The report that abu Musab al-Zarqawi personally committed the brutal murder of Nicholas Berg raises a number of thoughts for me. The murder and the knowledge of its videotape were bad enough (I’ve seen the still photos published in the papers, but have not looked for the video or for photos showing the actual murder). Giving the murderer a name seems to make things even worse, though it’s hard to say why this should be. There are, though, some important issues that need to be raised.
First, the claim that this crime was committed in retaliation for the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is a hypocritical lie. Zarqawi is a long-standing terrorist who is happy to commit murder on any pretext or none. He’s the main suspect for the Karbala atrocity in March, and even if this isn’t proven, he’s certainly committed many other crimes. Although Zarqawi wasn’t personally responsible, the al Qaeda murder of Daniel Pearl in 2002 was almost identical to this case, and had no particular “justification” beyond the fact that Pearl, like Berg, was a Jew[1]. More generally, claims of this kind are usually a pretext for, or retrospective justification of, crimes that would have been committed anyway. Those who’ve used Zarqawi’s crimes as a justification for torture in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are little better than he is in this respect.
Second, and despite the first point, Zarqawi’s claim will come to be accepted as the truth unless the West as a whole makes a decisive break in the downward spiral we are now watching. This means taking real responsibility for the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Rumsfeld is not the only one who should lose his job over this. Lt General Ricardo Sanchez was personally responsible for authorising the use of dogs in interrogation sessions, something that could not possibly be construed as anything other than torture or the threat of it. And of course the Abu Ghraib prison itself should be evacuated and demolished. Sadly, I can’t see any of this happening. We will all pay dearly for this disaster in the future.
Third, this crime only heightens the need for an inquiry into the scandalous decision to leave Zarqawi’s terrorist outfit in peace, even though they were operating on US-controlled territory for two years before the Iraq war. Zarqawi could have been caught or killed at a tiny fraction of the economic, military and political/diplomatic cost of the decision to go after Saddam, but Bush chose not to do it. We should be told why.
fn1. I shouldn’t have to point out that this “justification” only makes the crime worse, but I will point it out anyway.
John Quiggin 
John,
As to whether General Sanchez personally approved the use of dogs, I must say I haven’t been following the emergence of the evidence with rapt attention. However, unless I’m misreading it, the ABC transcript to which you linked doesn’t actually assert positively that Sanchez himself approved the use of dogs. What it says is:
“Among the items he could approve there’s: … the use of dogs.”
Saying that he COULD approve them is not the same as saying that he did. Perhaps he did, but the mere fact that they were used doesn’t of itself prove it. If it’s true, then presumably assertions or evidence to that effect can be found elsewhere. I’m not disagreeing with the general point that command responsibility and punishment for these abuses should almost certainly extend a long way up the line from the soldiers who physically perpetrated them, but one still needs to be careful about making specific allegations of fact.
Ken, I did earlier see a report that said he had approved the actual use of dogs. But I didn’t think it was necessary to get a link saying exactly this given that:
(i) we know that use of all the other items on the list was standard operating procedure
(ii) we know that dogs were used in torture of prisoners
In any case, unless you can think of a legitimate use of dogs in interrogation, the fact that he held command in a situation where they were a known option ought to be enough to justify his resignation in the circumstances.
As Steve Sailer says, the only people who have resigned/sacked/sidelined in this admin are those who pursued public interests policy and told the truth. eg Powell, White, Lindsey, O’Neill, de Lilio, Shinseki, the Medicare guy, the EPA girl.
If you pursue private interest politics or lie then you will prosper.
But none dare call it treason.
Zarqawi is innocent!
Seems that the claim is US propaganda.They claimed recently that Z was killed in fallujah or else lost his leg or legs.The assasin is able bodied and certainly not dead.
Arab linguists claim that the voice is not his,others claim that assasins speak russian and that contractors killed berg.
It is all very fishy,be very suspicious.
Sacrifice: another iconic war image
A still from the video of the decapitation of Alan Berg, an American civilian in Iraq, purportedly carried out by