What do you think of all the speculation RE the Nick Berg Killing?

[Delano]

What do you think of all the conspiracy speculation RE the Nick Berg Killing?

Sorry to those who have voted, I made an addition.

[ForrestGump]

1. All of the above

Any of (well, just about) the various theories being floated here could be true, including the most basic one -- the one given as face value -- but it's gone way overboard into nutso territory. Some people might just be doing intellectual exercises, which is fine, but this situation is hardly the best material for that right now. The really scary ones are the True Believers, who already seem to have their minds made up.

We may never know the truth. I hope that we will. Maybe we already do. That there's so much serious debate here about this says a lot about how trustworthy we perceive the US government to be.

Regardless, that young man stays just as dead.

[BurtWorm]

18. You said it, FG. The govt's trustworthiness is in the toilet.

They have themselves to blame, if this kind of suspicion bothers them. Unless they want this type of suspicion to go on... :tinfoilhat:

[Blayde Starrfyre]

2. Sorry, too convenient

Let's see how this works. In the wake of a massive prisoner abuse scandal that reaches the highest level of the Bush administration, a groups which idenitifies itself as connected to Osama bin Laden (who to this point the administration has been unable to link with Iraq) murders an American civilian in the most grusome way possible. How fortuitous. Reminds me of another lucky coincidence, in which the incubent Democratic senator from Minnesota died in a plane crash a short time before the election in a tight race with a Republican. Or another election in which the Democratic governor of Missouri died in a plane crash days before in a tight race with a Republican who is now Attorney General in the Bush administration. Or when a certain man who knew where the bodies were buried with enron just happened to commit suicide. Or when some certain planes slammed into some certain buildings, killing 3,000 Americans at a time when the administration was under fire for its failed economic policy and corruption vis-à-vis the energy task force.

Nobody could have that many "lucky deaths." It's a conspiracy. Karl Rove and the PNAC masterminded the deaths of all those people, and it becomes more apparent as the "happy coincidence body count" piles up.

[Delano]

3. You're entitled to believe that.

I have no doubt that some of these folks are amoral enough to do this sort of thing, but I'm not quite convinced.

The dragging deaths a few weeks ago were not boosting Bush's numbers, so I fail to see how this brutal killing will do much for him. It horrrifies us all, but I don't see how ANYONE comes out a clear winner in this.

All we know is that one young man and his grieving family have lost BIG-TIME. This whole week or so has been sickening. I shudder to think at what will be next.

:(

[Blayde Starrfyre]

5. Yes, but

The killing of Carnahan didn't really work out for Ashcroft either. Didn't stop them from trying again (and succeeding) with Wellstone. Right now they're desperate, they'd try anything to save the PNAC master plan.

[Delano]

7. All I'm saying is..

the fact that someone is capable of doing something, and low enough to do it doesn't necessarily mean that they did it. True, there are a lot of suspicious incidents you cite. And maybe the Bushies actually did engineer some of them. Who knows? But I SERIOUSLY doubt they did ALL of them.

Besides, don't you remember how the RW nuts had a "Clinton body count" of all the people starting with Vince Foster that Bill & Hillary supposedly killed? A lot of the freeptards ate that up, too. All I'm saying is don't let your imagination run away with you. Keep an open mind, but demand definitive proof. We shoot ourselves in the foot if we do otherwise.

[Pachamama]

8. Battleground States - Pennsylvania, Ohio....

....is Matthew Maupin of Ohio next?

Sorry, I couldn't resist, but I have to admit, its pretty creepy and interesting to think that "if" something like this was orchestrated to divert attention away from the woes of the administration and also garner support, isn't it interesting that the people who might be "killed" are from key states Bush Co. needs to win desperately?

Just a thought...

[girl gone mad]

4. Why was he wearing an orange jumpsuit?

It's an honest question. I had never associated that with AQ, but maybe there is an honest answer.

[arcane1]

9. who else wears orange jumsuits?

people detained by the US military in the war on terror, as Mr Berg was



I'm not convinced of anything yet in this story, but I don't trust these bastards, and this story has many things that make you go "hmm"

[WoodrowFan]

19. yes, and no one else in the world has them in orange

It's a well-known fact that only the US has orange jumpsuits, that they are even better controlled that nuclear weapons, and that every one ever made is still in control of the US government.

SHEESH. Get a grip people! You can BUY THEM ONLINE!

http://www.pxdirect.com/inmate_u.htm

[arcane1]

21. ah, ok, al Qaeda must've bought them online w/their paypal account

and of course they took the time to dress him up in the outfit first, before running the video

that is the most sensible thing I've heard all day :eyes:

[Joe the Revelator]

6. If our guys did this, it would have been much less obvious

Do you think that if some think tank thought up this idea that they wouldn't also put forth the effort to make it look more authentic? They would have stereotypical "Muslims", no time stamp on the camera ect.

[stickdog]

10. Yep. Just look at the way they've always so neatly tied up all the loose

ends, ever since Gore won Florida!

