Posted on 05/13/2004 2:05:20 PM PDT by kcvl
Wow!
Nick Berg: 'Iraqi police thought I was an Israeli spy'
The Daily Telegraph reports Nick Berg, the US civilian decapitated on video by Islamic militants in Iraq, told friends in Baghdad that he had been arrested and detained in Mosul because Iraqi police thought he was an Israeli spy. The Telegraph also reports that Mr. Berg told friends that a few hours after he was arrested by Iraqi police, he was transferred to a US military facility, where he was in a cell with Syrian and Iranian fighters. Both the Telegraph and CNN quote Hugo Infante, a Chilean photographer, who saw Berg on April 6, shortly after he had returned to Baghdad after being released from detention.
"Nick told me, 'Iraqi police caught me one night, they saw my passport and my Jewish last name and my Israeli stamp. This guy thought I was a spy so they put me with American soldiers and American soldiers put me in a jail for two weeks.' ... He wasn't mad. It was just an adventure for him. He said, 'This s**t happens. It was bad luck'."
The Chicago Tribune reports that Berg's friends also said he had traveled to the area lugging electronic equipment, hoping to find "lucrative work on telecommunications systems." The electronic equipment may have added to the impression that he was conducting "suspicious activities," as Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, described them Wednesday.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Berg's murder has the potential to provide US President George Bush with "a little breathing room," as his administration reels from the continuing fallout from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. But the White House's bid to turn attention away from the photos and videos showing US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners has been complicated by the reaction of Berg's family to his death and the role they believed the US played in it.
The White House seems to be locked into a very public clash with the family and friends of Berg over the details surrounding his detention in Mosul in the weeks leading up to his abduction and death. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that US officials in Washington said that Berg had been visited by the FBI three times during his detention, but that he was never held by US forces. The officials say he was held by Iraqi police, contrary to what his family has been saying.
Berg's family angrily denied the claims.
"The Iraqi police do not tell the FBI what to do, the FBI tells the Iraqi police what to do. Who do they think they’re kidding?" Berg’s father, Michael, told The Associated Press from his home in West Chester, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb.
Military officials acknowleged that the US is the ultimate authority in Iraq, including over the Iraqi police. But Bloomberg News reports Thursday that Iraqi police are now denying US assertions that they detained Berg. "The Iraqi police never arrested the slain American," Mosul's police chief, Major General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi said. "Such reports are baseless."
FBI officials also say that after his detention, the State Department offered Berg a plane flight from Baghdad to Jordan, but he declined it. His father said his son e-mailed him that he didn't want to travel to the airport because he believed it was too dangerous. American soldiers refer to the airport highway as "RPG Alley" because of frequent attacks by insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades. Berg's family says he had arranged to leave Iraq on March 30, but his 13-day detention prevented him from doing so.
Delaware Online reports that US Rep. Jim Gerlach (R) of Pennsylvania, whose office had been working with the Berg family to get their son released from detention, said he had trouble getting information from US officials after Berg was arrested. The State Department told Gerlach's office that Berg needed to sign a release waiving his privacy rights before they could provide any information, Gerlach said. "That privacy release was not signed, so we could not find out a lot," he said.
"At this point I need to know more facts," Gerlach said. "If the US had any control or authority, Nick should have been accorded all civil rights that any American citizen should have," he said. "Why was he not given permission to make phone calls? To have counsel? Why was he detained for 13 days?" Gerlach asked.
Several other interesting twists have also arisen in this story. Nick Berg and his father, Michael, had strongly differing opinions about the war (a posting on a right-wing website had labeled Michael Berg as an "enemy" of the US because he signed a petition supporting the "Global Day of Action" held on March 20 to protest war in Iraq). Also, Berg's deceased aunt had been married to an Iraqi. The Associated Press reports that Berg had visited Mosul on an earlier occasion to see his aunt's husband's family.
Meanwhile, the man who was given credit for Berg's death on the videotape of his execution, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, has become so dangerous he may eclipse Osama bin Laden as the person posing the greatest danger to the US and its allies. The New York Post reports that Mr. Zarqawi has decided to use Iraq as the "theater" for his war against the West.
"He is clearly the most active terrorist in the world right now, and what you are seeing is a rise in his stature as well as a rise in his ego," said Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Bin Laden and Zawahiri are hiding out in caves in Waziristan [northwestern Pakistan], so he is going for spectacular operations to seize the spotlight. This is a man who is committed to the utopian vision of the demise of the West and the rise of a radical Islamic world, and he sees Iraq as the main theater of operations to accomplish that goal."
