Posthuman Blues

White House Grand Slam on the Nick Berg Murder

"You see, in principle we don't object to giving the photos to the media. But IN THIS SITUATION, we just can't do it. And we're sure the media don't want to be responsible for more decapitations, either."

No, I haven't seen the much-discussed decapitation footage. But I've been tracking the inevitable conspiracy memes. There's a medical doctor who doesn't think the severed neck spurts blood correctly, implying that Berg was already dead at the time of the beheading. Some think the murder was perpetrated by BushCo loyalists intent on distracting the public from the mounting evidence of widescale prison abuse.

I sincerely doubt both scenarios. But the latter almost makes sense, if you're willing to pay a passing visit to Tinfoil Hat Land. Occam's Razor suggests that we're seeing plain, imbecilic "revenge." But the timing of the beheading's release is certainly convenient ammunition for a mainstream press forced to deal with the spectacle of American troops behaving like savages. After all, these are the same troops we're constantly reminded to "support" (apparently by ensuring Bush's election).

The Berg killing helps make the Arabs look more like the popularly conceived caricature: thugs who revel in American blood. And in a perverse, subconscious way it might even help to "justify" the pointless abuses and killings doled out by occupying American forces; war supporters will seize on the Berg footage as evidence that "war is hell" and that the prison abuse should go unpunished.

The "logic" will go like this: Conditions in Iraq are so aberrant and awful that we should expect U.S. troops to lose it. Hell, those grinning men and women in uniform hooking up battery cables to Iraqi genitals are the real victims -- just look what they've been reduced to by those Arab bastards!

I fully expect to read variations on the above theme for months to come.