Some theories on the Berg situation

[underpants]

These are just "read between the lines" ideas and supposition so take them as you may. No there are no "white hands" conspiracy theories on those sick sadistic murderers of Nick Berg.

First, I think he got arrested by the Iraqis because the reason he gave for being in Iraq was so far outside of what they expected to hear they got suspicious and arrested him. His father has said that he was a Bush supporter and was in Iraq to help bring them Democracy, that might sound like pie-in-the-sky idealism but it probably caught the Iraqis (and the US military) off guard. They probably haven't seen anyone over there who isn't either trying to overthrow the US or there to make tons of money off the process. We know that he went to Gambia to help with fresh drinking water so to think he went to Iraq to not only find work (that is a whole other subject) but to do what he saw as his part.

Second, US spokesman Dan Senor said that Berg was never in US custody but the Bergs filed suit to have their son released (the suit has been scrubbed from the court website/database) so something lead them to think that he was in US custody. I think that they simply lost track of him. The original story was that the Iraqis arrested him and handed him over to the US who in turn help him for 13 days with no charges pending. I think that someone along the line decided to just let him go, put him on the street, while other parts of the administration over there might have been either ready to charge him or get him out of country. It seems that the complete lack of paper trail or the lost paperwork gives Senor the ability to say that he was not help by US forces. What it really would mean is that the ball was dropped on a monumental scale.

Just two ideas.