Earlier I had posted a link to some guy who claimed that Berg's murder was actually orchestrated by americans. I sarcastically made the comment of "everything you read on the internet must be true", because the "evidence" he presented was very weak.
Since then I've come across numerous others who have analyzed and questioned the video. I haven't come to any conclusions, but certainly doubts have been raised in my mind. I think this goes beyond conspiracy theory, and the following article gives plausible explanations for things like "Why was he in that orange jumpsuit? Why is there hours of discrepency in the footage times?" etc.
http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html
In my mind, the biggest thing against these theories is: Even if some covert arm of the govt were capable of such horror, would americans ever take such a big risk given the repercussions of the truth coming out? And if they did, would they not polish this video to such an extent that it could not be so easily broken down by armchair analysts? At the same time, there's no question that the government has done a lot of duping of the public even in the context of this war, so I don't have very much confidence in their integrity either.
Slightly more conspiracy theorist, but brings up some valid points, including the fact that the US admitted to having him in custody just prior to his death:
------------------------
Everything was going South deservedly so and the Bush Administration needed help.
Enter poor Nick Berg.
Nick Berg was a telecommunications contractor who went into Iraq to "help". But he and his family were not unknown to US authorities.
On March 7, 2004, an 'enemies' list of anti-war groups and individuals was posted on the Free Republic.
Among those listed was this entry: "Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc." That's Nick Berg's father, Michael who acts as business manager for his son in their family radio communications firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
Just days after "Michael Berg" and "Prometheus Methods Tower Service" had come up on that Iraq war 'enemies' list, his son Nick Berg returned to Iraq under the business name of Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
Nick was detained, first by Iraqi police, then for 13 days by the United States military in Iraq. He was in US custody and admittedly questioned by the FBI 3 separate times. They would not release him nor press charges nor let him speak to an attorney.
He was a "terrorist sympathizer" and detained in a US orange jumpsuit (like those in Guantanamo) and put in a cell with Syrians and Iraqis.
Yet they now claim Nick Berg was NEVER in US custody. Oh really?
To back its claims that Berg was in U.S. custody, the family gave The Associated Press copies of e-mails from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq.
"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly,'' Payne wrote to Berg's father, Michael, on April 1. Payne repeated that Berg was "being detained by the U.S. military'' in an e-mail the same day to Berg's mother, Suzanne.
Frustrated by their inability to find out about their son's whereabouts, The Berg's filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia on April 5 asserting that their son was being held by the American military in violation of his civil rights.
"His parents contacted our office, the F.B.I., the State Department," said Representative Jim Gerlach, a Republican from Upper Uwchlan Township in Pennsylvania.
Representative Gerlach met with the Berg family on Tuesday. "They got very insufficient information,'' he said. "They felt that they were not getting full answers."
Nick Berg's father, Michael Berg was publicly furious, "I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing has caused," he said. "I don't think this administration is committed to democracy."
The Berg's filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia on April 5. A day later, Nick Berg was released. He contacted his parents and told them that he was coming home. The following day he checked out of his hotel in Baghdad, and disappeared.
At the height of the US torture scandal, Nick Berg's body was "discovered" on Saturday May 8, having reportedly been decapitated the same day by muslim radicals specifically Al Queda.
And, almost miraculously, a video appears worldwide showing "Al Queda" in possession of Mr. Berg (somehow still wearing his orange jumpsuit) at which time he is supposedly beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi whom Americans claim is Al Queda's lead man in Iraq. Not only does Al Queda record the video, but Zarqawi's name and "signature" appear on it.
Convenient? Oh, and how.
Yet there are many problems with this explanation.
Long ago, when trying to tie Al Queda with Iraq, Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi was fitted with a prosthetic leg in a Baghdad hospital (which, at the time, was touted as being a major indication of a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein).
Yet the killer in the video walks and moves around with both legs just fine. Zarqawi could not be the killer. So why would all the killers wear hoods to hide their identity, and then sign the video with their own name and call themselves Al Queda?
