Decapitating Americans

The tape of Berg's killing, entitled, "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American," showed five masked men. The CIA believes one, who read a statement and carried out the beheading, was al-Zarqawi. (source)
the title gives away the name of the butcher. some reasoning worthy of a genius there.

mainly gathered from the kuro5hin thread:
1. zarqawi is supposed to carry an artificial leg. the guy with the knife in the video seems to be rather fit for a one-legged fellow.
2. zarqawi is jordanian. the guy in the video apparently doesn't have a jordanian accent. of course his declaration could have been dubbed by someone else. in which case i ask myself what the cia was analysing anyway.
3. zarqawi is an expert in poisoning and chemical weapons and is not known for cutting off heads of people.
4. he is supposed to be the missing link between al-qaeda and iraq as powell said in february. german officials who have been investigating zarqawi for a while doubt this. zarqawi has also been blamed for the madrid explosions and yesterday's killing of the head of the iraqian governing council. without any proofs whatsoever as far as i know. this man is build up as the new bin laden by bush&co if you ask me.
5. zarqawi has a tatto on the left hand. no tatoo in the video though you can see his left hand.
6. why did he cover his face? he is widely known. because it wasn't him?

either the guys at the cia are totally dumb or they think the american people are f*cking stupid. or a mixture of both.

.. As I say, I didn't hear all of it, so it requires additional substantiation .. but look for more of that story to surface ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601

conspiracies are never obvious, aimurchie. but there are many questions here and they haven't been answered yet. neither by the press which never analysed this case in depth nor by bush&co.

April Fools!

Other strange things - the sound non-sync up, and yeah, hate to say it, but the blood ... just didn't seem right..

It's really not any one thing, though - just the confluence of multiple little details - that leaves me wondering. To be clear, I didn't approach the video LOOKING for signs of conspiracy, I'm NOT saying I've determined for myself that it IS some kind of conspiracy. Merely, still wondering. That guy on the left weirded me out more than anything.

*I am wondering if there are any facts about him at all.

Dude, Forensic Files, The New Detectives, and Cold Case Files

actually, that WOULD make for a good story. but i've yet to see a piece that investigates the signs one way or the other, or that even acknowledges that there SEEM to be holes and incongruities in what we've been told. i mean, nick berg was doing SOMETHING in between the time he apparently spent in that iraqi prison (which we already know the government has contradicted itself about) and his alleged beheading, right? has anybody even tried to find out what that something might have been? or whether his oklahoma al quaeda e-mail connection MIGHT have been something other than mere coincidence? has anybody done a in-depth interview with his dad? have people harassed his dad at all since his statements last week? these really aren't far-fetched questions. (though again, maybe somebody has delved into them, and i just missed it. if so, i'd really like to know where.)

I think that in due time that is a good idea, but allowing time for a parent to grieve for their murdered son is probably a healthy thing to do.

while riding in Seymour Hersch's car.

While being driven home by John Kerry, when the car goes off a bridge into a river/lake.

But it's quite different than saying that the CIA executed Berg and released a videotape of it.
And offering plastic chairs as evidence.

i only saw it on the net and assumed that this is to do with crap internet video format... is it the same on TV??

I don’t like talking about it, but I suppose this thread is the only place to, so I will admit that I watched most of the video too (unfortunately). I also thought something technical was amiss, and I saw it before reading any of this cover-up hoopla. I have worked with streaming video for the last 5 years, and the weird time sync has nothing to do with it being online. The source tape has definitely been edited in some way (overdubs, edits), and these changes are just harder to notice in the compressed/reduced quality of online video.

I’m not saying this makes it a fake, though. I don’t really buy any of these chair/tattoo/fat arguments to prove that “these are US troops in disguise!”. My guess is that this is a video made my Islamic extremists of some sort (although maybe not Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). And if he was indeed well-dead by the time of the beheading (which does seem to be the case, but I have no medical proof of this), then he might have just been killed in some other way and then decapitated later on video. I mean, even people as extreme as this might not have been able to stomach doing it while he was alive.

All that said, something here is still a bit fishy, and I can tell you that I am the last person to buy into conspiracy theories and all that…

Watching it was a difficult choice. I am still, in my mind, debating why I chose to watch it. I have many friends who basically agree with you. I guess I just wanted to make sure that something so horrible and stupefying actually did occur. It's not like I want to see countless images of death and destruction, but the crazy way the war and occupation has played out has been very controlled. The US government won't allow pictures of COFFINS to appear!
I don't have to live with daily carnage, so maybe I do need a reminder that other people - all over the world - deal with these things on a day to day basis.
Sudan. Right Now.

They showed the thing in its entirety on the news.

"Dude, that is TOTALLY disgusting that you watched that. I mean, think about the synapses that you've scarred by watching that; you might have used them to trap fairies. Oh man, I'm WASTED..."

x-post, I have no idea what Dan means.

1. "FUCK OFF"

2. "Thankfully not"

3. *do not post, ignore*

4. "FUCK OFF!"

My understanding is that no video has surfaced OTHER than that which was shown on the net -- that is, the tv stations that show it are all showing crappy Real Video.

...drop out.

i'm a bit sensitive about all this since there have been reporters in town all week camped outside the berg house, and the dad actually taught some people i know. i actually told one of them to "fuck off" when he asked me for a quote, which i was surprised by.

Also, not sure whether anybody has linked to this very good piece by Berg's dad, so here goes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1221515,00.html

Coalition forces apprehended four people in connection with the beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, a military coalition official said Friday, but have since released two of them.

The senior official said the two remaining might be released after more questioning. He provided no further details.

An Iraqi security official said the four men who decapitated Berg and videotaped it were members of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary organization, according to The Associated Press.

The AP reported the official believes the men were led by a nephew of Saddam Hussein, Yasser al-Sabawi. The nephew was not among those arrested, the official told the AP.

I prefer to know the full extent of humans; ability to do evil to others. This doesn't mean it doesn't disturb or sicken me, quite the opposite. But I'd prefer to see and know rather than turn my back.

FWIW I hadn't watched this video yet b/c I just wasn't interested. I caught enough of what had happened from the news clips I saw. But I'm going to try and watch it now b/c of the controversy over whether it's legit or not.

i almost puked afterwards, and i have had trouble watching with tv/movie violence ever since viewing it.

maybe that's a good thing.

http://i.imgur.com/BdxaVul.jpg

need a thread for listing who we think a thread was most likely to be bumped by

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24608499

Facebook lets beheading clips return to social network

Surely we have revives vmic non?

censorship is bad, mmmmkay?

The charity's leader Stephen Balkam told the BBC he was surprised by the latest development.

"I would have expected a heads-up on this," he said.

People are sharing this video on Facebook to condemn it. If the video were being celebrated, or the actions in it encouraged, our approach would be different.

"if exactly the same thing was happening but with some slightly different text underneath it this wd be a totally different situation"

i dunno, maybe add some koan about the difference between freedom of speech and not making your public discourse straight douchery

i am not exercised about this really, i just struggle with the mindset that wants to share videos of people being murdered on Facebook, presumably trawling for "Like"s

you still can't have nudity on there, right?

nudity will corrupt our youth, decapitation vids will make us strong

wasn't there a line about this in a Kipling poem?

"If you can keep your headless videos
When all around are losing theirs"

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