Came upon this at another Forum site, and thought it was interesting:

The story can be found here.







The list of "enemies" on FreeRepublic's website can be found here.

Michael Berg's name can be found about halfway down, listed as:
Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc.,
West Chester, PA

Now, I will grant you that BreakForNews is more than a little "conspiracy-theory-ish" on this story. However, FreeRepublic is known for their highly activist, right-wign stand on issues, and are not above taking the names on such a list and mailing it to the FBI, CIA, and others, if they think that it will help their cause.

The questions for debate are:

1. Could this list have been the reason that Nick Berg was detained by Iraqi Police and Coalition forces?

2. If so, does FreeRepublic bear any responsibility for his death?

Plenty of conspiracy theories on all this stuff. What's new?

Anyway....

Iraqi police say that they arrested Berg because he had an Israeli stamp on his passport. Once they found out he was a Jew, it probably didn't help him any either. Common problem in backward Arab countries.

So, I find it extremely unlikely that your common Iraqi policeman would be combing American right-wing websites, looking for lists of so-called "enemies" of the Iraq War and then actually find one of those people, like a needle in a haystack.

But, hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists before!

I've been trying to figure out just what in the world Berg was doing in Iraq in the first place. Been reading quite a lot of different articles all over the place, and I have a theory of what may have happened. I don't have the links to all of the articles I've used to piece together the story, but if someone wants them, I could probably find a few. First of all, I read (I think in the Denver Post) that Berg and his father disagreed over Iraq and Nick Berg's support for President Bush, so I don't think anything political happened. From The Independant.....



I saw an interview with one of Nick's business partners yesterday on MSNBC and that guy said Berg had asked him to go along to Iraq with him. The guy refused, saying it was too dangerous. Berg apparently didn't think so and headed off over there looking for work. He had no contract, no sponsoring agency or company, and thus no security services. That's nuts. I haven't figured out how he even got into Iraq in the first place. In story after story I've read from a variety of different news sources, the theme of Nick Berg thinking he could take care of himself was repeated. When he was detained by the Iraqi authorities at the checkpoint in Mosul, they probably took him into custody for his own protection. Perhaps the family's confusion over the US holding him was because apparently the FBI talked to him while he was in custody wanting to know what he was doing in Iraq all alone and trying to encourage him to get the hell out of there. There was apparently someone referenced as "an American diplomat" who was working with Berg and trying to get him to leave Iraq. This diplomat even arranged for a flight from Baghdad to Jordan, but Berg refused saying he preferred instead to drive south to Kuwait and leave from there. He thought, according to this diplomat that the drive to the airport was too dangerous. So, he disappeared and nobody knew where he was.

Why was he there in the first place, Iraq is an extremely dangerous place? I know a couple of verteran international journalists who have been in a whole lot of places in their career and they have told me that Iraq is about as dangerous a place as they've ever seen. They never went anywhere without a whole lot of security and then there were places they simply wouldn't go. What in the world was this 26 year old guy doing running around the countryside? Totally nuts. Perhaps an answer might be from this article in the Denver Post. From that article...



Crazy way to make a living..... He might have been better off if he had stayed in Iraqi custody until they could convince him to get the hell out of dodge. At least he'd be alive today.

Gee, maybe if you'd read the actual article.....

Nobody said Iraqi police were combing American right-wing websites. What was postulated, was that someone on FreeRepublic may have sent Berg's name and company info to the FBI, saying that they should be investigated.

If the FBI did do this, and found Berg had travelled to Iraq, might they not have passed this info along to Iraqi police, and military in Iraq, asking them to be on the lookout for, and detain Berg, if they came across him?

Again, I'm not saying any of it actually happened. I just find it a curious coincidence, that's all.

Aquilla,

Added to that:

'CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports on what is turning into a bizarre mystery with a connection to 9/11.

