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Berg's Father Demands Answers From Bush (Free Republic mentioned)
Duluth News Tribune ^ | Thursday, May 13, 2004 | Nicole Weisensee Egan

Posted on 05/13/2004 9:13:32 PM PDT by kristinn

Posted on Thu, May. 13, 2004

Berg's father demands answers from Bush BY NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - The day he buried his son, Nick Berg's father angrily lashed out at President Bush - and said he had a question for him:

"I would like to ask him if it's true that al-Qaeda offered to trade my son's life for another person," Michael Berg told a small group of reporters early Thursday morning outside his West Chester home.

"And if that is true, well, I need that information," said Berg, a self-proclaimed peace activist who has marched against the Iraq war. "I think that the people of the United States of America need to know what the fate of their sons and daughters might be in the hands of the Bush administration."

In the video showing Nick Berg's decapitation, one of the masked men read a statement that Berg had been offered in exchange for some Iraqi prisoners. U.S. officials deny that.

Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death.

"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," he said, shortly after posting a "War is not the Answer" sign on his front lawn. "The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."

Hours after his strong remarks, Michael Berg said goodbye to his son in a private burial ceremony attended only by family members. A private memorial service will be held Friday.

In other developments Thursday:

• The CIA confirmed that, according to voice analysis, terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the masked man who beheaded Nick Berg in the video that was beamed around the world on the Internet earlier this week.

• While U.S. officials continue to deny that Berg ever had been in U.S. military custody, Michael Berg produced e-mails from Beth Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq, dated April 1, that said his son was being detained by the military.

• An alternative, left-leaning blog, www.breakfornews.com, posted a story theorizing that the Iraqi police had detained Nick Berg because his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., and his father had been named on a list of "enemies" of the Iraq occupation in March.

• More information - and theories - surfaced about why the Iraqi police had detained Berg and what happened to him after he lost contact with his parents on April 9. Meanwhile, in Mosul, police chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khair al-Barhawl insisted his department had never arrested Berg and had no knowledge of the case.

• Luke Lorenz, one of Berg's best friends, got a Web site - www.nickberg.org - up and running in honor of his slain friend.

Late Wednesday, Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., sent a letter on behalf of the Berg family to Secretary of State Colin Powell seeking answers to the puzzling questions surrounding Nick Berg's final days in Iraq.

Thursday, Michael Berg addressed a number of questions that have surfaced in recent days, including why his son had refused offers by the FBI and the military to fly him home.

Berg said his son may have turned down the offer because he'd "had enough of the FBI." Payne, the U.S. consular officer, also told the family she'd try to get him on a military flight out of Baghdad, he said.

"I told my son this when I spoke to him on the telephone for the last time ever on April 9, and he said, `I don't take too seriously anything that the State Department promises,' " Berg said, just before taking off on his morning bicycle ride.

"I don't think he was doubting their sincerity but their ability in the situation. And it was only a promise for a try so that didn't give us a whole lot of confidence."

Berg also said that the FBI told the Iraqi police to hold his son after spotting him riding in a cab in Mosul late at night.

"The Iraqis arrested him," Berg said. "He was doing nothing wrong. He was not breaking the curfew. He was in a taxicab. It was late at night. They were suspicious. I don't blame them for that. What I do blame them for is detaining him for 13 days without due process."

Thursday, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that another reason that Nick Berg had been held for so long was that the FBI was checking into some contact he may have had with terrorists while he attended the University of Oklahoma.

Michael Berg said his son had attended the university and had been taking a course at a remote campus, near the airport, and had to take a bus to get there.

"Some terrorist people - which no one knew were terrorists at the time; they were just going as students - were also taking that bus," Berg said. "And someone asked him basically if he could use his computer. And he did. College kids did it all the time. And it turns out this guy was a terrorist and he used my son's e-mail address - amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to.

"He was not a friend of my son's, not even an acquaintance," Berg said. "Just a guy sitting next to him on the bus. The FBI was satisfied with that."

