Posted on 05/13/2004 9:13:32 PM PDT by kristinn
Posted on Thu, May. 13, 2004
Berg's father demands answers from Bush BY NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN Knight Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - The day he buried his son, Nick Berg's father angrily lashed out at President Bush - and said he had a question for him:
"I would like to ask him if it's true that al-Qaeda offered to trade my son's life for another person," Michael Berg told a small group of reporters early Thursday morning outside his West Chester home.
"And if that is true, well, I need that information," said Berg, a self-proclaimed peace activist who has marched against the Iraq war. "I think that the people of the United States of America need to know what the fate of their sons and daughters might be in the hands of the Bush administration."
In the video showing Nick Berg's decapitation, one of the masked men read a statement that Berg had been offered in exchange for some Iraqi prisoners. U.S. officials deny that.
Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death.
"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," he said, shortly after posting a "War is not the Answer" sign on his front lawn. "The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."
Hours after his strong remarks, Michael Berg said goodbye to his son in a private burial ceremony attended only by family members. A private memorial service will be held Friday.
In other developments Thursday:
• The CIA confirmed that, according to voice analysis, terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the masked man who beheaded Nick Berg in the video that was beamed around the world on the Internet earlier this week.
• While U.S. officials continue to deny that Berg ever had been in U.S. military custody, Michael Berg produced e-mails from Beth Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq, dated April 1, that said his son was being detained by the military.
• An alternative, left-leaning blog, www.breakfornews.com, posted a story theorizing that the Iraqi police had detained Nick Berg because his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., and his father had been named on a list of "enemies" of the Iraq occupation in March.
• More information - and theories - surfaced about why the Iraqi police had detained Berg and what happened to him after he lost contact with his parents on April 9. Meanwhile, in Mosul, police chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khair al-Barhawl insisted his department had never arrested Berg and had no knowledge of the case.
• Luke Lorenz, one of Berg's best friends, got a Web site - www.nickberg.org - up and running in honor of his slain friend.
Late Wednesday, Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., sent a letter on behalf of the Berg family to Secretary of State Colin Powell seeking answers to the puzzling questions surrounding Nick Berg's final days in Iraq.
Thursday, Michael Berg addressed a number of questions that have surfaced in recent days, including why his son had refused offers by the FBI and the military to fly him home.
Berg said his son may have turned down the offer because he'd "had enough of the FBI." Payne, the U.S. consular officer, also told the family she'd try to get him on a military flight out of Baghdad, he said.
"I told my son this when I spoke to him on the telephone for the last time ever on April 9, and he said, `I don't take too seriously anything that the State Department promises,' " Berg said, just before taking off on his morning bicycle ride.
"I don't think he was doubting their sincerity but their ability in the situation. And it was only a promise for a try so that didn't give us a whole lot of confidence."
Berg also said that the FBI told the Iraqi police to hold his son after spotting him riding in a cab in Mosul late at night.
"The Iraqis arrested him," Berg said. "He was doing nothing wrong. He was not breaking the curfew. He was in a taxicab. It was late at night. They were suspicious. I don't blame them for that. What I do blame them for is detaining him for 13 days without due process."
Thursday, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that another reason that Nick Berg had been held for so long was that the FBI was checking into some contact he may have had with terrorists while he attended the University of Oklahoma.
Michael Berg said his son had attended the university and had been taking a course at a remote campus, near the airport, and had to take a bus to get there.
"Some terrorist people - which no one knew were terrorists at the time; they were just going as students - were also taking that bus," Berg said. "And someone asked him basically if he could use his computer. And he did. College kids did it all the time. And it turns out this guy was a terrorist and he used my son's e-mail address - amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to.
"He was not a friend of my son's, not even an acquaintance," Berg said. "Just a guy sitting next to him on the bus. The FBI was satisfied with that."
A senior law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Nick Berg had volunteered information about the 2002 investigation when he was detained in Iraq. The official said that an e-mail address traced to Berg had been used by an unidentified individual with purported connections to terrorism.
The investigation showed that Berg had never met the suspect individual and had not given the e-mail address to that person. Investigators concluded that Berg's e-mail address had been spread among dozens of people with links to the university.
The suspect individual appears to have been acquainted with Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaeda adherent now in federal custody and awaiting trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks, the official said.