U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before 9/11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password. '

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/11/...ain616842.shtml

This entire article has many twists and turns. That the emails from Beth Payne, US consular in Iraq, to the family say that Berg is safely in US custody, the government saying the emails were 'false' that they never had him, and that Berg thought it was too dangerous to go by taxi to the airport but was going to travel overland to Kuwaiit or Jordan to go back home?
Plus a two week detention that didnt seem to shake him in the least, he told his family he was treated fairly but did not accept a flight home or in one story told his family the US could not get him a flight out. Add to that both the US and the Iraqi police deny ever having detained him, but the FBI says they questioned him 3 times in 2 weeks. Its positively creepy.

I said in another post, the coincidences are too many- Password stolen by a suspected terrorist, Berg puts himself into a dangerous war zone all alone, he is detained for 2 weeks by someone who wont admit it, released and then kidnapped within 3 days and subsequently chosen to be killed in a most gruesome way....wearing what appears to be a US issue orange prisoner suit.....either Nick Berg is the unluckiest man in the world or something is very strange about this picture.

Artemise,

I don't know if we have a "best of" category for the "understatement of the year" or not, but if we do, this comment would make my list. It is indeed a very strange story and the more that comes out, the stranger it gets.. I"d still like to know just how in the world he got into Iraq, and I heard tonight on TV that he not only got in once, but twice! He apparently came home for a brief time, then returned early this year. Now there's all kinds of rumors about him having an Israeli stamp on his passport, a copy of the Koran written in Arabic or Farsi and other things.... This has gone from the strange to the bizarre.

I really do wonder just what in the world Berg was doing over there.

Edited to add a couple of more things I heard tonight from a reporter at TIME magazine.....

Apparently, Nick Berg was walking around Baghdad, taking public transportation and the like and generally acting like he was in NYC or something. He was reportedly a pretty big guy and would have stood out as an obvious westerner in Iraq. From my discussions with journalists who have been there, this kind of activity is completely crazy. It's like he was painting a sign on his back, "Kidnap me". One does have to wonder just what he was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all......

Correct about having returned home once, and the Israeli stamp, it appears:


http://csmonitor.com/2004/0513/dailyUpdate.html

Plus:

http://www.dailylocal.com/site/news.cfm?ne..._id=17782&rfi=6

As far as the Quran and anti-jewish books...its NewsMax and they site no evidence of this or link, I hold little creedance until I see it somewhwere else. Besides that, I suspect disinformation tactics. Berg was a Jew after all. Aquilla, if you have it from somewhere else please be forthcoming.

There is one more wierd coincidence:
He helped set up electronics equipment at the Republican National Convention in 2000. After working for a Texas company, Nick Berg went into business for himself in West Chester, Phila.
http://www.dailylocal.com/site/news.cfm?ne..._id=17782&rfi=6

Berg was also in Ghana (by reports from his family) at one point, another Muslim dominated country, not Uganda as Newsmax erroneously reports (jeez, Im sick of journalistic laziness, dont they know Ghana from Uganda FGSake! or is it purposeful misleading?). I havent seen the year.

However the plot is thick. I suspect he was a spy, I just cant figure out for whom.

I saw the above in some of the earlier news reports but I've noticed other news reports are a little more descriptive about the ironic Moussaoui connection:

Chicago Tribune, 14 May 2004

Edited to add:


Perhaps he was in both? (I don't know.) I came across the following statement from Cornell University concerning Nick E. Berg as their former student:

Cornell University

I wanted to add a bit of info on Prometheus. Surely this name was not picked randomly:

Prometheus, a figure from Greek mythology.
Prometheus -- his Greek name means forethought -- was a Titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity, initiating all the arts of human civilization but angering the Gods, especially Zeus. In various versions of the myth, Prometheus was also held to have been the creator of humankind, molding human beings from clay, and guarding humanity against the angry Gods. Another thread, and this one clearly represented in Percy Bysshe Shelley's drama, Prometheus Unbound, is that the Titans and Gods were equally matched in their internecine war until Prometheus struck a deal with Zeus to throw his power on the side of the Gods in return for a pledge that Zeus would free humankind from servitude. After Zeus won, he reneged on his promise and chained Prometheus, along with the other Titans, for perpetuity.