A senior law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Nick Berg had volunteered information about the 2002 investigation when he was detained in Iraq. The official said that an e-mail address traced to Berg had been used by an unidentified individual with purported connections to terrorism.

The investigation showed that Berg had never met the suspect individual and had not given the e-mail address to that person. Investigators concluded that Berg's e-mail address had been spread among dozens of people with links to the university.

The suspect individual appears to have been acquainted with Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaeda adherent now in federal custody and awaiting trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks, the official said.

Moussaoui attended flight school in Norman, Okla., home of the university.

Also Thursday, Michael Berg said he has been a member of International ANSWER - Act Now to Stop War & End Racism - for the past year and has participated in several anti-occupation marches. He said he planned to march on the Pentagon with the group, which is calling for Bush to bring the troops home now, on June 5.

The story on the alternative blog site theorized that information about the Bergs and the "enemies" list made its way to the FBI and, eventually, into the hands of those in Iraq who track or harass anti-war activists entering the country.

The list appeared on www.freerepublic.com, a neo-conservative, pro-war Web site, on March 7. It posted questions from an unidentified reporter from Salon.com Thursday.

Berg said his son was a supporter of Bush up until he died.

Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst, said it's clear that both liberals and conservatives are trying to use Nick Berg's gruesome death to advance their causes.

"The Right seized upon his terrible death to try to reverse the momentum of horror over prisoners being abused," he said. "They immediately seized upon that to say, `You see. These are the people we're dealing with.'

"And now the Left is trying to say he was arrested because he was harassed because of his father's anti-war ideologies," he said. "Both sides are trying to use any scrap or evidence they can to discredit the other side. This whole tragic affair has gotten caught up in the controversy over the war. And it's probably not going to end anytime soon."

The danger facing American contractors in Iraq like Nick Berg is likely to continue, said Kathryn Rosenblum, editor of the Iraq Reconstruction Report, a newsletter devoted to Iraq business prospects.

"It's an incredibly risky place," she said Thursday, estimating that 30,000 to 50,000 Americans, Iraqis and Third World nationals are working there now. She said she's aware of 60 American workers who've been killed in Iraq and a handful who are missing.

At a ceremony Thursday in Center City, former Army Specialist and POW Shoshana Johnson said that Berg's death should be a warning to all non-military personnel over there.

"Get civilians out of Iraq," she said, after accepting the Freedom Award at Citizen Crime Commission's Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.

Philadelphia Daily News staff writers Barbara Laker and Simone Weichselbaum and Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

---


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: maninthemirror; nickberg
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1 posted on 05/13/2004 9:13:33 PM PDT by kristinn
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To: doug from upland
FYI.

BTW, it was a year ago this month that ANSWER posted its statement giving unconditional support to those who ended up killing Michael Berg's son. I wonder if he knows; I wonder if he cares?

2 posted on 05/13/2004 9:17:01 PM PDT by kristinn
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To: kristinn
Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death.

That's a bizarre sentence. There has to be a typo or some similar mistake.

3 posted on 05/13/2004 9:18:57 PM PDT by 68skylark (.)
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To: kristinn
Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death. "Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," he said, shortly after posting a "War is not the Answer" sign on his front lawn. "The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."

So do you think he is speaking figuratively or that he really believes the conspiracy theory that the masked men weren't AQ?

4 posted on 05/13/2004 9:19:03 PM PDT by Born in a Rage
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To: kristinn

I feel for this family and poor Nick Berg, but to blame President Bush is a disgrace. Bush didn't take a knife and chop off Berg's head, it was our enemy an Muslim terriorist. I'm sick and tired of President Bush being made the scape-goat every time something tragic happens. Wake up Michael Berg, your son was killed by our enemy, the muslim terrorists, just like 3000 of your fellow US citizens were on 9/11/2001.


5 posted on 05/13/2004 9:19:37 PM PDT by Lucky2 ( 2004 is the year the Yankees will win the World Series and GWB will be re-elected!)
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To: kristinn

Hmmm. McGee's theory seems more possible the more you hear from the father on this. Maybe Dad should not have warned his son not to trust the state department?


