Antiwar.com Blog

On the Nick Berg Beheading

Col. Lounsbury writes what I think may be the definitive post here.

Lounsbury quotes the Washington Post:

The persistent violence contrasts sharply with U.S. officials’ optimistic calls for private companies to invest in Iraq. Over the past year, the Commerce Department has conducted a three-continent campaign to promote investment and reconstruction opportunities.

It was at one of those conferences that Berg was inspired to go to Baghdad, his family said. He dreamed of building radio towers in Iraq that would beam reports from a free press.

According to his family, Berg met businessmen at the conference who asked him to inspect radio towers damaged in the war. Berg hoped to make a bid for his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., to provide parts and repair services.

Berg’s mother said she had begged him to change his mind about the trip.

But Berg, whose family described him as a bit of a rebel, decided that the potential business was worth the risk. He took a flight from New York to Amman, Jordan, on March 14 and then traveled on to Iraq. He did not have a security guard, translator or driver lined up, his mother said, and he decided to stay at smaller hotels not frequented by foreigners..

Emphasis Lounsbury’s. Bottom line: Berg may as well have been wearing a sign on his back reading “Clueless American – Kidnap Me.” Of course, Lounsbury says this much more emphatically and entertainingly.

Aside: Don’t visit Lounsbury’s site if graphic language offends you.

Another aside: Berg’s body was discovered sans head.

Tacitus makes a good point:

The pornography of violence in the form of taped executions (Fabrizio Quattrocchi) and especially beheadings (Daniel Pearl, the infamous Russian conscript decapitation) is a staple of Islamist propaganda, and will continue to be even in the absence of crimes on our part. Which is not to excuse or apologize for those crimes — merely to point out that there’s cause and effect here only on a very shallow level.

I agree in part. If not for the prison scandal, Berg would probably have been executed the same way for another “reason.” There exists no shortage of grievances that would resonate for the real audience for this video, the Arab street. For the Western audience, it was sufficient to shock them with barbarity with the added bonus of giving Western contract employees added incentive to leave.

Here’s an interesting tidbit that Lounsbury throws into a later post:

On the other hand, I note my local shopkeeper (who likes me, I don’t think he knows where I am from come to think of it – he also has a pictures of Yassine and Co. up in his shop) showed me a weekly yesterday. It had, in connexion with the Abu Ghrieb incidents, a picture – genuine? who knows? – of an American soldier (art claimed from the prison, whatever – with a tatoo of the Israeli flag on his arm, along with some American stuff. Maybe a roughneck Jewish sort. In any case, that is an angle being highly played, that there is an Israeli connexion to this, that Israelis are helping. Unforunately there may be some truth to this.

Not surprising that this angle is being played up in the Arab media. Too bad most Americans are too clueless to realize how inflammatory this imagery is to Arabs.

Just as a quick footnote to the April 29 article about Balkans and the EU: the BBC reported that EU’s Commissar – er, Commissioner – Chris Patten was in Belgrade pressuring Serbia to submit to ICTY’s demands.
“He said compliance with the court was a key step on Serbia’s path towards becoming a member of the European Union”, says BBC (my emphasis).
So this wonderful new mega-state considers its fundamental values to be expressed by submission to an illegitimate, politically motivated, criminally abusive and unprofessional kangaroo court? What more incentive does one need to bid it good riddance?

Spearheading the movement that clamored for US (and Western) intervention in Bosnia in the early 1990s – and Kosovo in 1998-99 – has been a diverse group of people united around a desire to stamp out “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. Naturally, their definitions of these terms have been rather flexible.
While I don’t think these voices have been the prime mover behind the American Empire, they have certainly been its useful idiots during the Clintonian era. While under George the Lesser their influence seems to have waned in favor of the bloodthirsty oil imperialists, they have by no means vanished.
Witness one Melanie Kintz, who offered an attempt at sarcasm Monday while trying to cajole students of Western Michigan University to oppose ethnic cleansing… Continue reading “Genocide crusaders at it again”

