Nick Berg was a Torture victim - confirmed.

[Must_B_Free]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/13/wtort113.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/13/ixnewstop.html

A ring around his neck, he added, showed that he had "clearly been tortured". The horror of the beheading reverberated throughout America yesterday, nowhere more so than in the town he called home in his last few words before he was murdered.

Confirmed:
-Torture Victim Coming home in midst of Torture Scandal.

High likelyhood to be dangerous material witness in Torturegate.

Edit: Link added - sorry I forgot it.

[Ediacara]

1. Do you have a link?

With who you're quoting and in what context?

[charlie]

2. Where did that come from? n/t

[LibertyorDeath]

3. More Details- Cough em up....

[ant]

4. uh-huh

He wasn't mad. It was just an adventure for him. He said, 'This s**t happens. It was bad luck'."
-source

He definitely sounds like a torture victim about to expose the US government.

:eyes:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. Do you have a link or did you just pull this out of thin air?

[Must_B_Free]

6. Sorry, forgot

added

[ant]

7. oh please

From the article:

Mr Duke had been unable to watch the whole of the horrifying murder video. "I looked at the beginning of the pictures on the internet," he said. I had to turn my back but I listened to the sounds."

A ring around his neck, he added, showed that he had "clearly been tortured".The horror of the beheading reverberated throughout America yesterday, nowhere more so than in the town he called home in his last few words before he was murdered.

In context it's clear the guy's saying he was tortured by his kidnappers. Note that no one who saw him at the hotel has described such a thing.

I'm also not sure that you could even notice such detail, given the quality of the video and what Berg was wearing. Maybe I'm not remembering it accurately, though.

Edited to add another quote from Mr. Duke, in the same article, and this one does refer to Berg's time in US custody:

Mr Duke said Mr Berg had given him a similar account of what happened in Mosul. "His attitude was that it was all a bit of fun. Inconvenient, but in the bigger picture not a big deal.

Torture's all a bit of fun? Maybe Berg was a fan of Rush Limbaugh...

[Paradise]

10. i remember seeing a noticeable bruise-like ring around his neck

in a still photo, and wondering what it was. :shrug:

[happynewyear]

15. this picture?

If you look you can see what appears to be on the left side of his neck. It almost looks like a shadow. It is difficult to know.



In any event, I agree with the other opinions voiced here. This thing stinks so bad I can't stand the smell!

[Paradise]

28. you know what...

it was a similar photo to this one, only it was a front view , and, now that you pointed this out, it had to be his beard. thanks, i feel a strange relief that he may not have been tortured. :cry:

[Must_B_Free]

11. I never said he was tortured in Mosul.

he was tortured by his Kidnappers.

Who do we know in Iraq that kidnaps and tortures people? :eyes:

[ant]

19. are you kidding me?

From your original post:
Confirmed:
-Torture Victim Coming home in midst of Torture Scandal.

High likelyhood to be dangerous material witness in Torturegate.

You were very clearly saying that he had been tortured by the U.S. and was on his way home to expose them. That would be why the U.S. allegedly kidnapped and murdered him, no?

If you were claiming that he was tortured by his kidnappers - who grabbed him after his release from U.S. custody - this point about him coming home to be a witness in Torturegate would be irrelevant. The motive you're trying to provide only works if he was tortured before his release, not afterwards.

Who do we know in Iraq that kidnaps and tortures people?

So because the U.S. has tortured prisoners all tortured people in Iraq have been tortured by the U.S.?

Do you really, truly, honestly, in the depths of your mind and soul, believe that is sound logic? Really?


I'm not saying the U.S. didn't kidnap and torture Berg, mind you - I have no idea of knowing and it doesn't seem like a completely impossibility - I'm just saying that so far there is no evidence at all to suggest that. And these two particular arguments - that he was going to expose the U.S. for torture or that because he was tortured it was therefore the U.S. that did it - are probably the weakest I've heard so far.

It's just bad, awful, but so-terrible-it-actually-hurts-my-soul logic.

[maggrwaggr]

8. yeah I'd say having your head chopped off is torture

:eyes:

And the 9/11 planes had missiles on them.

[ant]

9. I bet...

Berg had uncovered information about US involvement in 9/11. Think about it...he worked communications...government officials communicated with the planes...it's so obvious.

[leftistagitator]

12. I don't understand Bergs actions in the Army version of events

Berg was apprehended right before he was scheduled to come home. The last time he talked to his family after he was released he said he was going to come home as soon as he could in the safest and easiest way possible. Why then would he decline a strongly suggested offer from the military for free and well guarded transportation home?

[Eloriel]

18. Because getting to Baghdad was dangerous

or at least that's what I've seen as HIS explanation.

[charlie]

24. His Dad speculated

that he turned down the offers because he had "had enough" of the FBI.

