Posted on 05/13/2004 8:35:22 PM PDT by SeenTheLight
First off, I'll get the obligatory stuff out of the way: the videotaped beheading of 26-year-old American Nicholas Berg, now believed to have been done by al-Qaida linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is truly horrifying and an outrage. It confirms that we must continue to fight the War On Terror using maximum force in any place necessary to ensure that these refugees from the Middle Ages are totally defeated.
Certainly Nicholas Berg is as innocent a victim of extreme Muslim atrocities as the 3,000 Americans killed on September 11, 2001, or the victims from the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings. But there are many questions about Berg's fateful visit to Iraq which do not square with information given by his family or the U.S. Coalition story of what exactly happened and why he was detained.
First, what has been given as Berg's college background and how he came to run a one-man communications firm seems a little strange if not outright preposterous. It was reported that Nick Berg attended four different colleges: the last was the University of Oklahoma where it is claimed he learned to install radio towers. But Berg never received a college diploma. Media reports said his one-man company was called Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. Reality check: it is virtually impossible to obtain such technical work as installing radio towers without a Professional Engineering license, let alone not having a college degree!
The first reports of his life story said that Berg supported President Bush in the War on Terror and helped install communications equipment at the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia. But his father, Michael Berg, is a member of the off-the-charts anti-war group International ANSWER (''Act Now, Stop the War, and End Racism.'') While children occasionally do not share the politics of their parents (I didn't), you have to wonder if telling the media that his kid was a Republican was something of a ruse to direct attention from Michael Berg's (and his son's) true politics.
Then there are the two 2004 trips to Iraq. While most contractors travel directly to Baghdad, Nicholas Berg instead landed in Jordan and found his way by land into Iraq. If indeed Berg was a one-man contractor installing radio towers, it would seem difficult to get any work in Iraq without (a) initially consummating commitments while still in the United States, and (b) having a link to a larger construction company such as Bechtel or (dirty word alert) Halliburton! As yet no radio towers that Nicholas Berg may have built while in Iraq on either trip have been identified.
We know that Nick Berg was bouncing around Iraq until he was detained either by Iraqi police or the U.S. Military in Mosul on March 24. I'll give his dad the benefit of the doubt here: Nicholas was definitely being detained by the coalition for any of the following suspicions:
a) He was loaded with electronics equipment, supposedly for his work on radio communications towers. Possessing sophisticated electronic gear in a war zone without producing any paperwork to prove that he is building radio towers probably set off alarm bells.
b) It was likely that Berg was on an FBI ''watch'' list. FBI agents interviewed Berg a few years ago when they were investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks because, unbeknownst to him, Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, had used his e-mail account when both were in Oklahoma. On Thursday Fox News reported that the FBI dismissed the link between Berg and Moussaoui as ''coincidental.''
c) Speaking on condition of anonymity in one media report, a U.S. official said Iraqi authorities detained Berg ''for his own protection'' because his behavior in Mosul seemed unusual for a Westerner. Plus Berg, who was Jewish, had in his possession texts that were considered ''anti-Semitic'' in tone. One of his friends has been quoted as saying that the Iraqi police thought Berg was an Israeli spy. To add insult to injury, Berg was also carrying some literature written in Farsi including a book about Iran.
d) On April 10, after he was released, Berg visited an Iraqi man who was once married to his aunt. Question: did his former uncle have political ties that caused any suspicions for the coalition?
e) Because he belongs to a far-left peace group and was known to authorities, Nicholas Berg's father likely raised a red flag and was a possible reason that the FBI visited the family in suburban Philadelphia at least three times during the 13 days that Berg was detained.
On April 5, Michael Berg filed a lawsuit alleging that his son was being held illegally in Iraq. Either Iraqi police or coalition authorities released Nicholas Berg the following day. From both his e-mails and interviews with friends, we know that Berg was moving around Iraq through April 10. It is unclear what happened next. On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon claimed that the U.S. consular extended an offer to assist Berg to depart Iraq by plane to Jordan. But according to his dad, Berg refused, believing that flying out of Baghdad airport was too dangerous and instead he wanted to try driving to Kuwait. In another published report, a friend said Berg wanted to leave by riding through Jordan. Driving in Jordan or to Kuwait when offered a plane ticket home makes no sense: since the fall of Saddam, Baghdad Airport, heavily guarded by coalition forces, is probably as safe as any place in Iraq.
Between April 10 and May 8, when his decapitated body was found hanging from an overpass in Baghdad, Nicholas Berg's whereabouts are unknown. In the rambling speech seen on the grizzly video just before he was decapitated, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicated that he could have traded Berg for hostages being held by the coalition. If true, and believing a terrorist is always a stretch, one question arises among many: why was there no announcement through Al Jazeera, similar to other hostages, that Berg was being held?
To be sure, Nicholas Berg's brutal murder is a great tragedy that has much of the nation and the civilized world outraged. Ironically, Berg's death may do what his old man doesn't want: galvanize American resolve to win the War on Terror! Perhaps amidst the haze of statements from government officials and from a father who may have a hidden political agenda, maybe we can eventually get the real story of the curious life and tragic death of Nicholas Berg.