For his actions, however they are construed, Prometheus was severely punished by Zeus. In the version related by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, the most influential account from classical antiquity, Zeus chained Prometheus to Mount Caucasus and set upon him an eagle (in other versions a vulture) who each day ate away at his liver which would be regenerated by night.

I also noted the Prometheus Methods name with interest, recalling Greek Mythology stories from my youth. The version I remember had Prometheus fashioning humans out of clay while his brother, Epimetheus, fashioned all the world's animals out of clay. There was a special urn with gifts to bestow upon the creations but Epimetheus finished first and gave all the gifts away before Prometheus finished modeling humans; so while animals had all the advantages of sight, sound, reflexes, etc., humans were dull and plodding creatures that shivered in the night and suffered all the disadvantages. Prometheus so pitied his poor creations that he broke the rules and stole fire from the Gods to deliver to humanity, so that they might have warmth and light in the night and learn how to cook meals. Zeus was enraged, but relented when the humans intended to sacrifice a large bull in the God's honor. The bull was cut into two pieces and a priest invited Zeus to come down and choose the preferred half; but Prometheus hated to see his creations waste their hard earned food resources, so he secretly counseled the priest to put all the worst parts (bones and sinews) into the better looking half of the bull, and to hide all the best cuts of meat inside the inferior looking half. Zeus of course chose the better looking half, and at first, the smell of the burning sacrifice wafting up to Mount Olympus appeased his anger over the stolen fire; but later he found out about the ruse and became infuriated with Prometheus. He then chained him to a rock in the underworld, where an Eagle would come and eat out his liver every day, only to grow back every night due to his immortality. As a sign of respect for Prometheus and what he did to benefit mankind, humanity adopted the practice of wearing a ring on the finger, symbolizing the bonds that kept Prometheus chained to the rock in Hades.

Thats as best as I can remember the story of Prometheus; its been more than 20 years since I've read any of the Greek Myths. I am sure there are lots of different versions, depending on the source material you read.

What to take from that regarding the business in question - I don't know. Perhaps "Prometheus Methods" was picked for a name on the notion that the Berg family was into altruistic concepts like bringing fire (communications) to disadvantaged peoples (the third world) in spite of divine resistance (who?). Abject speculation on my part - I have absolutely no idea.

The problem with these kinds of rumors is that they tend to make a life of their own. I have heard a number of journalists reference these documents in discussions on television and in questions in press conferences, but I think they were trying to ascertain whether it was true or not. The TIME Magazine reporter said she had heard them, but had no evidence that such documents existed. It's a difficult thing for a journalist, particularly in these days of the Internet. They hear or read a rumor, can't substantiate it, so how do they handle it? Report it as a rumor and have their words taken out of context and used as "proof", or not report it and risk being incomplete in their story. Difficult decsion.



That thought crossed my mind as well, but if he was a spy, he was a REALLY BAD spy from all that I've read and heard. I wouldn't think that he would have a hope in hell of penetrating any terrorist/insurgent organization looking the way he did and with his lack of fluency in the language. (That was confirmed by people who knew him. He spoke a little arabic, but not much).

However, since we are in speculation mode here, I'd like to advance a possible explanation for his actions for others to consider. This is just a hypothetical, I have no evidence to support it.

Could it be that he was looking to get kidnapped?

Pretty weird, but he's been described as something of an "adventurer" and he'd been in some pretty difficult situations before. Could he possibly have thought that he could get kidnapped by someone, make all kinds of headlines in the US over it, then talk his way out of it? Then, he comes home, writes a book, does the talk show circuit, gets his 15 minutes, makes a ton of money and lives happily every-after? I don't mean to disparage his death, it was horrible, but could something like this be possible?