I suppose Tony Parsons’ apology of sorts in yesterday’s Daily Mirror is a giant step forward on the road to that warmonger’s redemption. And yet, his argument is tained by a simple fact that his comparison (Slobodan Milosevic and Tony Blair) is facetious.
Parsons assumes Milosevic was guilty of aggression and atrocities, calling him “the man at the top, and the indisputable architect of a mountain of misery.”
Indisputable? Not so. In fact, Milosevic’s exact role in the Balkans Mountain of Misery is very much in dispute. Evidence presented at his “trial” shows only that the prosecutors have a rich but depraved imagination.
On the other hand, Blair’s atrocities, lies and aggression are all amply documented, because he took pride in them. The question, then, isn’t “Why isn’t Blair on trial if Milosevic is?” but “Why is Milosevic on trial, and not Blair?” Or Clinton. Or Albright. Or Holbrooke. Or Robertson. Or any other Imperial official with blood on his or her hands from 1999.
We’ve yet to get a satisfactory answer. Or any answer at all.

“Next Door to Mohammed Atta”:

The Mossad apparently warned their American counterparts several times about the terrorists, especially about al-Midhar. … Apparently not until shortly before September 11 did the CIA recognize that al-Midhar was dangerous and asked law enforcement agencies to look for him.

“FBI Agent Was Prevented From Relaying Warning on 9/11 Hijackers“:

More than a year before 9/11, CIA officials prevented an FBI agent working with the CIA from passing vital information to his agency on two suspected al Qaeda members — men who later would become Sept. 11 hijackers.

U.S. officials told ABCNEWS the agent wanted to warn his FBI bosses about a gathering in Malaysia where al Qaeda suspects Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi met with suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen.

After the meeting, CIA officials learned Al-Midhar and Alhamzi had visas to enter the United States, the U.S. officials said. …

“If that information [got] disseminated, would it have had an impact on the events of 9/11?” asked Jack Cloonan, an ABCNEWS consultant who previously worked as an FBI agent assigned to pursue members of al Qaeda. “I’m telling you that it would have.” …

Al-Midhar left the United States and came back just two months before 9/11 attacks — no questions asked. He arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, using his own name.

Also see “Blinking Red,” “Did Al Qaeda Exploit Government Jihad Support?,” and “Preserved in Amber, Blind to Terror.”

The claim is that it is revenge for the torture of detained Iraqis in US military prisons.

The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit – similar to a prisoner’s uniform – who identified himself as Nick Berg, a contractor from West Chester, Pa., whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.

“So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins … slaughtered in this way.”

The video bore the title “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American.” It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi – a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden – was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution.

The man was found today on an overpass in Baghdad. The military described the body as “showing signs of trauma.”

CORRECTION: The body was found Saturday. The announcement was made today.

UPDATE: The Guardian adds some dialogue:

“How can a free Muslim sleep well as he sees Islam slaughtered and its dignity bleeding, and the pictures of shame and the news of the devilish scorn of the people of Islam – men and women – in the prison of Abu Ghraib?” the speaker said on the video.
[…]
In the video, the speaker threatened both US President George Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

“As for you Bush … expect severe days. You and your soldiers will regret the day you stepped into the land of Iraq,” he said. He described Mr Musharraf as “a traitor agent.”

More from the Guardian piece:

Mr Berg was in Baghdad from late December to February 1 and returned to Iraq in March. He failed to find work and planned again to return home on March 30, but his daily communications with his family stopped on March 24. He later told his parents he was jailed by Iraqi officials at a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul.

On April 5, the Bergs filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending that their son was being held illegally by the US military. The next day Mr Berg was released. He told his parents he had not been mistreated.

The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he said he would come home by way of Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait.

Suzanne Berg said the family had been trying for weeks to learn where her son was but that federal officials had not been helpful.

“I went through this with them for weeks,” she said. “I basically ended up doing most of the investigating myself.”