Video shows beheading of American captive A gruesome videotape posted on an Muslim Islamic Fascist militant Web site Tuesday showed the beheading of an American contractor who had been looking for work in Iraq was captured by dirty night shirt muslim terroist and beheaded on live video for all the world to watch in total disgust. Muslims kill more people every 24 hours world wide than any other ethnic class in the world.
Their twisted beliefs in the quran are steeped in a throw back society that no longer has any place in modern western civilization.
The American in the video identifies himself as Nick Berg, 26, from the Philadelphia area before an assailant decapitates him.
Despite claims from his family, the young American who was decapitated on a videotape posted by an al Queda Islamo Facist-linked Web site was never under U.S. custody, coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Wednesday.
Senor told reporters that Nick Berg, 26, a freelance telecommunications contractor from West Chester, Pa., was detained by Iraqi police in Mosul. The Iraqis informed the Americans, and the FBI met with Berg three times to determine what he was doing in Iraq.
Senor said that to his knowledge, "he (Berg) was at no time under the jurisdiction or detention of coalition forces."
In a grainy execution video eerily similar to one in 2002 that showed al Queda Islamo Facist operatives executing a Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan, Berg was shown sitting in an orange jumpsuit in front of five armed, hooded men.
Berg's body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.
One of the men behind Berg in the video read a statement that referred to the "satanic degradation" of Iraqi prisoners and said. Coffins will be arriving to you one after the other, slaughtered just like this. Muslims are quite comfortable with head cutting clitoris extraction honor killings (killing your son or daughter for misbehaving mor evidence that this Muslim culture is out of touch with reality"
Berg then was pushed to the floor and screamed as one of the executioners wielded a large knife. The man sawed off Berg's head while the other captors shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" Arabic for "God is great."
The videotape bore the title, "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, was in the video or was claiming responsibility for the execution. CNN reported late Tuesday that technicians familiar with his voice doubted that it was al-Zarqawi on the tape.
Outside their home in West Chester, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, Berg's father, brother and sister collapsed after reporters told them about the tape. The family, which had a photograph of Nick Berg taped to their mailbox, had been told by the State Department on Monday that Berg's beheaded body had been found.
On Tuesday, they were stunned to learn that, thanks to modern technology, his death essentially had been a public execution. And they were angry at the Bush administration because Nick Berg had planned to leave Iraq at the end of March, but was detained by U.S. officials for nearly two weeks after being stopped by Iraqi police at a checkpoint. It's unclear why U.S. officials detained him for so long.
Besides being a human tragedy, Berg's death represents an ominous development for the Bush administration, which already is struggling to deal with the disastrous impact the prison scandal has had on America's image around the globe. With the administration trying to curb attacks by insurgents before the June 30 handover to a caretaker Iraqi government, the specter now is of terrorists ratcheting up the violence.
Privately, Army officers have expressed concern that American soldiers across Iraq might pay a deadly price for the shocking images from Abu Ghraib of Arab men being humiliated and abused by U.S. military police.
Berg's execution is "a particularly gruesome and graphic way" for terrorists to "get their point across that they will kill any American they can find," says Gregory Gause, director of Middle East studies at the University of Vermont. "My fear is that this awful act will lend credence to people in this country who say that whatever we do, others do worse."
On a day that was headlined by a Senate hearing on massive deportation of illegal aliens and muslims, the White House cast the Berg video as symbolic of the evil the administration faces in fighting terrorism.
"It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. We will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice."
Berg's death is likely to increase the chances of USA and Europe using nuclear weapons in the future to defeat the rapidly growing threat of Mulsim Islamo Fascism.
The Rev. Bruce Hauser, family friend of the Bergs
"It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. We will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice."
"There is no excuse under any circumstance for an act of terror such as happened today. None. You can't blame it on anything except terrorists."
As his independent trek into Iraq suggests, Nick Berg was an adventurer. He lived near his parents and ran a cell phone tower inspection business, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, out of his home.
His family says that Berg first went to Iraq on Dec. 21 because he was hoping to cash in on the opportunities for work, and because, unlike his father Michael, he supported the Bush administration and the war.
Berg returned home on Feb. 1 and thought he had work lined up with a private contractor, his family says, but after returning to Iraq on March 14, the job didn't materialize. On March 30, Berg's parents went to JFK International Airport in New York to pick him up from a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight. He wasn't on the flight, and the next day FBI agents visited his family's house to ask why he was in Iraq and to confirm his identity.