[abracadabra]

11. this is inconsistent with Al Qaida

when's the last time they horrifically executed a perfectly good hostage on TV.?
And why did Al Qaida just happen to do this ?--now wouldn't a local resistance group have taken revenge rather than a foreign terrorist organization
?
the overall builds of those guys in the background don't really look like typical arab builds--look slightly overweight and like former jocks who stopped going to the gym for a year or two .
Look at the naked Iraq pictures and you can see a difference if you look at the "average" body types.

What about the strange blur on those accomplices in the background ?

And those masks are a little too much...they usually veil their appearances but not overboard like that.

The orange jumpsuit?

And this poor guy was interrogated
for 2 weeks prior to this by Americans in Iraq without access to a phone?
(how do we know they didn't shoot this video 2 or 3 weeks ago saying he was being held while he was actually dead)

What was he being interrogated for for so damn long?
Somebody release the info to the public before we jump to conclusions.
Somebody tell us about why he was in an American prisoner outfit--the
orange jumpsuit---
Tell us why the timing was so perfect to put a damper on the prison abuse outrage.

[JaySherman]

13. Umm... remember Daniel Pearl?

The reporter and "perfectly good hostage" whose throat was slit in Pakistan, for all the world to see on video. IIRC, the leader of the cell turned out to be an Al Qaeda operative.

[bklyncowgirl]

14. Actually this is consistent with Al Queda

Their goal is worldwide Islamic revolution and have no qualms about sacrificing scores of Iraqis when the U.S. takes its inevitable revenge.

This also plays into the hand of the Bush administration who were looking for a distraction from the Prison Torture scandal and an outrage to jumpstart sputtering support for the war.

Al Queda want a worldwide Islamic state. Bushco wants to remake the Middle East. Neither much care who gets killed in the process.

[abracadabra]

17. Actually, in Reality here, it is NOT consistent with A Q

They rarely execute on tv with overweight ex jock looking henchmen in American made ski masks.
sorry
but until you can show that they do this normally then you may NOT conclude that it is consistent with AQ methods.
This global Islamic rev crap you talk about is BS.
The AQ has moved int Iraq but they are not known to BE Iraqis nor are they known to do these abhorrent sorts of things on video.

[WoodrowFan]

20. oh please

"American made ski masks" You saw the tags in them I guess to know that? This is as bad, and as ill-informed, as the "they're white"! BS.

[radfringe]

12. the beheading WON'T hurt bush*'s numbers

if anything it will give them a boost

the current rumbles are that the beheadings are in response to the torture in the prisons

this could be true, and it could also be true that the torture story is being used as an excuse by groups to justify their positions and as a way to rally Iraqi sentiment their way

I expect we will see more beheadings and similar horrors in the coming months

one thing the beheading has guaranteed is that the torture story will be dropped from the media headlines and fade from view. It will be replaced by stories of how our troops are being abused by Iraqi groups

if bush* issues a statement in person, it will be full of cowboy bluster - shoot-em-up-bang-bang rhetoric. Those that have spoken out about the prison torture will effectively be silenced and portrayed as wimpy-whiney liberals

Limbaugh and other reich-wing-radio-heads will be screaming their mouths off today -- and we won't be hearing that this was a 'fraternity prank' or 'just blowing off steam' or the 'actions of a few bad-doers' -- they will cloak themselves in the flag, their faces will turn red-white-blue as they express their outrage and direct their condemnations towards the 'liberal' media (it's the media's fault for televising/publishing the pictures)

[gottaB]

15. Other

The politics of official sentiment is a thorny business. We as net personas don't bear the same weight of responsibility as our heads of state and other public officials. Obviously. What responsibility is ours?

Sometimes the jackals get on my nerves. I ignore them. Sometimes I am profoundly annoyed by propagandistic manipulations of public sentiment. I do my best to avoid being manipulated.

The ugly truth is that every day some atrocity is being committed in the world. Yesterday it was Muslims in Kano, Nigeria, butchering their Christian neighbors in retaliation for massacres of Muslims in Yelwa. If you were following the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, perhaps you missed that. But then again, perhaps you ignore Africa altogether in favor of Asia, where religious violence and election violence compete with natural disasters for high body counts. And let's not forget the Middle East, where in Gaza last night....

You see, with the net, you don't need broadcast media to keep up with the current anxiety level. Of course you might find yourself feeling sympathy or outrage towards the "wrong" people, or being like all code orange on the wrong day. But it's up to you, as a surfer, to choose what to pay attention to. Knowing that you have that freedom, and exercizing it, I believe contributes to a respect for the variety of human responses to the affairs of the day. Decorum and all that, I don't know, but tolerance for sure is a quality of good netizenship.

[HuskerDem]

16. It's about incompetence and poor decision making

Berg was MONUMENTALLY misguided to head over to Iraq ALONE with NO SUPPORT and NO JOB, no safety network whatsoever. He paid for that poor decision with his life.

The detention and subsequent screw up by our forces is just another symptom of the disease which is about to kill Bushcos Iraqi adventure. Utter and complete imcompetence.