I'd like to show you what's wrong with America and our modern-day, limp-wristed sense of justice.

Take Nick Berg, for example. Remember him? Yeah, the white guy who got his head taken off in Iraq. Uh... the bearded white guy? You don't remember him? He had a baseball card collection when he was 15? His favorite color was green? You still don't remember!?

Probably because the savages in Iraq are cutting off heads all the time lately- it's enough to make one forget- but back in the day, Nick Berg was one of the first high profile head losers.

Here's how poor headless Nick's father is dealing with the situation. My observations are in red:

PHILADELPHIA - Michael Berg has forgiven his son's killers. It doesn't mean he's not angry. He still hates their actions. He still wants justice.

First off, as cold as this will sound, I have no respect for this guy. Your kid's head got cut off- I saw the video- and he has forgiven the cocksuckers who did it?! Give me a break!

What it means, he told an audience recently in an Oklahoma City church, is that he doesn't seek vengeance.

"I am a man of peace," he said, although clearly not always at peace. "I beseech others at every opportunity to be the same. I cannot accomplish my goal with hatred in my heart."

And what is your goal, sir? I'm very sorry about what happened to your son but somehow I don't think "life in prison" will inspire that much fear in the hearts of animals who are willing to DIE for their religion. If they're willing to DIE, do you really think LIFE in prison would bother them?

It has been a year of searingly painful anniversaries for Berg:

The day his son, Nick, returned to Iraq to repair communications towers.

The day Nick was detained.

The day they last talked.

The day Nick checked out of his Baghdad hotel, telling the clerk, "Inshallah (God willing), I'll be back."

And then, that horrific day when the phone rang . . .

In an act that shocked the world, Nick had been abducted and beheaded. His body was found May 8, 2004, near a Baghdad highway overpass. Even more unthinkable, his killers posted a ghastly video on the Internet.

I watched the video again tonight, just to refresh my memory.The sick fanatics who cut Nick's head off scream louder than he does. Seriously, when they first start sawing away at his neck, one of the guys lets out a feminine scream that would make Mariah Carey feel like Springsteen. And don't think it's easy to cut a head off, because it's not. They saw at the neck for quite a while.

Cutting the necks of infidels = hard work!

Watch for yourself, kids!

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/berg_killing.wmv

But it has also been a year of epiphanies that have both salved the unending ache of Michael Berg's loss and driven his need - his compulsion, perhaps - to act, to speak out.

Just weeks ago, in Oklahoma City, he took part in a 10th-anniversary commemoration of the bombing of the federal building.

Along with survivors of that act of destruction, plus those who had lost family in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and others affected by acts of terror, he spoke about forgiveness.

He had taken a class at Immaculata University. The brochure came in the mail to his home in West Chester, Pa., and he had flipped through it, looking for an art class.

A single word caught his eye: Forgiveness. The subtitle: "The way to love in a wounded world." Berg knew he had to take that class.

Within the first five minutes, "I began to find words to express things that, up until that time, had just caused turmoil," Berg said.

Only one word you should have thought of: revenge. Fuck that class and fuck your forgiveness. No offense.

Now he stood in an Oklahoma church and told the audience he didn't want vengeance. He just wanted the killers "removed from society" - jailed.

He was surprised when a woman objected. She said warehousing people wasn't right and didn't fix anything. Then and there, Michael Berg began to rethink the matter of justice.

What did he want?

Every day, everywhere, Michael Berg wears his uniform: jeans, an antiwar T-shirt and the same antiwar button he has worn since the day Nick died. It says, "Stop the War on Iraq."

Virtually every weekend since Nick's death - he can't bring himself to say "beheaded," so he says "the B word" - he goes to a peace rally, a vigil, a march.

It wasn't the 'B word' that they did to your son, sir, although I'm sure it's easier to 'forgive' the people who did it when you use sanitized abbreviations like that. They sawed his fucking head off as he died. Your son died with no head. Forgive the cocksuckers all you want, but that's what happened.

