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Your mission, should you choose to accept it...
I'm looking for someone who's been doggedly following the Nick Berg case. Truth be told, I've been avoiding the news for the past week; it's just too goddamn depressing. But I can't ignore reports of renewed fighting in Najaf. I've been hoping for a negotiated settlement that disarms Muqtada al-Sadr's men without encouraging other demogogues to make a similar power play. Frankly, it's the only plausible solution since a raid on Najaf's shrines would be disastrous, as would allowing the Mehdi Army to fortify them unmolested.
In any case, I came across an article in a blog of unevaluated reliability that runs through some of the odd bits of the Nicholas Berg story. One mystery, the fact that no state records can be found for the business he purportedly owned, has been corroborated by a local newspaper. I don't really have the time or inclination to track down the other leads, but I'm wondering if anyone else around here does (or already has). Please share!
Edit: Okay, now I'm starting to run into speculation that the video itself was faked (that is, Berg was really killed, but not by Arab terrorists) in order to distract us all from the torture allegations. Perhaps I should back away from this topic slowly and go back to my ostrich act.
In any case, I came across an article in a blog of unevaluated reliability that runs through some of the odd bits of the Nicholas Berg story. One mystery, the fact that no state records can be found for the business he purportedly owned, has been corroborated by a local newspaper. I don't really have the time or inclination to track down the other leads, but I'm wondering if anyone else around here does (or already has). Please share!
Edit: Okay, now I'm starting to run into speculation that the video itself was faked (that is, Berg was really killed, but not by Arab terrorists) in order to distract us all from the torture allegations. Perhaps I should back away from this topic slowly and go back to my ostrich act.
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http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/14/berg/index.html
Hum
As for Berg, the Freepers apparently had his father on an 'Enemies of the State" list compiled after the anti-war protests from last year, and for associating with ANSWAR, the left wing nutjubs who think Kim Il Sung is a cool guy. What he actually did I've not heard, nor have I heard much of any sins of the son, aside from glowing hometown reports of his character and intentions. It's been pointed out that he was also a Jewish American with a passport stamped at Isreal, Jordan, and points in Africa where he'd previously done antenna work, which may well be why the FBI interogated him three times, as well as drawn the short lot from his captors.
The blog link is... hum. That link to Oklahoma tho- such stuff gets deep real fast. NPR has stated that Promethius Communications was a joint business between the son and his dad (i think after interviewing Dad); the latter may be the engineer's expereince that the blogger says the company lacks. The missing stateside paperwork may well just be in another state- my dad's company is incorporated in Nevada, after all. Personally, I'd be more inclined to allow for something to be seriously dodgy if the stateside paperwork did exist- after, all, overlooking such an obvious piece of cover for a covert operation smacks more of incompetence than nefarious intent. Given that Nick's dad doesn't look to be quiet any time soon, I'll expect that lots of things will show up about them both soon enough.
Let me know what you think of Jaun Cole, tho
Oooh
http://www.angryfinger.org/archives/000232.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/5/13/165525/077
Signing a petition, apparently, makes on an Enemy of the State...
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Alas
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People caught in the act of not being black-and-white movie characters with clear, written storylines does tend to bring out the paranoid when connected to dramatic public/political events like this. I read Bernard Henri-Levi's book on Daniel Pearl, and he constructs an elaborate man-who-knew-too-much speculation about the "reason" for Pearl's murder, after uncovering a fair amount of evidence that the kidnappers had not initially intended to kill him when they snatched him. But he's honest enough to acknowledge that escape attempts have been known to trigger additional beatings or even killing in other captivity situations, and that Daniel Pearl apparently tried to escape. And after all it may be that the kidnappers had no clear plans at all when they grabbed him, but were just responding to an opportunity when it arose and deciding what to do on the fly. (He was not targetted for kidnapping out of the clear blue sky, but was taken when he showed up for a meeting to interview a terrorist leader which he'd arranged). And in general do such people need a particular additional reason to kill an American Jew who is under their control, if they can't think of anything better to do with him at the moment?
It is not inherently suspicious that a person with no real credentials might read in the papers about how slowly and fitfully the reconstruction is going forward in Iraq and see an opportunity for himself to get in on something at the ground floor by filling in some cracks. The American "Wild West" was full of people who'd failed at business and other professions in New England. Why not Iraq? And it is not inherently suspicious that a person wandering around the country trying to make connections might register as "missing" to a press corps that rarely leaves the hotel in Baghdad and an overstretched occupying force that does not necessarily have more than a handful of people if any in most of the quieter villages.
So, sure it's possible that Berg was a CIA agent, or a peace activist who got in over his head, but it's also very possible that he was precisely who he said he was. So many people seem to be finding political uses for his death that I think I'll just wait until someone at least as truth-seeking as Henri-Levi (rather than totally agenda-driven which is what we're seeing now I think) decides to actually go and talk to people and try to find out what really happened.
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