RIP Nick Berg

Roger Ailes (ya know, the good one) has this one right.

Nick Berg, the American contractor beheaded by Islamists in Iraq, should not be used as a political football. What happened to him is an atrocity, commited by awful, awful people who have used the torture in Abu Ghraib as an excuse and justification for their brutality. This sick act should not, and must not, be used as it was intended by the Islamists: as a further excuse to ratchet up hostilities, to "exterminate the brutes."

It should not be used to absolve Americans of having been responsible for atrocities either. When, as Atrios notes, the White House uses this crime to insist that the torture in Abu Ghraib is not all that bad, they trivialize both.

Berg should be mourned, and his killers brought to justice. Anything else would be wrong.