I doubt somehow that Berg's murder was directly related to the Freeper hit list, but his father's activities could well have had something to do with his questioning by the FBI in Mosul.

Curioser and curioser: among the sites which Nick Berg was inspecting during his travels was... Abu Ghraib. From his e-mail mid January: "The worst site I have been on was the Abu Gharib I tower, a 320 meter (1040') guyed tower in the main broadcast complex for Baghdad, near the Abu Gharib political prisons."

I'm not about to don a tin-foil hat, but there is definitely more to this story than meets the eye...

You know Aquilla, this is sort of looking at least case scenario instead of best case scenario.

With Prometheus Methods looking more like a cover operation, Berg being in Ghana, having wired the Republican National Convention in 2002, previous password problems with a suspected and detained terrorist, Isreali stamp on passport, a decline of transport back to the US, several detentions and questioning, which NOONE admits to in full, immediate kidnapping and ultimate death by god knows who, only 6 days after a US flagrancy and scandal....I dont think Nick Berg was trying to do a 'tell all' book.

Besides the Admin has been curiously silent on what could have been an issue to stake the nation on anti-Islam and back the war against 'barbaric peoples', but it didnt happen, because somehow it got way too messy and basically they have let it drop, which is astounding , considering the gruesomeness of the ordeal and its possibilities as pro-war propaganda.

Just like the few Osama videos, this one has been left out there, and dropped from discussion. Like the (fake) one where Osama appears to be a hippopotamus in compared to his gaunt normal stature. Never debunked, never reported as real.

I know that intelligence agencies are seeing the same things, and more because they have better technology, as I am seeing in this video, and many things in that video are misleading, a culmination of an event that is at least partially a lie.

As was Nick Bergs life. To what extent is being suspectly 'minimised' by the Admin, instead of maximized to their benefit. Why arent we hearing about an examination of the video and what it entails...no its being dropped as a non importance. Strange. Youd think this could cause major upheaval.
Perhaps because several news agencies saw a clear 'wag the dog' scenario and have already reported it as such?

WHy havent we seen this video authenticated? Why is there no new mention of it, especially when I can see the obvious problems with it?

Nick Berg was a total idiot or a spy. Well, theres really only one conclusion, considering the scrambling cover-up of his detention. Who for, remains to be seen.

if you go Here (read this before you continue) there is a rant about how the Nick Berg killing was all a conspiracy and several "legitimate reasons" why this is so.

I have 1 thing he missed and some things to disprove his "facts"

go Here and you can see that the man accused of killing Berg, al-Zarqawi was killed in a bombing.

Dissproving theories
The white chair at the US Base is the same one in the Berg video: White plastic lawn chairs can be found anywhere, it's incredibly stupid of him to overlook that fact.

He's wearing an orange jumpsuit, like the kind prisoners wear: if you look closely you can see that he's wearing silk. Our prison systems aren't issuing silk to prisoners.

The killers are wearing bullet-proof vests: THEY'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREEKING WAR! Why is it so hard to believe that iraqis would wear body armor?

The killers were fat: I've watched the video's played on CNN and FOX News and I've seen planty of fat Iraqis.

I will come back and edit this list later but I need to go now.

The Freepers like to think they are important enough for people to take them seriously, but even Rush and Hannity have turned on them lately. I seriously doubt the FBI would pay any attention to them unless they have them on a watch list as a hate group. Also, doug from upland (iirc, that's the one who made that post) is fairly well known as an idiot. The freepers like him, but he's the butt of many jokes elsewhere.

IMO the Free Republic had nothing to do with it. The fact that he was an American Jew with a stamp from Israel on his passport was no doubt the key factor. Consider that the only other person beheaded in Iraq was David Pearl – also an American Jew.

I find it odd that the prisoner abuse issue gets so mush press and this story is buried. Is it because there is no “play” for Kerry in this incident. Our biased press at work!