A retired 60-year-old teacher, he has been to England, to France, to South Korea. He demonstrated before the national political conventions last summer and at President Bush's inauguration. He was outside Fort Bragg, N.C., on the second anniversary of the Iraq war.

Every Saturday he is not someplace else, he is at the weekly Chester County Peace Movement demonstration at the courthouse in West Chester.

"He's a hero to a lot of us," said the movement's founder, Karen Porter. He has "experienced the tragedy of war in a personal way" and is still able to share with other people.

I know this is politically incorrect to ask, but how is Mr. Berg a hero? He doesn't come off as a hero, he comes off as a limp-wristed Iraq apologist. If I got my head cut off and my father forgave the guys who did it, I'd come back as a fucking ghost and cut my dad's head off myself.

Always, he meets people, other victims, from whom he can draw inspiration. He now inhabits a circle of people he considers "injured" by war and terrorism - emotionally, if not bodily.

They speak the same language. They can accept a man's grief. "When we get together, no one's worried about tears," he said.

His wife, Suzanne, and their two children have been adamant about their need to grieve in private. Berg has felt compelled to speak out.

"We of the peace movement are pretty much totally ineffective" as far as stopping the war, he said. But he will keep at it.

"We'll be there when the rest of the world wakes up."

The rest of the world will not wake up, because there's nothing to wake up from.

That night in Oklahoma, as Berg thought about the woman's comment about justice, he had an idea.

Many of Berg's friends and family, heartsick and enraged, wanted the ultimate revenge.

Like they should have.

Berg never did, "not from the first minute."

Part of him felt guilty, even disloyal or unpatriotic, for that.

For good reason.

But he also thought about how Nick's killers said his death was retaliation for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib. If Berg insisted on retaliation himself, wouldn't he be just like them? Wouldn't he be condoning the concept?

"That would say, 'Yeah, you were right to kill Nick.' And I couldn't say that."

Since reasoning like that always works.

But Berg still needed justice. If not jail, what would it be?

Another Oklahoma speaker was the Rev. Michael Lapsley, who fought apartheid in South Africa. He lost his hands and an eye to a letter bomb. He said he would want the bomber to work in a hospital, caring for people with similar injuries.

Berg was moved. The next day he told a different audience that he would want the man who killed his son to spend 50 years caring for amputees in Iraqi hospitals. "And the American politicians who are responsible, I would like to see deprived of their power."

I KNEW it. Now you're coming out into the open with your real self-hate as a civilized member of Western society. It's not the fault of the Iraqi guys who SAWED YOUR SONS HEAD OFF WHILE HE WAS STILL ALIVE, it's the fault of American politicians. No offense, Mr. Berg, but you are an idiot.

Many found his willingness to forgive - his need to forgive - deeply moving.

I find it self-absorbed and politically motivated.

"The thing I really like about Michael is he has remained open to new ideas and new ways of dealing with his son's murder," said David Potorti, co-director of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, who helped organize the Oklahoma events.

It is an evolving process.

Now, a few weeks later, Berg has decided that Bush - whom he holds ultimately responsible - should run an "exchange people" program. Every year, families from across America would trade places with families from around the globe.

Bush is ultimately responsible!? Our soldiers pose naked Iraqi soldiers in funny positions and that's torture... yet your son got his head sawed off. That's equal?

"We would all get to know each other a lot better," Berg said, "and get to see that we're all the same."

Yeah, that's going to happen. Very realistic.

Today, in private, Michael and Suzanne Berg plan to follow the Jewish tradition of unveiling Nick's tombstone. Then Michael Berg's quest for peace, justice and forgiveness will continue.

"I learned that forgiveness is like quitting smoking cigarettes," he said in Oklahoma. "Sometimes, the evil gets to you, and you have to quit all over again.

"Sometimes, you have to forgive over and over again."

Yeah, since forgiveness worked so well for the Jews in the 40's.

I'm sorry your son got his head cut off with a blunt machete by animals, Mr. Berg, but your ignorant idealism will only allow animals like that to continue to thrive.