Ira Simmons
http://www.topthecharts.net/
Good point. But if it's true, then why did the FBI leak the connection? That could blow the lid off a whole underground operation.
http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/NickBergEnemiesList.htm
You just nearly killed me I was laughing so hard. Well, let's face it. Who are we going to send over there?? I want jews who love Israel or Christian Lebanese. The Docker wearing white guys from Virginia who are generally not knowledgeable on the mideast and stick out like a sore thumb?? I think Berg is so unlikely that it works--or maybe not, he is dead, right?? I think Berg was doing something highly dangerous, perhaps trying to pretend to be a John Walker Lindh type to get close.
I find it so odd, that he attended all those colleges. That he is a technical whiz. That is father is such a public ANSWER crank--didn't Oswald pretend to be a Castroite??
What people do so publically, I take with a grain of salt!!
..''We got along splendidly,'' Berg wrote. ''We spent a few hours and I helped him establish an e-mail account.'' --snip--....
Ok, to go along with "theories", perhaps this was code meaning have met Al Qaeda, all went well, helped establish ......
If they were involved in A.N.S.W.E.R. - they probably were into subversion tactics.
..
And all they got him was an orange jump suit and a chopped neck.
This is the Left trying to shift blame--it was the Leftist media (if any American had anything to do with it, that killed Nick Berg.
Are you buying all these conspiracy theories yet? I admit that he's starting to show up like Forest Gump amazingly close to certain AQ-related events, but there are also completely plausible explanations for all this so far. It would not be suprising for a kind and idealistic kid from a wealthy US Jewish family to try and befriend Muslim or M.E. students while in college, kumbaya and all that. Idealistic kids can be quite gullible and attracted to noble causes, and he seems to have a pattern of such with his going to Africa and Iraq. Plus some of the things his dad have said seem to be taken way out of context/proportion, with a ridiculous amount of things being read into those statements. If the guy and his dad were really in on some complicated AQ plot, would his dad be so careless as to say "He was AQ's best friend?" and blow 'X' years of hard work? Actually all the parents have said and done, while quite wrong and harmful, are fully consistent with what one could expect from grieving parents in shock naturally blaming a President whom they so vehemently have opposed in the past.
What about snail mail or a common carrier?
If Berg was CIA, then G-d help us...
Nick was an expendable ignorant asset...its his father that is CIA.
His father sacraficed his son to Al Quada, within the the fallout of the prison scandal, to afford a forum in which to confirm his radical leftist leanings to ANSWER and MoveOn.
NICKS DAD IS A CIA AGENT ABOUT TO GO DEEP
The writing is on the wall...
As I have said from the beginning...to understand the son, watch the father. This story was dirty from the get go. The father also didn't waste a second of grief before attacking the Administration for his son's murder. Failed the smell test right there (add the "coincidental" email to complete the picture).
Michael Berg is an enemy of America. He is also JINO who hates Jews, supports the PLO and wants Israel to be destroyed. It was truly horrible that his son died this way (and unfortunate that it was not his wretched father instead), but if Nick was truly pro-insurgents, then the truth MUST come out. The Japanese "hostages" were ultra-left scum, and their government rightly attacked them instead of having false sympathies. Let's hear the truth.
A little off topic but wondered if any y'all caught this CIA guy on FNC, I think his name is simmons or something like that.He said torture is ok for high level AQ, says he's eaten, drank and slept with them, says he's seen them cut out tounges, gouge out eyes and cut off heads. I wonder how credible he is cuz he's an old white boy. How does one like that infiltrate AQ?
I like the way the author laid everything out. This is looking pretty bad.
Thanks for pinging me.
I know the image you are referring to. That photo is NOT, I repeat NOT of Nick Berg. It is a photo of an anonymous Iraqi casualty from the initial invasion. It has been around for some time. I don't know exactly when the image was taken, but I saw it around April 30 in a gallery of imagery from OIF.
I don't know why, maybe he was Mossad. I wonder if he went to study in Israel as a teen. That is very emotional for many jews.
The anti-semitic books he had--total ruse.
If he was their IED maker, why would they kill him?? why would they kill him if he was helping them?? There are a lot of Americans they could nab. Why would they kill someone helping them kill Americans--they wouldn't!!
If you have access to a phone, any phone, you have access to the internet. You may have to call Tel Aviv to get a server, but if you can call out, you can log on.
Too dangerous? It was good enough for Bush and Rummy, but not for this guy? Again, this story fails the smell test. what was he up to when he fell into the hands of his father's buddies???
*
Or getting run over by a D8 "Cat" Bulldozer...
Hey Lan,
check out #2 post, after you read this article...some things about Nick Berg's story don't check out. Could it be possible???
Well, remember that Oswald was supposed to be a rabid Castro loving Communist--we all know that that wasn't so. Castro hated Communists and was friends with men who had trained the Cuban freedom fighters that Kennedy left in the lurch at the Bay of Pigs. Oswald's public Red activities were purposeful.
Why would the father be so publically Red???
That's too easy!!
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