Nick Berg
Al-Qaeda With Another Snuff Film of An American

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Another snuff film publicity cry from Al-Qaeda, this gruesome footage, reminiscent of the murder of Daniel Pearl, surfaced 5-11-04.

I'm sure Fox News will convince it's viewers how this justifies why we're over there, and the other side will convince those on it's side this is exactly why we shouldn't be over there... and on and on.  Meanwhile, the guy is still dead, people on both sides in Iraq are still dying, and on and on it seems to go. 

The religion of "peace",  or more literally "submission" (the actual translation of the word Islam) isn't winning any converts on this end.  If you dare watch the video, the zeal with which these guys perform this killing, all the while chanting "Allah Akbar" ("All is Great" or "Allah Is The Greatest") is disturbing to say the least. 

True religious zealotry is pretty damn frightening to begin with.  Man, left to his own devices, is capable of a LOT of evil - but when man truly believes he is serving God by killing or doing harm, or that he is in some way honoring Him by doing so, there is really no limit to it.

Just below is an article about Nick, and below that some stills, a description and a transcript of the video.  At the very bottom, grisly pictures from the video.

If our enemy is willing to die for their cause
but we are not willing to kill for ours
who will win?

Who Was Nick Berg?

Nick Berg liked to play the saxophone. When he was at high school he was a member of the marching band and neighbors would hear him practising in the evenings at his parents' house, the music seeping out through the walls.

He was a friendly young man. His friends said he had an independent spirit. The 26-year-old liked science and he liked to travel. When he was at college he went to Ghana and helped build houses out of mud, returning home considerably thinner and with his pockets empty because he gave away most of his money. Now Mr Berg is dead, murdered in the most terrible way in a place thousands of miles from his home and light years away from the life that he led in the Philadelphia suburbs.

His family is heartbroken while his friends and neighbors, probably along with every other American, are sickened to the core. "It's a very somber mood," said one neighbor, Janet Conrad, yesterday. "He was very well liked. It's an unbelievable tragedy."

Mr Berg was beheaded in Iraq by extremists apparently closely linked to the senior al-Qa'ida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who took him hostage and then made a video of his execution which they posted on to an internet website. In a statement they read out before sawing off Mr Berg's head with a knife, the five masked men claimed they were killing the self-employed telecommunications engineer in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison. It is not certain whether Zarqawi, on whose head there is a $10m (£6m) reward, was among the killers.

Mr Berg's body - discovered dumped next to a road in Baghdad last Saturday - was due to be returned to the US last night or later today. But for many Americans, the coffin being flown to Dover Air Force base in Delaware will be bringing home not just the young man's remains but also the visceral horror of the war and the ongoing occupation by US forces.

"I was adamantly opposed to the war," admitted another of the Bergs' neighbors, who asked not to be named. "But here it is."

One senses that Mr Berg's murder has shocked America in a way perhaps more powerful even than the 700 US soldiers who have been killed in prosecuting President Bush's mission to oust Saddam Hussein. He, after all, was not a soldier but a communications engineer who had travelled to Iraq independently to try to secure contracts to repair radio antennas - another thing he used to practice in the back garden of his parents' home in West Whiteland, Pennsylvania.

He had supported the war and wanted to help rebuild Iraq, said his father, Michael, a retired schoolteacher, who was opposed to the invasion. "He's a helping guy," Mr Berg Snr told reporters: "He looked at it as bringing democracy to a country that didn't have it."

The brutality of Mr Berg's murder and very public way in which he was killed has stunned America and horrified his family, who collapsed sobbing when they learnt of the video's existence. While newspapers declined to print the most graphic of the images, they were available on websites such as the Drudge Report, where the execution, complete with Mr Berg's screams as the knife was placed to his throat, could be viewed.

One could argue that the pictures of Iraqi hospitals full of children maimed and killed by American and British cluster bombs are, in their own way, equally horrific, but that would miss the point.

Most Americans - even here in the middle-class suburbs of Philadelphia - never see, or never choose to see, images that portray the horror the war has wreaked on Iraqi civilians. But thanks to the same digital technology that ensured the pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib were dispatched around the world, Mr Berg's five killers carried out what was, in effect, a public execution.

As a result, the image of Mr Berg, wearing an orange jump suit and bound to a chair shortly before he was beheaded, will probably become as much a fixture of the iconography of Mr Bush's so-called war on terror as the photograph of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl shortly before he was beheaded by an al-Qa'ida gang in Pakistan in 2002.

"I just do not want to see those pictures," said Susan Mattern, 32, who used to catch the school bus with Mr Berg's brother and sister, and who organised a candlelit vigil of prayers and remembrance outside the family home on Tuesday night. She said: "There was nothing we could do. I just rang some people so that we could show our support. I know that if I was in their position I would want some support. I am so upset by what has happened. Yesterday I think I was in shock because it was so close to home but today it has really hit me.

"I just think that now we need to get the hell out of there. If they want to kill each other then let them."

While the US authorities have vowed to find Mr Berg's killers, his friends and family are also demanding an explanation as to what happened to him in Iraq after he was detained in early March by Iraqi police in the city of Mosul, who apparently questioned the authenticity of some of the documents he was carrying.

Mr Berg's father said that his son had told him in a telephone call he had been handed over to the US authorities who held him for 13 days without access to a lawyer and that he was questioned about what he was doing in Iraq. His family filed a lawsuit in the federal court in Philadelphia on 5 April asserting that he was being held by the military in violation of his civil rights. A day later, he was released.

