May 11, 2004
You will never see a smile like that on a liberal or a muslim fanatic unless they are killing someone or impeaching a republican.
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/
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The U.S. media is giving all-out coverage to video stills of an American named Nicholas Berg, who was decapitated by Iraqi insurgents (the original video bore the title “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American”). Barely mentioned is that Berg was arrested by U.S.-backed Iraq police forces and detained without charge by Iraqi police from around 24 March to 6 April, after being stopped at a checkpoint in Mosul. UPDATE: According to The Guardian and other sources, Berg was originally arrested by the Iraqi police but actually held for the thirteen days by U.S. military personnel.
Yes, folks, stop looking for the video and start asking how Berg got into the hands of his executioners. His own family said the U.S. military was at least partially responsible for his imprisonment. On April 5, they filed a federal suit claiming that Mr. Berg was being held illegally by the United States military in Iraq:
The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he told his parents he would come home by way of Jordan. Suzanne Berg said that the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was, but that federal officials had not been helpful. Philadelphia Inquirer
In what is becoming the motif of the Iraq Occupation, agents with the F.B.I. claim that the Iraqi police acted independently by arresting Berg in the first place. The police are yet another tier of the blame-and-denial game being played by the Pentagon and Bush Administration. The U.S. controls (or should control) the contractors and Iraqi police and needs to take responsibility for what their minions are doing in Iraq.
My heart goes out to the family of Nicholas Berg. He’s from a Philadelphia suburb near the one I grew up in. He took classes at two colleges in my old neighborhood and I could easily have passed him cutting through the campuses. I can totally empathize with his desire to see the world and maybe make it a better place by helping to rebuild Iraq.
There are questions that must be answered and the U.S. media had better start asking them:
When did the U.S.-backed Iraqi police release Berg?
Who did they release him to?
Where has Berg been for the last month?
Who are the men who decapitated Berg and who were they working for?
Who released the execution video (even hawkish blogger Andrew Sullivan can’t find the site, even Aljazeera doesn’t say where it is) and who added the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi caption?
Some of the websites questioning the Berg story are clearly those of wingnut conspiracy types. With that warning, here are some interesting links and threads:
For what it’s worth, I was contacted my a major American news organization Thursday morning. The researcher said they were asking many of the same questions and she asked if I had uncovered anything interesting. If any of my readers know of other resources, send me an email and I’ll post it here and pass it along to this news source.
The lefties are showing so much personal concern for this guy. It's almost as if he were one of their own.
I'm guessing he wouldn't last long in Philadelphia.
"Who you callin' Moffak? Moffaker!"
Doctor Raoul Castro Guevara?
Ya gotta be kiddin'!!!
Here's more, Louie. Bookmark for a lot of very interesting reading...
Ssshhhhhhhhhhh. Big mouth.
Bookmarked. BTT
Thank goodness someone is saying what I have been thinking. I really doubted anyone would hire some freelancer to do this kind of work. WHAT was this kid with radical left wing ties doing wandering about Iraq by himself?? NONE of it makes any sense to me. Interesting about the email account as well.
idiotas.
ellos son proximo gente que nosotros va necessita hacer guerra.
armas y balas amigo!
Actually I was wrong. I have documentation that Berg was hired by several firms in the US to do that work. When I posted that I was under the impression that what Berg was doing was rebuilding damaged towers, but what he was doing was reinstalling broken and stolen equipment. You can do that solo, but it is very dangerous work.
My reasearch since yesterday has convinced me that Berg had the technical expertise to do all aspects of radio transmission engineering. As far as I can tell, his engineering credentials were not fake, they were Bona Fide.
I still have a lot of questions, but at this point, I am convinced that Berg was fully capable of doing whatever job he was allegedly bidding on in Iraq.
As far as Nick Berg's "left wing" ties, they seem to go to his father and I have seen nothing that directly ties Nick Berg to any left wing radical organizations. His father is a lefty, but then when I was Berg's age, my father and I did not have the same political views. I was the socialist commie and my father was a Birch Society Right winger. But that would not have stopped him from investing time and money in a company that I owned.
Well, glad to hear we were wrong. :)
You will never see a smile like that on a liberal or a muslim fanatic unless they are killing someone or impeaching a republican.
Berg Decapitation Video: more questions
You raise some interesting points. There are a number of "dots" that don't connect regarding the story of Nick Berg and what he was doing in Iraq.
I hadn't planned on trying to look at the video of this murder. I'm not a "fainter" or anything, but I've no interest in looking at that sort of horror out of idle curiousity. But I had read a few comments here and there about things in the video that didn't add up. For example, an Arabic translator at some US university commented that the man the CIA ID's tentatively as Al-Zarqawi didn't have the sort of dialectical accent that a Jordanian would have. Someone else mentioned that there was too little blood, saying that the man shown having his head cut off with a butcher knife was either already dead or it wasa dummy or something.
My own observation: although through long speech by the terrorist, it's clearly a living man kneeling at the feet of the line of masked men, it's pretty clear to me that whatever took place duruing the camera-jerking climax of the beheading wasn't the murder of a man. I'd have to agree that if it was a real beheading we saw, it was the beheading of someone already dead.
