Qaeda Leader Beheads U.S. Civilian in Iraq

[Elok]

I thought they got sexual and psychological abuse under Saddam too. Didn't his sons like to invoke Primer Noctem, like the English in Braveheart? If that's not sexual degradation I don't know what is.

As to the Darwin Award mentioned on page 6 or thereabouts, the mess in Iraq seems to be one big leap of faulty reasoning by all concerned, and this poor guy Berg appears guilty only of poor foresight by comparison IMO. If I may be pardoned for reverting to SAT-style analogies,

Rational Discernment:Iraq::Celibacy:Brothel

[Evil Knevil]

Don't hurt me because of this:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4FFA61A3-9C33-4597-A8D9-8079E91F2784.htm

:
Bloggers doubt Berg execution video
By Lawrence Smallman

Revolting millions around the world, the video footage of an American citizen's execution has also raised numerous questions concerning its authenticity.
Even at first glance, internet bloggers were asking on Thursday why Nick Berg was wearing an orange jumpsuit – just like US prisoners wear. Other net-surfers point to the unlikely timing of the executioner's dubbed announcement that Berg was to die for "Iraqi prisoner abuse".

Berg was last seen alive on 10 April, when his father Michael Berg believes he was killed - two weeks before the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in the world's media. Some discussions focus on the timing of the video's release - guaranteed to divert attention from the outrage regarding US torture of Iraqis.

Video oddities

There are plenty of questions raised concerning the video too. The body is completely motionless even as the knife is brought to bear – not so much as an instinctive wriggle. More graphically, some claim that cutting the throat's artery would cause a significant amount of blood. But little emerges and when the head was raised – not a drop of blood is seen to fall. In a possible explanation, one discussion room member suggested that Berg was killed and then beheaded later.

However, the circumstances of the video release are also strange. A Reuters journalist in Dubai first named the Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami website as the source for the video – at www.al-ansar.biz. Although the site has now been shut down, Aljazeera.net had looked at the site within ninety minutes of the story breaking – and could find no such video footage. But Fox News, CNN and the BBC were all able to download the footage from the Arabic-only website and report the story within the hour.

Days leading to death

Other questions presented by bloggers are Berg's peculiar circumstances in the weeks before his death. Why would a private Jewish American citizen choose to wander around Iraq by himself? Additionally, some have pointed out that his last email on 6 April to his family stated he wished to return home as soon as possible – yet the FBI claim he refused an offer of help to get home. In the wider press, FBI involvement has also generated much discussion as to why Berg was really arrested and detained for two weeks in Mosul. The unemployed visitor was suspicious enough for Iraqi police to arrest him – with FBI knowledge.
He had only just been released from prison where he had been held for 13 days by Iraqi police for reasons he said he did not know.

Family blames government

A US newspaper claims an official familiar with the case knew that FBI agents had interogated Berg, but had left him for two weeks because he was in Iraqi - not American - custody. But the official was unable to clarify the legal difference between the two, given the US occupation.
On 5 April, Berg's family filed a suit in federal court in Philadelphia - contending that their son was being held illegally by the US military in Iraq. The next day he was released and left to get himself home.

The last time the family heard from him was on 9 April, his headless body was found near Mosul on 8 May. "That's really what cost my son his life, the fact that the United States government saw fit to keep him in custody for 13 days without any of his due process or civil rights," Michael Berg said.

Final question

Some bloggers focused on the accent of the purported executioner. Many deny the accent is either Iraqi or Jordanian - while claims the voice is Egyptian or Iranian have been made. The Jordanian accused of the beheading Berg is himself believed to have been killed in March, according to two Islamist groups. An eight-page leaflet circulated this week in Falluja, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniya mountains of northern Iraq during a US bombing. But even if it was the Jordanian, one discussion room member observes his face is so well-known that "why would he bother to cover it?"

[Sava]

yeah, tinfoil hatters unite...

[Imran Siddiqui]

We never really landed on the moon either

[Evil Knevil]

I don't believe it really.... Just providing interest

But judging from the video he does look like he was dead before the beheading.

[Sava]

the jews killed kennedy!

[Imran Siddiqui]

I thought it was Castro? or the Mob? Or the Cuban Mob?

[Evil Knevil]

Surely it was the Jewish Cubans, who used their Mob connections in the US Government to plan the assassination?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Ok, I admit it. I killed Kennedy.

[Evil Knevil]

You Yiddish Dago you!

[DinoDoc]

I'm suprised that Al-Jazera finds the video so objectionable that they feel the need to put out a conspiracy theory to explain it away considering some of the other vids they have shown.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Sava
Actually, it was the ethnic Albanians that wanted their OWN schools. Is the US going to give the Hispanic population in the Southwest their own schools? Would the US allow them to secede?

NO! So remember that next time you approach a subject you know little about.

Well if the US government decreed that Hispanics could not be employed by the government, allowed thugs to drive them out of their own private businesses as well, and denied them the right to hold elective offices regardless of whether they came from families living in the area that is now the USA long before the USA was even a twinkle in the founding fathers' eyes then I'd think that secession might be justified.

[Gibsie]

If the guy in the video was already dead where did the screams that I've seen people referring to come from?

[Evil Knevil]

They sounded like they were coming from somewhere else, or that they were over-dubbed. It was out of sync as well...

He was pressed face down on the ground when he was supposed to be screaming, and you can't see his mouth opening. Nor was the screaming muffled like you would have expected.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


They've been denouncing Musharaff since he cozied up with the US after 9/11.

Of course.

But recently Musharaff has turned the heat up on those bastards.