Who is Nick Berg?
 

From http://OpinionJournal.com

Best of the Web Today - May 14, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Al Qaeda Hackers http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Northeast...erg.encounter/

Authorities insist it's nothing more than an eerie coincidence, but boy, it is eerie. CNN reports that Zacarias Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial on charges related to his role as the "20th hijacker," once used a purloined e-mail account belonging to Nick Berg, the American civilian murdered in Iraq by al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. On a bus in Oklahoma a few years ago, he "allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer," according to his father, Michael Berg:

*** QUOTE ***

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," [Michael] Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence.

*** END QUOTE ***

Adding to the high weirdness of the whole Berg saga are the strange and confused political views of the elder Berg, who is apparently some sort of far-left antiwar activist. (Reports such as one in the Philadelphia Daily News http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/8645584.htm?1c suggest he and his son did not see eye to eye on Iraq's liberation.) Agence France-Presse http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...heading_family reports on Michael Berg's sickening moral inversion:

*** QUOTE ***

"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld," Michael Berg, visibly upset, told ABC television.

"The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this," he said.

*** END QUOTE ***

Distraught people sometimes say crazy things, but this quote, from another CNN report http://www.fox11az.com/news/other/st...1bad661b8.html , bespeaks a genuine and astonishing ignorance:

*** QUOTE ***

Berg's father said Thursday his son was someone who simply wanted to "help people, not to hurt anyone." "He was not disrespectful of danger, he just didn't recognize danger in people," Michael Berg said. "The al Qaeda that killed my son didn't know what they were doing. They killed their best friend. Nick was there to build Iraq, not to tear it down."

*** END QUOTE ***

Does Michael Berg really not understand that al Qaeda is in Iraq to tear it down, not to build it?

I think his father indicates where he got his naivete, ignorance of evil, liberalism, and misdirection from.

I think back to the "reasonable man" theory, as in "What would a reasonable man do?"

No disrespect to Mr. Berg, but it occurs to me that a Jewish kid with no connections and no job wondering around a country alone where heavily armed Americans and aid workers alike are shot at on sight is not acting in a reasonable and prudent manner.

A Forest Gump quote is popping into my head, but in respect to the deceased, I will refrain from stating it here.

TR

The article suggests he may have been more than just imprudent. Perhaps this will draw NDD out of the medical forum during one of his brief visits to the site. The word "Oklahoma" should get him going full speed, I would think . . .

:munchin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May14.html

Ashcroft Says No Link Between Berg and Terrorists

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 14, 2004; 5:01 PM

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said today that Nicholas Berg, the young American businessman who was beheaded in Iraq, had been investigated by the FBI two years ago on suspicion of a link to terrorists but had been absolved of any such connection.

Ashcroft vowed that the Justice Department would "work hard" to find Berg's murderers.

"This barbaric murder of Nicholas Berg illustrates the kind of evil that we face in the war against terror," he said. "And the United States will pursue his killers and we will bring them to justice."

He made the comments in a news conference at the Justice Department after Berg was buried this morning in a cemetery near his hometown of West Chester, Pa., in a private ceremony.

Berg, 26, was found dead Saturday outside Baghdad nearly a month after he disappeared while preparing to leave Iraq following an unsuccessful search for work. A video posted on an Islamic militant group's Web site Monday showed him being decapitated by five masked captors, purportedly in revenge for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military guards. The CIA said the apparent leader of the group, a man who read a written statement before drawing a large knife from his clothing, is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist connected to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

Before Berg evidently was captured by the terrorist group, he had spent 13 days in custody in the northern city of Mosul after being arrested by Iraqi police who believed his presence there was suspicious. During his detention, Berg was questioned three times by FBI agents, U.S. officials said.

At the Justice Department news conference called to announce an initiative against child pornography, Ashcroft was asked about the FBI's involvement with Berg. He said that after interviewing him at an Iraqi police station in Mosul, FBI agents informed the U.S.-led occupation authority in Baghdad that they had "no derogatory information" about Berg that would warrant further detention.

Ashcroft said FBI and Coalition Provisional Authority officials emphasized to Berg that he was in a "dangerous environment" and urged him to accept an offer to arrange his safe passage out of Iraq. He said Berg refused that offer, as well as government offers to advise his family and friends of his status.

"We did not develop any interest in Mr. Berg or determine in any way that he had any relationship to any activities of terror," Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft was also asked about FBI questioning of Berg in 2002 after a computer password he had used in college turned up in the possession of Zacarias Moussaoui, an al Qaeda adherent who is currently awaiting trial in the United States on conspiracy charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Berg's family and U.S. officials said Berg had loaned his computer and e-mail address to a man he met while riding a bus to classes at the University of Oklahoma in 1999 and that the man turned out to be a terrorism suspect who was acquainted with Moussaoui.