[lectrobyte]

13. The ring around the neck seen in the video could be from

being strangled before being beheaded (I'm one of those who has looked at the video, and thinks he was dead prior to the act in question). I read the article and didn't get any "high likelyhood to be dangerous material witness" wrt the POW war crimes. Or am I missing something there?

[neebob]

14. So this guy who had met Nick Berg saw some pictures on the internet,

noticed a ring around his neck, and that confirms he was tortured? Mmm'kay. Seems to me there's a pretty high probability that whoever cut his head off would have tortured him first.

[Must_B_Free]

17. Good question!

Andrew Duke, 49, a Colorado businessman who drank beer with Mr Berg, 26, at the hotel the night before he was abducted, apparently on the way to Baghdad airport.

hmmm.

"And as Berg rode around Iraq looking for a contract to employ his Pennsylvania-based, one-man firm, ``he was very cavalier. Partly he may not have recognized all the dangers, but partly there was a little bit of hubris there,'' said Andrew Duke, 50, a Colorado businessman who befriended the younger man at the small, slightly grungy Baghdad hotel where they stayed."

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:K2KbXVgeNfgJ:cantonrep.com/index.php%3Fr%3D0%26Category%3D24+%22Andrew+Duke%22+Colorado&hl=en

look like an American soldier having a day off,'' said a desk clerk at the Al-Fanar Hotel in central Baghdad, where he stayed. The clerk pointed at a picture, widely published in recent days, of Berg in a muscle-revealing, sleeveless T-shirt. ``That is how he dressed all the time. So people noticed him and knew he was probably American.''

But Hugo Infante, a Chilean reporter who got to know Berg in Baghdad, says Berg told him something different. According to Infante, Berg recounted that Iraqi police had quickly handed him to U.S. authorities in Mosul and that he had been held the entire time in a jail where American soldiers were his guards.

[Must_B_Free]

22. Details

Infante said Berg had told him he was held in a coalition facility where Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Iranians suspected of entering Iraq illegally were also detained.

Berg's father Michael said it was the family's understanding that Nicholas was in U.S. custody. The family filed a lawsuit on April 5 against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, accusing the U.S. government of holding Berg without merit.

Berg was released the next day and the lawsuit was declared moot.

http://us.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/13/berg.friends/

[Must_B_Free]

25. details on duke

Duke, who said he managed the Oxford Hotel for a while in the 1970s when his father owned it, and whose grandfather started the Miller Stockmen Western clothing stores, said Berg stayed about two doors away from him in the Al-Fanar Hotel.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E27059%257E2144982,00.html

[aquart]

16. Ring? Clearly?

Why isn't the family having an independent autopsy?

[democracyindanger]

20. Calm down

"A ring around his neck, he added, showed that he had "clearly been tortured."

And who said this? An academic expert? A former military officer? Somebody from Amnesty International?

No, it was "Andrew Duke, 49, a Colorado businessman who drank beer with Mr Berg."

I'm going drinking tonight. I'll see if I can find any more experts at the bars.

[Karenina]

21. The trillion dollar question...

WHO DUNNIT?

Let's play "Get A Clue."

So far Al-Zarqawi has been RULED OUT.

[democracyindanger]

23. Let's play

"If-you're-going-to-declare-something-CONFIRMED-then-base-it-on-evidence-or-testimony-from-experts-rather-than-the-victim's-drinking-buddy."

Or, go ahead and keep playing, "I'll-believe-anything-as-long-as-it-points-me-in-the-direction-I-want-to-go." :eyes:

[Karenina]

30. You've NAILED the point.

The RoTW CLEARLY sees America running off a cliff and taking EVERYBODY WITH. The direction Americans want to go is WE ARE SUPERIOR. Sorry kids, yo jenky butts STINK to high heaven. When I told Janet Parks that she reeked of urine, she SPIT at me saying, "Well at LEAST I'm WHITE!!!"
Things have stayed the same... gotten worse... :cry:

[flowomo]

26. The "ring" is plainly visible if....

you use a standard Photoshop color correction technique to rid the video stills of the yellow color cast. I used as my base line infamous chair, which I simply assumed was white. So I corrected the chair to white using the "curves" function in P-Shop. Once that's done, the "ring" is very clear -- BUT it is not clear that it is not a shadow from his beard (though I must say, it is a bit strong a shadow for that). Anyway, that's a just a point for consideration. I have no beliefs about Berg's fate one way or the other.

[salvorhardin]

27. Seems like a shadow to me

I did what you did also, but I also masked (very crudely) the background out of the image and applied one of Photoshop's sketch filters to reduce the image of Berg to just light and shadow. It seems to me that the ring on the neck is consistent with shadows caused by the lighting in the room, which appears to be above and to the right of Berg in the image. Correct me if my interpretation is wrong.

[flowomo]

29. nope, I agree, and that's why I hedged....

the curve of the shadow seems consistent with your observations. And the dark ring seems much too tidy for a "bruise," which would tend to smear more I would think.