Gya: American-killing terrorists are dissidents

The day after the story of Nick Berg broke in the international press, Guyana's Stabroek News ignores the whole kerfuffle and remains focused on alleged U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Nick Berg? Not a word about him.

The story gives a nod to the "deep religious sensitivities" of the Mid East without explaining how such "deep religious sensitivities" can accommodate homicide bombings, torture, rape and abuse of women, "honor" killings, and other such Mid Eastern delights.

Moreover, the writer proceeds to imply that U.S. soldiers slaughtered children and women without indicating that, in battle, Islamic mufsidoon (same as mujahideen in this quarter), too scared to fight like real men, are fond of using women and children as shields and shooting them in the back just so the opposing forces will be blamed for Islamic atrocities.

Unfazed, the writer moves on to discuss "abuse" at Guantanamo, totally ignoring the Afghans who gained weight from it and thought it was the best "abuse" they'd ever had, and the Russian mothers who have begged the U.S. to keep their sons in Guantanamo and "abuse" them some more. To top it off, he draws a parallel between the Bush administration and the Castro dictatorship, noting the irony of Cuba being "accused of jailing dissidents without fair trial." The bad, evil United States to so treat men who dissent from their government policies.

Again, entirely absent is any sense that the U.S. was the victim of Islamic terrorism, once again; that the men in Gitmo are not U.S. citizens imprisoned for policy differences -- as is the case with the Caribbean hero Castro -- but are mufsidoon who were taken on the field of battle, and who would have been happy to take the battle to the U.S. had they not been checked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Oh yes, no tinge of reality is allowed to impinge on the media's certainty that the U.S. is a brutal and evil giant whose mildest abuses are comparable to the worst atrocities of the world's worst dictators.