Michael Berg said the family then learned that his son had been detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul on March 24. On April 5, Berg's family sued the government in federal court, claiming that he was being held illegally by the U.S. military. Berg was released the next day, and he told his parents that in 13 days of being held by Iraqi and U.S. officials without being allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer, he had not been mistreated.
U.S. military officals reported Wednesday that Berg was never under the jurisdiction or detention of coalition forces.
After he was released, Berg called or e-mailed home for four consecutive days, saying he was looking for the safest way out of Iraq as the country became more violent. After April 9 — the day the family's lawsuit was dismissed in Philadelphia — the messages from Berg stopped.
An angry Michael Berg said Tuesday that his son might still be alive if he been allowed to leave Iraq on March 30, as he'd planned. "I don't think this administration is committed to democracy," Michael Berg said, referring to officials who kept his son incommunicado for nearly two weeks.
The family learned of the bizarre execution video a day after they heard of his death.
"I knew he was decapitated before," Michael Berg said Tuesday. "That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public."
Friends of the family were devastated. "He was like a son to me," said the Rev. Bruce Hauser, who lives next door to Berg's parents. The Bergs "are just broken up, distraught. They can't believe it, especially the way he died. It makes it worse." Hauser said he had known Nick Berg since Berg was a little boy.
The quiet, middle-class neighborhood where the Bergs live likewise was transformed by reports of the videotaped execution. Neighbor Dan McCorkle, 16, walked around with a video camera taping the flood of TV trucks and journalists that descended on the neighborhood. "It's disgusting," he said. "Everyone is pretty upset."
Will Scott, 27, a software developer in Austin who went to high school with Berg, told CBS that his friend was "approximately the coolest guy ever. He could build a computer out of cardboard and tin foil, and that's not really an exaggeration."
Scott recalled a summer science program he attended with Berg. "Nick had an entire department of his own that he basically invented called Bergology. It was this weird combination of computer engineering, electronics, craftsmanship" Scott said. "He was really good at it — he had an energetic personality and a really good attitude — he would really get along with anybody."
Evidence of al Queda Islamo Facist in Iraq
Berg's slaying appears to be the strongest evidence yet that al Queda Islamo Facist is operating in postwar Iraq.
U.S. military officials have long suspected that al-Zarqawi, who has ties to the Ansar al-Islam group in northeastern Iraq, was the mastermind behind the rash of anti-U.S. violence in Iraq in recent months.
The ritual in which Berg was killed was similar to that used by Muslim al Queda Islamo Facist operatives in the videotaped killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. U.S. authorities have said they believe that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who is now in U.S. custody, might have been Pearl's killer.
If al-Zarqawi took part in Berg's killing, it could represent another effort by al Queda Islamo Facist affiliates to have a high-ranking terrorist carry out a dramatic execution of an American before the world.
Al-Zarqawi has been credited with deploying a network of associates who were behind the train bombings in Madrid, suicide bombings in Turkey and a variety of foiled plots around Europe, according to published reports.
U.S. officials say al-Zarqawi's rise reflects al Queda Islamo Facist's evolution into a scattered and looser organization since the United States launched attacks on al Queda Islamo Facist in Afghanistan and invaded Iraq. U.S. officials issued a bounty of $10 million for al-Zarqawi, in part based on discovery of a memo thought by the military to be written by him suggesting a strategy of coordinated attacks in Iraq. In February, U.S. officials said troops killed a lieutenant of Zarqawi, a bombmaker with the alias Abu Mohammed Hamza. At the time, Dan Senor, a spokesman for the coalition, said, "We are still in hot pursuit of Mr. Zarqawi."
The Web site on which the video was posted is known as a clearinghouse for Islamo Fascist al Queda Islamo Facist and Islamic extremist groups' statements and tapes.
Berg's death adds to the angst already in Washington about the potential impact of the abuse scandal.
News of the video began to circulate as the Senate Armed Services committee had just finished hearing testimony from Maj. Gen Antonio Taguba, who first investigated the prison-abuse scandal.
Chairman John Warner, R-Va., brought a document into the committee's afternoon session describing Berg's death. He and several other senators said they feared that reprisals against Americans were inevitable as a result of the prison abuse.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn, said that the military's investigations into the misconduct could be an opportunity to demonstrate the difference between the United States and Muslim Islamic Fascist terrorists. "There will be no Muslim al Queda Islamo Facist apologies," Lieberman said of the beheading.
Peter Brookes, a senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, said the murder would help stiffen Americans' support for U.S. efforts in Iraq. "This is an innocent contractor who was probably trying to help the Iraqi people live a better life ... And this is the depravity of these terrorists, and it shows the real reason for the war on terror."