6 posted on 05/13/2004 9:19:38 PM PDT by jwalburg (Maroons for Kerry)
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To: kristinn
Mr Berg is a disgrace.
His politics take precedence over his son's horrid murder.
How dare Mr. Berg state that his son died for "the sins
of POTUS and Rummy."
7 posted on 05/13/2004 9:19:55 PM PDT by onyx (Rummy's job is winning the war, not micro-managing some damn prison.)
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To: kristinn
"The administration did this"

No, Mr Berg. Al-Qaeda did this, and this is why the administration has brought war to Iraq and other countries that support these animals.

8 posted on 05/13/2004 9:20:02 PM PDT by Senator Goldwater
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To: kristinn

I don't think this guy, Micheal Berg, is playing with a full deck.


9 posted on 05/13/2004 9:20:28 PM PDT by The South Texan (The Democrat Party and the leftist (ABCCBSNBCCNN NYLATIMES)media are a criminal enterprise!)
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To: kristinn
Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death.

This man is wacked! He doesn't blame his son's murderers and only three days after news of his son's murder he politicizes it. Just makes this whole situation even fishier. Did Berg the elder dispatch Nicholas to Iraq on some dirty mission to link up with AQ?
10 posted on 05/13/2004 9:20:52 PM PDT by Rummyfan
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To: Born in a Rage
"The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."

This guys nuts.
11 posted on 05/13/2004 9:21:38 PM PDT by MamaLucci (Libs, want answers on 911? Ask Clinton why he met with Monica more than with his CIA director.)
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To: kristinn

Are we coming to the realization that some allegiances are for keeps?


12 posted on 05/13/2004 9:21:41 PM PDT by endthematrix (To enter my lane you must use your turn signal!)
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To: kristinn
"The Right seized upon his terrible death to try to reverse the momentum of horror over prisoners being abused," he said. "They immediately seized upon that to say, `You see. These are the people we're dealing with.'"

Those zany right-wingers -- they're always trying to bring a little perspective and sanity to all the anti-Americanism in the press!

13 posted on 05/13/2004 9:22:10 PM PDT by 68skylark (.)
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To: 68skylark

Maybe Nick Berg left the country and went all around the world to get away from his father!


14 posted on 05/13/2004 9:22:22 PM PDT by Born in a Rage
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To: kristinn
The list appeared on www.freerepublic.com, a neo-conservative, pro-war Web site...

NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN needs to understand one thing:

Neo-cons
Make
Better
Lovers

"WEISENSEE EGAN" is the Latin phrase for "I need a man."

15 posted on 05/13/2004 9:23:20 PM PDT by Doctor Raoul (How can they call it a "Peace March" when they unconditionally support those who kill our soldiers?)
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To: MamaLucci

You are correct!

"Liberalism is a mental illness" - Michael Savage


16 posted on 05/13/2004 9:23:24 PM PDT by TSgt (What have you done for your country today?)
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To: kristinn
An Iranian TV station stated that the CIA had Berg killed to take the prison abuse heat off of the administration.

Given Berg's father's politics, statements and association with ANSWER is it possible that Berg Senior had Berg Junior killed to put the heat on the administration? </ sarcasim (maybe)

17 posted on 05/13/2004 9:23:51 PM PDT by Jeff Gordon (LWS - Legislating While Stupid. Someone should make this illegal.)
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To: kristinn

I am sorry but Michael Berg has managed to blame everybody except the people who slaughtered his son. This man is a classic example of a person whose religion is liberalism.


18 posted on 05/13/2004 9:24:32 PM PDT by lone star annie
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To: kristinn
"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," he said,

I'd like to extend my sympathy for your loss.

Jerk.

19 posted on 05/13/2004 9:25:01 PM PDT by Wormwood (Stand! Men of the West!)
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To: kristinn
"Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death."

I understand this mans grief but WTF????

20 posted on 05/13/2004 9:26:13 PM PDT by blackbart.223
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