"The suggestion that Mr. Berg was in some way involved in terrorist activity or may have been linked . . . is a suggestion that we do not have any ability to support and we do not believe is a valid one," Ashcroft said.

He discounted the significance of Berg's reported sharing of his e-mail address and the subsequent link to Moussaoui.

"We do not believe that reflects any association with terrorist objectives or activities," Ashcroft said. "It's not uncommon for individuals from time to time to allow computer use by other individuals in university settings."

Ashcroft said he did not know whether Berg ever knew Moussaoui, adding, "I do know that the matter was resolved, and it was resolved in a way that indicated that there was no inappropriate involvement in terror."

At the White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan today brushed aside a reported charge by Berg's father, Michael Berg, that the Bush administration bore some responsibility for his son's death.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," Michael Berg said Thursday in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

"This is a very difficult period for the Berg family," McClellan said. "This is a time to keep Nicholas Berg's family in our thoughts and prayers. And that's what we intend to do."

The family has asserted that Nicholas Berg was held by the U.S. military in Mosul and that his nearly two-week detention caused him to miss a flight he had booked to return to the United States on March 30.

The State Department has said that a consular official mistakenly informed the Berg family that their son was in U.S. military custody when he was actually being held by Iraqi police. But the family insists that Nicholas Berg himself informed them after he was released that he had been in military custody.

how does the article suggest more than imprudence?

At least in the case of Oklahoma, the putative connection is between known home-grown terrorists and ME terrorists.

I don't know that he had no job. He seemed to be an entrepreneur who specialized in building cell phone and radio towers out of mud and cement blocks in non-first world countries.

Was his presence in Iraq innocent? Is Ashcroft correct?

I don't know. I'm wondering more about the "Zarqawi Network".

from AP: "Al-Zarqawi appears to be seeking an increasingly high-profile presence. As late as March, U.S. officials said he was not known for making public statements or taking credit for attacks. But in the past five weeks, he has released three recordings, including the beheading."

Zarqawi is said to have authored a letter on February 9th inciting sectarian violence. On March 2nd, suicide bombings at Shiite mosques in Karbala and Baghdad were blamed on Zarqawi. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the April 24 Firebolt deaths. And now this.

Is his presence in Iraq innocent? Why is he allowed to be there?

You're missing the point and hijacking my thread.

I'm sure NDD will be along soon to straighten us all out. LOL

yes I am missing the point as much as I am missing NDD.

let me try again though, just in case we are truly on our own.

what some here are implying but do not want to say, is that Nick Berg was a part of a ME terrorist conspiracy. He gave Moussaoui his password, but the FBI (being a domestic firm) is not swift enough to prove it.

Michael Berg would have us believe that Nick was not like him, not an "enemy" of America. They all mistook Nick's support of the war in Iraq. The reality is that Nick supports the war in Iraq because his buddies in the Zarqawi Network support the war in Iraq. Its good business for them, and besides, it takes the pressure of their cousins in Al Q'aida in Afghanistan. Nick goes to Iraq with the express purpose of martyring himself in the name of Allah, because even though he seems like an American Jew, he has been converted to extreme fundamentalist Islam. He is not terribly religious, but the terrorists are more likely to buy his radio and cell phone towers made out of mud, so economically it works out for him.

The Zarqawi Network decided that it was time to make a snuff film with him because the abu ghraib prison issue was looking bad for Bush and the SecDef, and they wanted to enflame the world and garner support for America and its war in Iraq, because as we know, they love that war in Iraq.

Berg, innocent? I think not.


NDD please come soon

I haven't read the links and Iapologize for that, I am simply not in a reading mood tonight. I was talking to a guy today that said he heard Mr. Berg was a converted Muslim and his sister or somebody had married an Iraqi?

I really don't know that much about the case.

:eek:

DAMN! What the hell is going on down there? Run out of cope?

LOL - Not at all, I have legions of Centurions paying tribute on every trip - I am awash in Copenhagen.

I am simply fighting off a cold and have recently become more focused on the physical - a passing phase as my body will remind me very soon no doubt.

I will read them in the morning.

Call me a skeptic...
 

... gents, some things are just TOO coincidental..

Me thinks that something stinks, I just can't put my finger on it. :confused:

How about this possibility:

al-Zarqawi kills three birds with one stone --

1. Silences someone with info on US al Qaeda operations

2. Sends message to other cell members who might think about talking to FBI

3. Terrorizes Americans who don't know what Berg really was doing in Iraq

Hmmmmm . . .

Treasure bath! Treasure bath!