May 13, 2004 - The actions attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Tuesday should have afforded the liberals in our country an education as to what an atrocity really is. They also should have served as a chilling wake-up call. Zarqawi and his men beheaded an American hostage in Iraq by the name of Nicholas Berg. This "hostage” had people who loved him back here in the United States; family and friends. Berg went to Iraq to help rebuild that country. He wanted to make a difference for the Iraqi people. And from all accounts he was quite a guy.

Meanwhile, as film of Zarqawi and his henchmen holding Mr. Berg’s severed head up to the camera was streaming out of a militant Islamic website, Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy, Carl Levin and Robert Byrd sat pre-occupied with partisan politics, questioning Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba about the "atrocities” Iraqi enemy combatants were subjected to by a very few American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison. The actions of the guards at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison to the barbarism inflicted by those at war with the United States, namely the murder, cremation and display of four American contractors in Fallujah earlier this year and now the murder by decapitation of Nicholas Berg. So much for the Geneva Convention.

Kennedy & Co. have been playing a narcissistic game of politics with a most serious situation for far too long. Their subversion of the efforts in Iraq, a major battleground in the War on Terror, is starting to take on an almost Vietnam Era anti-war hue, a hue that Kennedy, Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry know how to employ all too well.

At almost every turn they have depicted the military action in Iraq as a quagmire, even when the victories were substantial. Kennedy has repeatedly referred to Iraq as George W. Bush’s Vietnam even though the differences between the two are stark. Perhaps the only similarity of note is that Kennedy and Kerry are again leading the anti-war movement, this time led by their lust for political power instead of ideology. The media records show they have criticized President Bush and his administration on every single aspect of the War on Terror, opportunistically, in hindsight.

The liberal-left among our elected officials have turned a collective blind eye to facts as serious as connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime and the existence of terrorists within the Iraqi borders. When Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5, 2003 he made it infinitely clear that terrorism reigned supreme in Iraq.

"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants,” Powell testified. "When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq…” *

He went on to offer proof that a regularly maintained contact between Saddam Hussein’s government and Zarqawi existed. Yet with all of this undisputed evidence the liberal-left still maintains there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. They do so to discredit the fact that Iraq was and still is a key harbor of terrorism in the world and a legitimate target in the War on Terror. They do it for political gain.

Kennedy & Co. have criticized at every step and insisted that no other reasoning was given for the actions currently being undertaken in Iraq but for the existence of weapons of mass destruction. This in the face of a plethora of treaty violations including 17 violated UN resolutions, US planes being fired on in the "No-Fly Zones” prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and genocide against his own people. All this courtesy of a nose-thumbing Saddam Hussein, "The Butcher of Baghdad.” And all mentioned by President Bush in his case to the people for going to war.

Now, while terrorists have sawed off the head of one of our countrymen while hanging others’ burnt carcasses from bridge supports, at a time when our government should be demanding action and denunciation from the Arab world, Kennedy is quoted as saying, "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers have re-opened under new management -- United States management." A more disgusting act of politicking has never been witnessed. Kennedy should be encouraged to resign and leave the political arena.

More disturbing, yet interesting nonetheless, is the silence that emanates from every corner of the Islamic community with regard to the true atrocities being perpetrated in the name of their God. Not one Arab leader, either sovereign or religious, has come forward to denounce the actions of Zarqawi and his band of thugs, not one. Al Jazeera and al Arabia, the two media mainstays in the Arab world are more worried about Saddam Hussein’s legal representation than they are about the barbarous murder of Nicholas Berg and those in Fallujah. This is evident by the fact that nothing was written about Berg even though the story is front-page news everywhere else in the world. One reason for this could be that the Arab world doesn’t find the death of an infidel newsworthy. Another reason could be that they realize Islam, their religion, is at war with the free world.

While the terrorists who perpetrated the hideous acts of barbarism against Nicholas Berg and the four American contractors in Fallujah dance with glee at these slaps to America’s face, we here in the United States need to realize the lesson of these atrocities with the intensity that a titanium bullet between the eyes would deliver. We are at war. We are at war with barbarians who wouldn’t hesitate to disembowel even the most liberal among us. It needs to be asked, do we, the American people and especially the liberal-left in this country, understand that we are at war?

The executed hostage was Nicholas Berg, an independent contractor from Philadelphia. His death needs to be our wake-up call.

[*] http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3756