It never happened. As reported both by the London Telegraph and CNN (CNN Transcript) :
O'BRIEN: Interesting. All right, now one final thought here. You did a very careful translation of your own, of the statement. And in it, you see no reference to al Qaeda. And yet the official U.S. government translation does. Explain how that happened.
NASR: Oh, I find it very interesting, because out of the blue, there is a mention of al Qaeda on the U.S. government translation. It says: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" Any speaker of the Arabic language is going to notice a difference between the word al Qaeda, which means "the base," and al qaed, which means "the one sitting, doing nothing."
My translation says: "Is there any excuse for the one who sits down and does nothing?" Basically they're telling people, you have no excuse for not doing anything, for not acting and defending Islam and so forth. Whereas the U.S. government translation adds al Qaeda to the statement, which is not on the statement.
But it gets much, much worse.
The Berg video is a montage of two separate videos taken from two cameras. This is apparent from the time in the lower right-hand corner, which changes as the angle of the shot changes.
Notice on the right that Berg's head has been cut off at 13:47:49 (1:47) yet on the picture on the left, at 2:44 nearly an hour later he is sitting with his head intact!
In the video shown all over the world, the man in the middle (wearing all black) is the one who beheads Mr. Berg, but immediately when the head is held up, suddenly it changes to the man in the white mask.
Additionally, the audio is 7 seconds off from the video.
So what, you say?
So let's see, an American who is considered an enemy of the US war suddenly is taken prisoner in Iraq, which the US denies, until his family produces e-mails from the US office in Iraq and sues and then he is miraculously released though supposedly he wasn't in custody. Can the government ever tell the truth?
Then he disappears and resurfaces only as the US is in dire need of an incident to try to put to rest the coverage of their torture in Iraq.
Suddenly, a US enemy-of-the-state ends up in Al Queda's hands and not just their hands but the leaderships who signs a video saying he killed him though the guy who supposedly kills him has a prosthetic leg and the guy in the video clearly doesn't.
Then it's released all over the world that Al Queda did not claim to do this and that the US intentionally doctored the transcripts.
Why would a guy in US custody for weeks, after being released for a day and getting ready to go home, not take off the damned orange prison jumpsuit?
Since then I've come across numerous others who have analyzed and questioned the video. I haven't come to any conclusions, but certainly doubts have been raised in my mind. I think this goes beyond conspiracy theory, and the following article gives plausible explanations for things like "Why was he in that orange jumpsuit? Why is there hours of discrepency in the footage times?" etc.
http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html
In my mind, the biggest thing against these theories is: Even if some covert arm of the govt were capable of such horror, would americans ever take such a big risk given the repercussions of the truth coming out? And if they did, would they not polish this video to such an extent that it could not be so easily broken down by armchair analysts? At the same time, there's no question that the government has done a lot of duping of the public even in the context of this war, so I don't have very much confidence in their integrity either.
Slightly more conspiracy theorist, but brings up some valid points, including the fact that the US admitted to having him in custody just prior to his death:
------------------------
Everything was going South deservedly so and the Bush Administration needed help.
Enter poor Nick Berg.
Nick Berg was a telecommunications contractor who went into Iraq to "help". But he and his family were not unknown to US authorities.
On March 7, 2004, an 'enemies' list of anti-war groups and individuals was posted on the Free Republic.
Among those listed was this entry: "Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc." That's Nick Berg's father, Michael who acts as business manager for his son in their family radio communications firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
Just days after "Michael Berg" and "Prometheus Methods Tower Service" had come up on that Iraq war 'enemies' list, his son Nick Berg returned to Iraq under the business name of Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
Nick was detained, first by Iraqi police, then for 13 days by the United States military in Iraq. He was in US custody and admittedly questioned by the FBI 3 separate times. They would not release him nor press charges nor let him speak to an attorney.
He was a "terrorist sympathizer" and detained in a US orange jumpsuit (like those in Guantanamo) and put in a cell with Syrians and Iraqis.
Yet they now claim Nick Berg was NEVER in US custody. Oh really?
To back its claims that Berg was in U.S. custody, the family gave The Associated Press copies of e-mails from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq.
