Venomous Kate, lawyerblogger extraordinaire, has let out list of very significant reasons to believe that the actual killing of Nicolas Berg appeared nowhere on the recording that has inspired so much controversy in the Blogosphere. Instead, it appears that the tape’s two major scenes — the Arabic address ending with Berg’s scream, and the actual holding down and decapitation of Berg’s body — took place 11 hours apart.
In the second part, where Berg is on the ground, held down and beheaded, it seems that he had already been long dead. If such is the case, Nick Berg was not “brutally murdered by beheading with a knife.” The video would then simply show alledged al-Qaeda militants removing the head of Nick Berg’s dead corpse, leaving the details of Nick Berg’s actual murder completely unknown.
concerning one of the main inconsistencies in the video purporting to show Berg’s death. Specifically, the absence of blood. While some may think it gruesome — or even disrespectful to Nick Berg’s memory — to ponder these things, I disagree…
…my lawyer mind has a tendency to obsess over inconsistencies. In this case, I am extremely puzzled by al-Qaeda’s apparent efforts to appear as if they were murdering Berg on film when clearly they were not. According to the video’s time stamp 11 hours passed between the time the terrorists read their statement – at the conclusion of which Berg is heard screaming – and the time the video shows Berg’s beheading. Additionally, the fact that Berg did not scream again while they brutally cut his throat, and the absence of significant additional blood, is proof enough that he was already dead.
So the plot thickens. Does this mean that Nick Berg may have cooperated in the first segment of the tape, which would have blended perfectly with the second half had the camcorder operator remembered to turn off his camera’s time stamp?
What was the “suspicious activity” Mr. Berg had been detained for in Iraq, and why was he carrying a copy of the Koran and “anti-semitic literature” about with him — travelling about Iraq with no driver or interpreter? And as highlighted in recent “bizarre Berg-Moussaoiu link” articles, why did Berg share online password-protected accounts with 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui?
U.S. Military authorities say he was arrested and held by Iraqi police forces. Yet Iraqi forces and Berg’s family, both of which have some rather convincing proof, say that he had been held by the U.S. Military.
I’ll stop myself, as these events lend to more conspiracy theories than I can handle. One thing is certain, though: there is much more to the Nick Berg story than “innocent American murdered on-camera in Iraq.”