Moussaoui attended flight school in Norman, Okla., home of the university.
Also Thursday, Michael Berg said he has been a member of International ANSWER - Act Now to Stop War & End Racism - for the past year and has participated in several anti-occupation marches. He said he planned to march on the Pentagon with the group, which is calling for Bush to bring the troops home now, on June 5.
The story on the alternative blog site theorized that information about the Bergs and the "enemies" list made its way to the FBI and, eventually, into the hands of those in Iraq who track or harass anti-war activists entering the country.
The list appeared on www.freerepublic.com, a neo-conservative, pro-war Web site, on March 7. It posted questions from an unidentified reporter from Salon.com Thursday.
Berg said his son was a supporter of Bush up until he died.
Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst, said it's clear that both liberals and conservatives are trying to use Nick Berg's gruesome death to advance their causes.
"The Right seized upon his terrible death to try to reverse the momentum of horror over prisoners being abused," he said. "They immediately seized upon that to say, `You see. These are the people we're dealing with.'
"And now the Left is trying to say he was arrested because he was harassed because of his father's anti-war ideologies," he said. "Both sides are trying to use any scrap or evidence they can to discredit the other side. This whole tragic affair has gotten caught up in the controversy over the war. And it's probably not going to end anytime soon."
The danger facing American contractors in Iraq like Nick Berg is likely to continue, said Kathryn Rosenblum, editor of the Iraq Reconstruction Report, a newsletter devoted to Iraq business prospects.
"It's an incredibly risky place," she said Thursday, estimating that 30,000 to 50,000 Americans, Iraqis and Third World nationals are working there now. She said she's aware of 60 American workers who've been killed in Iraq and a handful who are missing.
At a ceremony Thursday in Center City, former Army Specialist and POW Shoshana Johnson said that Berg's death should be a warning to all non-military personnel over there.
"Get civilians out of Iraq," she said, after accepting the Freedom Award at Citizen Crime Commission's Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.
Philadelphia Daily News staff writers Barbara Laker and Simone Weichselbaum and Daily News wire services contributed to this report.
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Where's the evidence to support that statement? Just because his wacked out dad said it, doesn't make it true. I doubt it is true.
Despicable. There really are no words strong enough to describe the vileness of this man. Who the hell does he think was wielding the knife while his son screamed for his life? Who literally slaughtered his son in a vastly less humane way than that used to slaughter farm animals? Who used his son as an object to score political points? And who is aiding his son's killers in scoring those political points? Lastly, who is using the slaughter of his son as a tool to recruit more killers who, in turn, will slaughter other innocents — most especially Jewish innocents? And who is aiding his son's killers in achieving their recruitment goals?
He's not whacked, he's wicked.
To say that is to excuse the Left for its actions. That, I will never do, and the Michael Savages of the world do a great disservice in using their radio "megaphones" to provide the Left with such an excuse. Leftists are NOT mentally ill. They are ideologically driven.
Actually, if I have the story straight, the father and Nick's siblings were out on the lawn talking to reporters when one of the latter asked if the family had seen the video. The family had been informed that Nick was beheaded, but it was the release of the video that caused the father to sink to the lawn in tears. He was upset the video was made public.
On the other hand, knowing what we do now about daddy Berg's desire to use his son's death for political purposes, your suspicions about the "grief on the lawn" scene are valid.
Reporters have got to be the tackiest form of life on this earth.
After reading the article, I still have most of the same questions. He disreguarded his security, went around by himself to the dismay of his Iraqi partner, and looked like a marine in civies.
They weren't getting much work. He went home once when he was not finding work. But he went back? Using what for money?
The best thing that happened to him was getting arrested, and offered a ride home. He refused. He seems very similar to those "Human Shields" we all have so much respect for. Except he actually paid the price.
DK
Well gee, I guess we should have traded him for 19 guys who had boxcutters handy.
Berg said he did not blame the terrorists for his son's violent death.
This man is insane or demonically oppressed. I am not kidding or exaggerating.
"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," he said, shortly after posting a "War is not the Answer" sign on his front lawn. "The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."
Put him and his family on a plane to Saudi Arabia right now. Make them live acroos the street from a Wahabi madrassa.
Berg said his son may have turned down the offer because he'd "had enough of the FBI." Payne, the U.S. consular officer, also told the family she'd try to get him on a military flight out of Baghdad, he said.