Anyone who's lived on a farm [as opposed to the corridors of Washington or NY offices] knows what kind of muscle spasms take place when you kill a living creature with a blade to the neck. That, and the lack of arterial blood that would be pumping out by the still-beating heart, tell me that the video is staged, at least in part.
I have no real doubt that Mr. Berg is dead, and that terrorists killed him. But I am certain that we didn't see it happening in this video.
I have been in the radio communications business for over 30 years.
I have three communications sites and towers.
I am sure most anyone in this business, like myself, is scratching his head over this Berg story.
The whole story is so full of holes that it makes zero sense.
Was Berg a radio man or a tower man?
Where is his staff of tower workers?
Where did he get his supplies?
What type of tower did he erect?
What WAS his expertise?
Where was his base of operation and all of his equipment?
My guess is that Berg was some delusional nutcase who, at best, could have hitched a deal with one of the big contractors, but even then, he would not likely be anymore
then a technical worker.
I have many friends that over the past 25 years have been to the middle east with companies like G.E (now Erikson), Harris, and Motorola.
Even in a non war zone, this work is done by BIG companies with BIG contracts, and many people.
Of course, we get all our information from the media, and we know that's worth about as much as spit.
Do you understand that there is a G-d who acts in ways far more subtle than any conspiracy that might be imagined.
IMO
The fact that #20 used an email account of Berg's is a lark.
Schools are NOTORIOUS for lax security.
It is SOP for schools to neglect to remove accounts from former students.
I know people who are amazed to discover that they still have email accounts at schools they attended 8-10 years ago!!!
This is VERY common.
_IF_ Nicholas Berg was no longer in attendance, it was not his responsibility to protect his email account.
How many email accounts did #20 use?
Was Nicholas Berg's account one of many used???
Is this data being quoted OUT OF CONTEXT?
If Nicholas Berg was criminally complicit in lending his account info to #20, THAT would likely null any benifit.
How many Freepers post account and password info so that others can view news stories???
Nicholas Berg may have treated his old email account in a similar manner. A poor choice, but not evil.
It is trivial to get 'someones' account info on any campus.
Anyone with a web page that allows scripts to run can collect more account info that they will ever need.
Suppose I wrote a troll post of some sort as a ruse.
In that post I mention a web site.
Many of the eyes on the post will check it out.
Of those some would sign up for a FREE account useing their favorite name and password. If they ALSO include an email address it is quite LIKELY that I could gain controll of their email! I could still find many of the others just by trying the top 10 or so ISP's. Some might even be valid Freerepublic accounts!
My point is,,,
It is easy to 'social engineer' around security.
Does that make the victim evil?
I have never given any personal passwords to anyone ever.
I know many who do not share my anal attitude regarding security. Pre 9/11 I was just an odd paranoid zealot.
I'm still paranoid, but I am not in the zealot minority any longer.
To date, the only thing that I have read about Nicholas Berg that makes me go 'hmmmm' is the fact that he appears to enjoy/tolerate the company of muzzlums.
This is a reflection of _MY_ personal belief system, not Nicholas Berg! (sad but true)
A classic case of wholesale condemnation prior to investigation on my part. Non evil muzzies may in fact exist.
He may have been the type to look FIRST for the good things in ALL people. Being a fool is not evil.
On another note;
I think it prudent to seperate Nicholas from his father.
Nick did! (as per what I have read so far)
The first quote out of the father, before he was contacted by the dims, before being notified ON CAMERA about the 'graphic' details, before the media went 24/7, is where I place my bets.
He was quoted as speaking directly about Nick and what Nick believed. Later quotes reflect the fathers painful spin.
Do 4 dots on a paper in a square pattern demand that a square is the only shape that crosses through all the dots?
Answer: No.
A circle will connect them in the exact same order with a single curved line instead of 4 straight line segments, a triangle works too. The possibilities are endless.
Apply Occams razor.
I have no idea if he was complicit in his own demise.
It is NOT the most likely scenario IMneverHO.
Travis, re your post #2 on this thread: pure speculation, of course, but perhaps not too far from the truth.
He was a joint exhibitor with Harris and the FCC and a bunch of other big name radio companies last year at the Pennsylvania association of broadcasters:
He apparently invented a way to build a communications tower in a remote location with made-on-site interlocking concrete blocks and is seen showing it off above. Apparently he was both a radio and a tower man. He was apparently fearless, which probably led to his demise.
"You can make these blocks on site so you can build a tower in a remote location."
I find it hard to believe that one can truck in the materials, equipment, and labor to build a concrete tower, weighing many tons, as opposed to sending in pre made 10 or 20 foot tower sections. This would be hard enough in an urban area. How would you do it in a remote area, or on the top of a mountain?
I have put up 200 foot towers in less then one day, trucked in on a pickup truck , using just 4 people.
Re your interesting post #60, the name of the "company" is not just Prometheus, but Prometheus METHODS. An odd formulation for the name of any company. What are "Prometheus methods?"
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