He told his parents that the State Department had been unable to get him a flight home and that he was seeking instead to return overland. They last heard from him on 9 April.

A US spokesman in Baghdad said yesterday that Mr Berg had never been in American custody but that the US authorities had helped secure his release from the police cell. The spokesman said Mr Berg had been warned that it was unsafe in Iraq and that he should leave.

It is not clear where or when Mr Berg was kidnapped or killed but analysis of the videotape suggested there was a gap of several hours between the time the masked men read their statement and when he was actually beheaded.

It is impossible to predict the effect Mr Berg's execution will have on US public opinion in the weeks ahead as the Bush administration prepares to return sovereignty to Iraq by 30 June. Those opposed to the war will probably be hardened in their opinion that this was the sort of horror that should have anticipated from the outset. Others may argue that the savagery supports Mr Bush's purported mission to bring democracy to Iraq. One neighbor recommended the solution should be to drop a bomb.

But among the birdsong in the quiet neighborhood where Mr Berg grew up, most people's thoughts were simply of him and his family, of someone they knew and whose death had brought the horror of Iraq to their doorsteps.

A few yards from Mr Berg's parents' home, Kathy McCauley was busy with the youngest of her three children.

"A lot of the mothers were terribly distraught," she said. "I was just looking at my own children this morning, my daughter getting the bus to school and I was just thinking that he used to do that."

Questioning The Videos Authenticity (Links)
Buzz Flash
Angry Finger
Lies Upon Lies

The Video Itself

The video starts out with a title in Arabic - supposedly translating to "Sheik Abu...With His Own Hands".

Starts out with Nick Berg in a chair.  He introduces himself, tells where he is from, and names some members of his family - this part I guess was to aid in his identification, so there could be no doubt.

Cutting to the main shot - five hooded men in a row standing behind Nick who sits, bound - and the executioner reads a statement in Arabic that goes on for about 4 minutes, or just over that.  At the end of his reading he pulls out a giant machete type knife and yells, his cohorts begin chanting "Allah Akbar" and they seize upon Nick to hold him still as the ringleader cuts and saws, at first over horriffic screams by Nick Berg, until his head is severed, and held up for the camera.

Fade Out.

Transcript Of The Read Statement
Please Note - This Comes From The Homeland Security Dept

Translated from Arabic

A statement to the nation

The praise of Allah for all Muslims with his support and the humiliating of those who attempt to defeat Islam and who attack it and who entice the unbelievers with their cunning.

The one that appreciated the days countries with its justice and the prayer and the greeting on from above the Islam lighthouse by its sword as for after :

The Islamic nation

You rejoice at the first signs of the dawn that have started that have granted the wind of triumph. Allah was benevolent to us in Al Fallujah, granting us victory

On one of the days of Allah and that was known to Allah alone

The Islamic nation

Does any excuse for waiting remain? How the free Muslim sleeps, with his eyelids closed.

And he sees that Islam is slaughtered and can be seen bleeding its dignity

And the shameful pictures and the news of the evil humiliation of the Islam people men and women in Ghareb 's father prison then where the jealousy and where the zeal and where the anger about the Allah's religion and where the jealousy for the Muslims sanctities and where the revenge for the honors of Muslims and Muslims is in the crosses prisons .

As for you are the Islam clerics then to Allah we complain about you, you see that Allah have founded the argument on you by the Islam young man who humiliated the strongest force in the date then broke its nose and destroyed its pride

We came to you that you learn from them the reliance meanings and derive from their doing the lessons of sacrifice and redemption to when you remain as the women you master only the slapping language and know only the way of wail and weeping

Then this appeals the world freemen and this it begs Kofi Annan and a third begs Amr Moussa and fourth he demands peaceful demonstrations and as if they did not hear to his saying ( ( O you the prophet incited the believers to the fight ) )

You were fed up with the fight of the conferences and the oratorical battles ohm came to you that you take the jihad way and carry the sword that sent by it the prophets master

And we beg from you that you do not be involved as usual in the denial of what will do it satisfaction of the Americans

He has ordered the prophet - peace be upon him - and he is master the merciful are with the slitting of the necks of some prisoners and their slow killing

And for us it is an example and a good example

As for you, the Roman dog Bush, I hope you are displeased and we wait for you with God's Help tough days and you and your soldiers today who tred Iraq's land will regret it.

And she dared in it to the Muslims fever

And another message to traitor Pervez Musharraf then we say to him that we in wait for your meeting with your soldiers

We demand of the American and will take revenge for the blood of our brothers in and Iraq and elsewhere

And as for you and the Americans soldiers wife then we say that we offered to the American administration this prisoner in exchange for some of the prisoners in Abu Ghareb prison but they refused

Then we say but if the dignity of Muslims and Muslims in Abu Ghareb prison and others is worth theur blood and souls

we tell you to know that the coffins will arrive to you one coffin after another, as your people are slaughtered in this way.........

Then you kill the polytheists where you find them and you take them and count them and place them where they can be seen.

Allah is the greatest and the honour to Allah and to its messenger and to the militants

And our last claim is that the praise of Allah is the Lord of the Worlds

Abu Mus'ab Alzrqawy
Prince of Al Tawhid group and jihad
Iraq
22 Rabi I 1425
*******************
11/5/2004

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