a fathers' day statement

Michael Berg, father of beheaded American contractor in Iraq Nick Berg, has a few things to say over on LRC today, and he says it well.

...My son Nick was an independent contractor, not associated with Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed-Martin, or the U.S. military. Nick was murdered in retaliation for the atrocities committed at the Abu Ghraib prison: murders, rapes, and torture of Iraqi citizens. Though Donald Rumsfeld says he took responsibility for those atrocities, no consequences were felt by him, but they were by my son and everyone who loved him. George Bush ordered Alberto Gonzalez to rewrite definitions of torture essentially ordering these sins, and he did so with impunity. This is not the way it’s supposed to be either.

Nick was arrested by George Bush’s military without reason and then illegally detained for thirteen days. While he was in custody, the revelations of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal became public. These revelations ignited the resistance in Iraq and made it impossible for Nick to get home alive. When Nick did arrive home, it was to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, a base from which I and all other loved ones of the invisible deceased are barred. This is not the way it’s supposed to be either....