But Zarqawi's rise to the top didn't have to happen, according to a report aired by NBC news in early March. During a seven month period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the US had at least three very good chances to kill Zarqawi while he was at a terrorist camp in northern Iraq. Although the Pentagon favored the attacks, the White House decided against going after Zarqawi for fear it would undercut its case for the war. Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was the only evidence of any kind that the Bush administration had to prove its claim that Al Qaeda and Iraq were working together.
"People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists," according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
The US finally did attack the northern Iraq camps at the start of the war, but by then Zarqawi and his supporters had left, according to the NBC report.
Finally, Farhad Manjoo writes in Salon how the advent and accessibility of modern technology, such as digital cameras, e-mail, and the Web, which is "in the hands of our soldiers and our enemies" mean it is increasingly impossible for us to avoid the "gruesome realities" of war, whether they happen in Abu Ghraib prison, or in an Al Qaeda hideout somewhere in Iraq.
Dog, feinsweinsucksass (LOL at the name) corrected me on that mistake. It was the picture of a professor that was killed earler, but Diogenesis included it in his collage presentation yesterday and I mistakenly thought it was Berg.
Meanwhile, the family said Berg had been questioned by the FBI more than a year ago about a contact he had with a terrorism suspect in 1999, while he was a student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
Some reports have said the suspect may have been Sept. 11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, but David Berg said that is not true. Nicholas Berg only went to school there in 1999; Moussaoui enrolled in a flight school in Norman in February 2001.
Michael Berg told reporters Thursday that his son was cleared of any wrongdoing. He said Nicholas Berg met the suspect while riding the bus to classes, and had allowed the suspect to use his computer.
It was believed
I offer up special prayers for Pfc. Keith Maupin daily.
I looked too, but he supposedly
changed dramatically during the
Africa trip. And stayed that way.
I couldn't say about being shorter
from my looksee.
Skull shape? Are you perhaps an
Anthropologist? Seems like a few
notable changes such as weight,
hair, beard, shadowy video, etc.
could combine to make it SEEM
as you say.
Everyone...U.S. officials, Pres.
Bush, the media, the entire family
& friends etc. say Nick Berg died
in Irag of beheading by terrorists
but you say not so?
What do YOU think?
Don't you think the Berg family would know if that was not their son in the video? Sheesh!
I know a little about the radio tower business. I know that you don't go to a foreign country on your own (by yourself without a full support staff) and try to get business building radio towers in a war torn foreign country.
You would have to have connections on the ground, you would have to know the local people. You would have to know where to get materials and experienced laborers. Building a radio tower requires the use of heavy equipment and cranes and people who are not afraid of heights and are trained in this most dangerous business. You don't get that by calling up people in the white pages in Baghdad, especially when there are very few phones to begin with.
All I can say is that if Mr. Berg were in Iraq by himself, then he was most likely not freelancing to try to land contracts to build radio towers. IMO, that would have had to have been a front for some other activities.
Certainly there are a lot of freelancers in Iraq. But they do not operate by themselves. They operate in teams. Big teams. Complete with security guards and local connections. Berg didn't appear to have any of that. I'm not even sure he spoke the local language. Who was he trying to get these contracts with? Inquiring minds want to know.
The info comes from the father who is an anti-war Commie and blames Bush for his son's death. (I was thinking yesterday that Michael Berg is like the fifth "Jersey Girl").
Another thing I thought of ... Remember when Anita Hill's allegations against Clarence Thomas first surfaced. The media spin was that Anita Hill could have no political reason to accuse Thomas of [fill in the blank], because she was a "Reagan Republican."
Then we find out, way after the fact, that she wasn't a Reagan Republican at all, but an opportunistic pro-abortion Democrat.
Why should we believe *anything* Michael Berg, the "Jersey Girl", says?
Thanks. It was posted on another thread as Berg.
I read the same posts, they seem to be a classic case of "coincidence inflation"...not a scrap of actual evidence or media reports that anyone was Berg's "roommate."
WE aren't saying it isn't Berg, we are questioning why he had lost so much weight and appeared so much smaller with dark hair and beard, when in photos from Phila before Iraq he was larger, much heavier, appeared taller and light hair...he wasn't in captivity long enough to lose 40 lbs...or maybe he just didn't like food in Iraq and lost it durin his overall stay. One person mentioned he was looked smaller boned and shorter than berg's phila photo.
Don't panic we haven't gone into conspiracy mode yet.
Lets see, there's 275 million people in this country, and the guy that surfaces in Iraq and is brutally murdered on the world wide web had contact with one of the 911 terrorist, and the victims Dad is all over the news blaming Bush and Rumsfeld? This is too damn weird......
Great pic. You're right, the profile doesn't fit either.
I have a chipping hammer and am looking to construct a 25 story building by myself in Mogadishu.
I see, thanks.
So does this mean that this guy tied in with the Oklahoma city bombing and 9/11?
In criminal justice they teach their is no such thing as "coincidence"
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