Conspiracy Theory Du Jour

It seems to me perhaps more than a mere coincidence that video footage of a US soldier murdering an Iraqi prisoner is taking second place on TV news and other media because video footage has simultaneously been released showing the apparent murder of Care aid-worker Margaret Hassan. All the more coincidental because we are told that NBC sat on the marine murder video for two days.

And all the more perplexing because the murder of Margaret Hassan just doesn't make sense. She was a Western woman who had converted to Islam, married an Iraqi and spent her whole life trying to help Iraqis. There was nothing to be gained by her murder. Even Al Zarqawi called for her release.

So who killed her and why?

Has she actually been killed (the video is not, in fact, conclusive and could be a mere ruse)?

"This kind of savagery makes it almost impossible for relief agencies to continue their crucial work in Iraq," said Poul Nielson, the EU’s departing development commissioner. If aid agencies pull out, who benefits from that?

At this stage, let's remember that the US puppet ruler of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, was once sponsored by the CIA to kill innocent Iraqis in the streets, in a random bombing campaign meant to terrorize the population and thus destabilize the Hussein regime (it didn't work, but many were killed). And let's remember that John Negroponte, the de-facto ruler of Iraq, was heavily involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and the disappearance of hundreds of innocent Hondurans (cases which have never been resolved).

These are people who fervently, stubbornly believe that the end justifies the means. Unless that principle holds true, they will never be able to wash the blood from their hands. As Shakespeare's Macbeth once lamented:

I am in blood
Steeped in so far, that I should wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er...