Sure, when I'm in a warzone, I'm always willing to let petty irritations keep me from getting home alive.
"And someone asked him basically if he could use his computer. And he did. College kids did it all the time. And it turns out this guy was a terrorist and he used my son's e-mail address - amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to.
I know Ashcroft said basically the same thing, but I don't let anybody use my school account. Anyone who does is an idiot.
Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst, said it's clear that both liberals and conservatives are trying to use Nick Berg's gruesome death to advance their causes.
Yeah, libs like his dad. I guess it's easier to use your kid as a political prop before you put him in the ground.
"The Right seized upon his terrible death to try to reverse the momentum of horror over prisoners being abused," he said. "They immediately seized upon that to say, `You see. These are the people we're dealing with.'
Oh, I'm sorry, could the nice CNN man point out what is invalid with our argument? It was not right, what those twits did to those prisoners, but after a week of people drawing moral equivalence between us and the terrorists because of it, the berg execution brought home how unlike them we are.
"And now the Left is trying to say he was arrested because he was harassed because of his father's anti-war ideologies," he said.
And blaming an American government for the actions of an al-Qaeda thug.
The danger facing American contractors in Iraq like Nick Berg is likely to continue, said Kathryn Rosenblum, editor of the Iraq Reconstruction Report, a newsletter devoted to Iraq business prospects.
Not while Ted Kennedy's around.
Or insanity/demonic oppression/demonic possession on the part of the Dad.
I've seen that happen before. I served with some folks in the Air Force who did so to get away from their parents. I told them all they should have joined the Navy...
Wirestripper's response in # 90 is good stuff, but I'd like to offer one more thing: Often, when leftists use the term neo-conservative, they really mean DA JOOOOZ!! (Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, etc.)
I'd like to ask the man about that. "Mr. Berg, when the Al-qaeda guys heard that you didn't hold them responsible for your son's death, do you think they laughed, or do you think they thought, 'whew, that's a wait off my mind, I was so worried that a Jewish pacifist in Pennsylvania might be holding a grudge"?
I agree keeping our mouths shut may be the best option...but then again, his remarks tell the general public all they need to know about the sort of person Berg Senior is, and the sort of people who run in the anti-war community. Mainly though, I can assure you that this was not the grief talking. Berg's religion is liberalism, and this statement was a sacrifice to his god.
Well said.
Berg's father is truly despicable, using his son's death as an excuse to bash the Bush admin -- despite the fact that he knows very well that Bush's policy is to not negotiate with terrorists and that Bush's spokesman already made it clear that no such offer was made by the terrorists in Berg's case.
Thanks for the info.
I guess it isn't a bad thing then (It wouldbe to them).
I also found this definition...
neo-conservative= An intellectual and political movement in favor of political, economic, and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the perceived liberalism of the 1960s: “The neo-conservatism of the 1980s is a replay of the New Conservatism of the 1950s, which was itself a replay of the New Era philosophy of the 1920s” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
"Leftist's use and like the term because it is close to neo-fascist. That is how they view us."
LOL That sounds like them not us.
neo-fascist= A movement inspired by the tenets and methods of fascism or Nazism.
There is one upside to this, but it is cold comfort. We (meaning the "kill the terrorists" crowd) win no matter what. If we keep prosecuting the war properly, that's a win. If we take the John F. Kerry law enforcement/please France approach, then someday soon Al-Qaeda does something huge, maybe even something that costs us a whole city. Then, people like Mike Berg will be lucky if they don't have mobs show up at their house to lynch them, Sedition and treason will finally be enforced, we will go to Plan C (every terrorist in a cell or cemetary) and do whatever it takes for as long as it takes.
The Soviet union could have killed us all. China could kill most of us and may someday be able to kill us all. Al-Qaeda probably couldn't even kill a tenth of us no matter how hard they tried. So the question is not whether we will go after these people, but how many of us have to die before we will realize that it is not optional.
LOL! Yes indeed, they continue to this day to call us Nazi's when everyone who studies history knows that Hitler was a liberal!
We had a guy in our local guard unit die in Iraq. Every decent-sized or major paper in the Northern half of Illinois called his parents looking for a comment the day they found out. I was too stunned to speak when I heard about it.
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