Media raises questions about whether Berg murder was staged

[Iceburg]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/may04/228799.asp
snip
While it was impossible to determine whether the killing was real or staged, the Islamic fundamentalist Web site on which it was posted has frequently been a channel for anti-American propaganda. Last week, it carried an audio-taped statement from bin Laden that the CIA said probably was authentic.

The video is of poor quality, and its time stamp seems to show an 11-hour lapse between when the assailants finish their statement and push Berg down, to when they behead him. That suggests a delay between those two portions of tape posted on the Web site.

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Apparently, we are not the only ones wearing tinfoil hats.

[hang a left]

1. Or as usual......

members of the press are coming here for help.

[BattyDem]

14. Can you blame them?

We always figure it out before they do! :evilgrin:

[KittyWampus]

2. As I Understand It, The Visual Images Are Not A Constant Flow

you don't see victim throughout video?

There might have been TWO videos that were edited?

[Iceburg]

4. Correct -- the clip was edited multiple times, and the sound track

was out of sync.

[radwriter0555]

3. there hasn't been a confirmed tape of bin laden since 2001.

no photos either. Which is strange considering he taped his speeches for years..

Suddenly the voice imprinting technology doesn't work, but ONLY when it's applied to obl tapes?

Right.

[daa]

5. His beheaded body was found on a bridge nt

[Az]

16. Consider

the difference between finding another dead body in a war zone and the brutal murder being seen on video. The impact is completely different.

[dusty64]

6. You're NOT supposed to

question the official version, haven't you gotten the memo?

[gandalf]

7. You're right here! Especially in times of war.

I appreciate that you try to bring us back to the right path (There is only one truth. You might call it official version. Everyone who dissents is a conspiracy nut.)

[robbedvoter]

8. So, is the identity of the victim even sure?

I ask as someone who didn't watch the video. Is the person killed recognizable as the person in part one?

[Iceburg]

9. The video is grainy and the alleged victim appears much thinner

than the earlier photos of Berg, thus it is difficult to ascertain whether the man in the orange jump suit is Berg.
I say "alleged" victim because I am not convinced that a beheading actually occurred. And IF it did, it most certainly happened after the victim died judging from the blow flow (or lack thereof). The credibility of this video and its timing of release are highly suspect.

[ewagner]

10. Add to that

David Ensor's report on CNN this morning that said the CNN Arab language specialists said that the voice on the tape wasn't who it was claimed to be.

I'm not saying that Berg wasn't murdered/beheaded.

I'm not saying that whoever did it is justified. They're animals.

I am only saying that there's an awful lot of questions here that need answering........

[ewagner]

11. d'oh dupe...click happy n/t

[Cleita]

12. I saw that.

They even brushed over it lightly on CNN.

[Quahog]

13. It's impossible to discuss this without getting GRAPHIC

I've watched it a couple of times. Having never beheaded anyone personally, I have to defer to others regarding the expected blood flow. I see a lot of blood on that floor. At the end, there is a corpse with a neck and no head, with the head set apparently on the corpse's back. The face on the head is very clear when it's held up by one of the perpetrators. Looks like the guy in other photos of Berg that have been shown. Berg's headless body has been identified, it was found in Baghdad on Saturday. I thought I read that his head has since been found, but it's hard to remember what's verified and what isn't at this point.

My one hope in this (and it's admittedly hard to have any hope about anything at this point) was that Berg was already dead when they sawed his head off with a dagger. I would think that, even if he wasn't consciously trying to fight back, that his body would have moved about more violently than it does during the actual beheading. As has been pointed out by others, the soundtrack does not match up, the death screams start before he's even pushed to the ground, and immediately after that the camera is jostled, then the time stamp changes. Maybe he was killed some other way, then beheaded on camera and a soundtrack added later.

Ultimately, who the hell knows? I'm not sure it makes much difference. I mean, the guy is dead, his head was sawed off, whether it happened before or after he was dead seems inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The point, as far as I'm concerned, is that this is what it's come to. This is how badly we've pissed these people off. This is what georgie's little desert adventures have cost a man, and his family, and his community, and his country. And it's just the tip of the iceburg, it's just the beginning of what's to come. The chimp made our bed, and now we all get to lie in it.

[qanda]

15. This is what I noted

The video starts out at 13:26 and then goes to 2:18 while Berg is still talking. Then it goes to 2:40 when the person speaking Arabic begins speaking. However, the time stamp seems to go backwards instead of forwards at times while he's speaking. The knife is pulled out at 2:44 and they throw Berg to the floor. Then the time skips all the way 13:45. Then it goes back to 2:46 when they show his head and finally it goes back to 13:48.

I'm thinking that they used two cameras-- one using military time and the other using regular time. Of course that still does not explain all of the gaps and why the time stamp would be going backwards in some places.