
4) Relieving the US of the financial burden of maintaining no-fly-zones without end, which the US dared not remove for fear that Saddam would go all Rwanda on the Shi'ites and Kurds the moment we tried it, and that the US would be blamed for the slaughter.
5) Ending the need for the UN sanctions the burden of which Saddam had managed to place squarely on the backs those of his own people that he was trying to kill anyway, both so he could spend the money on 50 palaces, coddling his military, paying Palestinian terrorists to blow up Iseaelis, and pursuing WMD programs, and so he could gain propaganda advantage by blaming the deaths of the intentionally neglected Shi'ites and Kurds on the Un sanctions, even though, if he had spent the oil-for-food mioney for its intended purpose, food, water and medicine could've been supplied to all of the Irasqi people, with funds left over.

...my question to you is; how do you explain all the very odd oddities
regarding the beheading video?  especially the total lack of blood.

I reviewed the video again.  Nick Berg is definitely alive and moving.  The sound track is badly matched; the 'Allahu Ackbars' and the screaming begin before Nick Berg is pushed over and the neck sawing begins.  There is a lot of blood, greatly obscured by a dark floor, and jugular spurts would've been obscured by the cap in the foreground and the feet of one jihadi, as well as by the camera angle.  Also, there is clearly blood dripping from the severed head when it is held up to the camers.

DrSebby.
"Courage...and shuffle the cards".