"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly,'' Payne wrote to Berg's father, Michael, on April 1. Payne repeated that Berg was "being detained by the U.S. military'' in an e-mail the same day to Berg's mother, Suzanne.
Frustrated by their inability to find out about their son's whereabouts, The Berg's filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia on April 5 asserting that their son was being held by the American military in violation of his civil rights.
"His parents contacted our office, the F.B.I., the State Department," said Representative Jim Gerlach, a Republican from Upper Uwchlan Township in Pennsylvania.
Representative Gerlach met with the Berg family on Tuesday. "They got very insufficient information,'' he said. "They felt that they were not getting full answers."
Nick Berg's father, Michael Berg was publicly furious, "I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing has caused," he said. "I don't think this administration is committed to democracy."
The Berg's filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia on April 5. A day later, Nick Berg was released. He contacted his parents and told them that he was coming home. The following day he checked out of his hotel in Baghdad, and disappeared.
At the height of the US torture scandal, Nick Berg's body was "discovered" on Saturday May 8, having reportedly been decapitated the same day by muslim radicals specifically Al Queda.
And, almost miraculously, a video appears worldwide showing "Al Queda" in possession of Mr. Berg (somehow still wearing his orange jumpsuit) at which time he is supposedly beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi whom Americans claim is Al Queda's lead man in Iraq. Not only does Al Queda record the video, but Zarqawi's name and "signature" appear on it.
Convenient? Oh, and how.
Yet there are many problems with this explanation.
Long ago, when trying to tie Al Queda with Iraq, Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi was fitted with a prosthetic leg in a Baghdad hospital (which, at the time, was touted as being a major indication of a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein).
Yet the killer in the video walks and moves around with both legs just fine. Zarqawi could not be the killer. So why would all the killers wear hoods to hide their identity, and then sign the video with their own name and call themselves Al Queda?
It never happened. As reported both by the London Telegraph and CNN (CNN Transcript) :
O'BRIEN: Interesting. All right, now one final thought here. You did a very careful translation of your own, of the statement. And in it, you see no reference to al Qaeda. And yet the official U.S. government translation does. Explain how that happened.
NASR: Oh, I find it very interesting, because out of the blue, there is a mention of al Qaeda on the U.S. government translation. It says: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" Any speaker of the Arabic language is going to notice a difference between the word al Qaeda, which means "the base," and al qaed, which means "the one sitting, doing nothing."
My translation says: "Is there any excuse for the one who sits down and does nothing?" Basically they're telling people, you have no excuse for not doing anything, for not acting and defending Islam and so forth. Whereas the U.S. government translation adds al Qaeda to the statement, which is not on the statement.
But it gets much, much worse.
The Berg video is a montage of two separate videos taken from two cameras. This is apparent from the time in the lower right-hand corner, which changes as the angle of the shot changes.
Notice on the right that Berg's head has been cut off at 13:47:49 (1:47) yet on the picture on the left, at 2:44 nearly an hour later he is sitting with his head intact!
In the video shown all over the world, the man in the middle (wearing all black) is the one who beheads Mr. Berg, but immediately when the head is held up, suddenly it changes to the man in the white mask.
Additionally, the audio is 7 seconds off from the video.
So what, you say?
So let's see, an American who is considered an enemy of the US war suddenly is taken prisoner in Iraq, which the US denies, until his family produces e-mails from the US office in Iraq and sues and then he is miraculously released though supposedly he wasn't in custody. Can the government ever tell the truth?
Then he disappears and resurfaces only as the US is in dire need of an incident to try to put to rest the coverage of their torture in Iraq.
Suddenly, a US enemy-of-the-state ends up in Al Queda's hands and not just their hands but the leaderships who signs a video saying he killed him though the guy who supposedly kills him has a prosthetic leg and the guy in the video clearly doesn't.
Then it's released all over the world that Al Queda did not claim to do this and that the US intentionally doctored the transcripts.
Why would a guy in US custody for weeks, after being released for a day and getting ready to go home, not take off the damned orange prison jumpsuit?
