Occam's Triple Blade

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In case it wasn't bizarre enough for you that Nick Berg's e-mail password once fell into the hands of Zacarias Moussaoui, now comes word that Berg once sat down for a 20-minute videotaped interview with ? Michael Moore.

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Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. Swamp Justice

    Mark S.’s theory sounds reasonable, though I am still not sure what to make of that Moussaoui knew Berg’s email password story and that Berg had been in US custody. Strange, then stranger…

  2. PapayaSF

    Mark S.: Your theory jibes with my speculation. And don’t feel too bad about the name error, because Moussaoui did end up with Berg’s email password, remember?

  3. Will

    Nick who?

  4. MALAK

    Allow me to posit the first whacked out conspiracy theory:

    Berg was encouraged by a film producer to seek out a religious nut/terrorist in a bid to become a sacrificial lamb/Judas goat so as to expose the horrors inherant in the Bush governments’ Iraq policy. Now if I could only tie in the Illuminati it would be perfect . . .

  5. jessy

    Wow, only 11 posts, and nothing since 2:40. I guess youse all aren’t much into conspiracy theories. Anyway, what is the full story about Nick Berg, or at least story presently available to the general public? I thought he was just another American killed by technologically literate terrorists. A link will suffice.

    Grazie mille

    JLB

  6. I wonder if we’ll ever learn the entire Nick Berg story (and whether it will be made into a movie-of-the-week).

  7. ha!

    I’m sure Michael Berg is holding out for a better offer.

  8. joe

    The New Republic is revisiting the Daniel Pearl killing, pushing the theory that the guy convicted of the crime was involved in the “kidnapping,” (actually, a consensual visit that went bad) had no idea he was going to be killed. Some local Pakistani Islamists were holding him and wondering what to do, and some “associated of Khalid Sheik Mohammad” show up, take control, and decide to kill him on TV.

    It seems plausible to me that Iraqi holdouts had Berg with the intention of making a tape, maybe trading him for something, and some of their foreign “buddies” showed up.

  9. Mark S.

    My theory:

    Berg was a naive American lefty went to Iraq to help the poor people of Iraq who were being oppressed by the evil Bush administration. Thinking that he could play Jimmy Carter or Jesse Jackson, he got in touch with the radical elements still in entrenched in Iraq in order to “understand” them. That’s probably how he became connected to Moussaoui. Of course, this would raise the attention of the local authorities, prompting the questioning.

    When the Abu Garhib story broke, Moussaoui wanted to make a statement by killing an American. Berg was readily at hand and he may have just blabbed about Moussaoui’s operations to the cops, so Nick gets his noggin sawed off.

    As I said, it’s just a theory. Feel free to poke holes in it as you will.

  10. anon

    Mark S.

    “Moussaoui wanted to make a statement by killing an American. Berg was readily at hand and he may have just blabbed about Moussaoui’s operations to the cops, so Nick gets his noggin sawed off.”

    WTF are you talking about? Are you talking about the same Moussaoui who is in US custody for almost three years now? Are you confusing Moussaoui with Zarqawi?

  11. Mark S.

    Whoops…My bad. Now that I read the whole story I realize what a rotten mistake I made. I feel so embarrased.

    Ignore everything I said. I should refrain from making political speculations before my first cup of coffee.

  12. thoreau

    I am confident of only 3 things concerning Nick Berg:

    1) What happened to him was atrocious, horrific, and any other negative adjective you can think of.
    2) He was not just a random guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was involved in something that we don’t know the details of, and it went very, very wrong.
    3) If he was working for the US gov’t, the people who killed him had no knowledge of it. Otherwise they would have boasted about it on tape. “Look, infidels, this is what we do to your agents and informants!”

  13. crimethink

    Aha! Finally, a Michael Moore – Al Qaeda connection!

  14. j

    Well, if this is true, what was on the 20 minute videotape?

  15. I think the reason nobody’s positing a wacky conspiracy here is because there already appears to be a wacky conspiracy. Just a coinkydink that Berg’s password was used by Moussaoui, that he wound up in Iraq years later, that he was interviewed by Moore (wouldn’t we all like to see that 20 minutes), and that he was “detained” or “not detained” by US agents (depending on who you talk to). He was murdered in a heinous fashion–yes.

    But had he made himself available to the terrorists? Had he gone along with his own capture, much like passengers went along with the hijackers on September 11–because he, like they, did not expect death?

  16. Walter Wallis

    You would not believe the conspiracy theory being brunted around Al Jiserra, that the execution took place in the whatchacallit prison and that an American soldier is visible in a couple of frames.

  17. det er fornuftig

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