By TOM KNOTT

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 14 — We apparently are starting to forget Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American whose beheading in Iraq was posted on an al Qaeda-linked Website three days ago.

You can tell our interest in Berg is on the wane because of the news decisions of Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, who appear obsessed with the S and M photographs that emanated from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

One of our citizens, a civilian contractor, is brutally murdered by five monsters in ski masks, his severed head held aloft for the camera, and many of America’s sober-minded journalists are in a rush to resume anew the national dialogue on the naked Iraqi prisoners stacked on top of each other.

The ever-responsible pundits in the national press seemingly have a genetic incapacity to connect the dots of terrorism and the struggle in Iraq.

These enlightened souls do not seem to understand that we are at war with a group of fanatics whose thought processes stopped in the eighth century.

These nut cases are out to kill us. They are out to blow up our cities. And we do not have the luxury to sit back and feel the pain of the scum lurking in a prison in Baghdad.

But that is not the way it is going to be in this presidential election year.

We are going to discuss the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

We are going to see a correlation between the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners and the beheading of Berg, as if this explains the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

We are going to dwell on the reaction of the Arab street, as if there is something we could do to satisfy the Arab street. The Arab street was filled with rage against America long before our military liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein. It is always something with the Arab street, starting with America’s relationship with Israel.

We also are going to receive a heavy dose of Ted Kennedy’s political opportunism.

He has been getting all hot and heavy over the prison photographs, which would be almost amusing if we were not involved in the serious business of war.

Kennedy should be the last person to question the veracity of President George Bush. He should be the last person to express moral indignation in this Iraqi prisoner affair.

Kennedy still has a lot of explaining to do regarding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969.

Playboy Ted showed a lot of courage that night after driving his Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. After being unable to save the campaign worker — his claim — Kennedy waited a number of hours before reporting the incident to local authorities.

That is our statesman from Massachusetts. He is the statesman who used to have the bad habit of losing his pants in the company of various women, especially if he was hitting the sauce.

Now listen to him.

“Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers re-opened under new management — U.S. management,” he says.

Sen. Kennedy, you go right ahead and make your cheap political points at the expense of our troops in Iraq.

But please excuse them if they resent your tired-looking face. Excuse them for thinking that you are making their jobs a whole lot harder.

Kennedy, as John Kerry’s lead attack dog, has lots of Bush-hating helpers in the national press.

The beheading of an American from West Chester, Pa., is shoved aside, so we can resume our previously scheduled program, which is: Look at the poor Iraqi prisoners being mistreated.