Samuel Butler's translation of the first line of Book I of Homer's Iliad is as follows:

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles…

Here's another example of the same line as translated by A.T. Murray:

The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus' son, Achilles…

Another; this one by Richmond Lattimore:

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus…

Here is the same line in the original Greek:

Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achileos Oulomenen,…

"Menin" is the feminine accusative of "menis"; which translated literally is "wrath". Which brings us to the translation of Robert Fagels:

Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,…

While I would prefer "wrath" to "rage", at least Fagels gets the sense right: the first word should be as it was.

Which brings me to the video. I've heard many of the arguments questioning the authenticity of the footage of Nick Berg being murdered: one captor has a gold (verboten!) ring on the wrong hand; Berg is in an orange jumper reminiscent of an American federal detainee; the picutre is jumpy and of an unaccountably poor quality; there should be more blood (!?); etc.

Reader-mail on the suspicious convenience of the video points to more salient political issues:

Right at the very moment when the moral authority upon which rests our invasion and occupation of Iraq is irretrievably capsizing we get:

1. Physical evidence of Al Queda in Iraq. There, you see? This really is the front line in the war on terror. Forget the scandal, we have serious business to attend to here.

2. Evidence that while we may have criminals, the people we're fighting are truly ruthless monsters.

3. Reassurance that no matter what further Abu Ghraib images or videos are released, well, you won't see a beheading for God's sake.

4. Something that bypasses entirely what Bush and Rumsfeld refer to as "the filter" (the media) and instantly, without warning and leaving no traces behind, delivers it's highly emotional and viscerally irrefutable message to the entire world.

5. Evidence that our enemy is growing more sophisticated. In the past Al Queda has handed VHS tapes or audio cassettes to Al Jazeera. Now apparently they have digital video cameras and internet access.

6. Something that is guaranteed to get Abu Ghraib off the front pages all over the world.

You just could not have a more perfectly scripted propaganda piece for the purposes of the Bush administration at a more crucial time. It is what the administration and its apologists continually point to when questioned about Abu Ghraib. Without it they have nothing. In an attempt to give it more force Powell actually chastised the entire arab world for not being more outraged over it.

Lastly, there are those loose ends. The sketchy narrative of US military protection to Iraqi police custody to band of masked terrorists. Berg's family insisting that we're not getting the full story.

I suppose it's natural to look skeptically (or even in outright disbelief) upon such horrors. As some dipshits have been saying,

...how do you wind up in a prison if you're just innocent and didn't do anything? […] I'm going to dispute [the] contention that we had a lot of people in [Abu Ghraib] with just no rap sheets at all, who were just picked up for no reason at all.

Indeed. How could such things happen? The Holocaust. The Trail of Tears. The Rape of Nanking. Paris Hilton. Some monstrosities are so blindingly wretched that their scope can only be comprehended piecemeal.

For me, however, the issue of the authenticity of the video is not nearly as telling as the larger context in which it exists: a cauldron of fear, despair, pain...and wrath. Like in the Iliad, wrath is the genesis of war. President Bush continues to remind us that he will "never forget the horror of September 11". To forget, forgive, or otherwise outgrow the pain of an injustice would lessen our wrath. To continue fighting, one must perpetually feed the spirit with fresh injections of rage. Of course, rage leads to rage. Attacks to counterattacks. Murder to slaughter. When I watched the video of Nick Berg being killed, while I recognized that it may be seen by some as suspicious, it nonetheless filled my eyes with water. Like September 11, it ignited a brisant flash of wrath within me; followed by a lingering residue of sadness. It's the sadness that lasts. What begins with wrath can end only in years of wandering; or maybe just a ceaseless parade of destruction.