Conspiracy Theories, Inc.

[darren_stranger]

The more i think about this Nick Berg thing, and all the conspiracy theories flying around about it, the more i keep coming back to the same thought.

If (and i can't say either way to this myself) the video really is too bodgy to be real, then the question is what are the most likely explanations. The most simple options seem to be:

a. The CIA, or another similar agency, made a video with so many obvious flaws (perhaps so that no-one would believe a well-resourced intelligence agency would do so bad a job).

b. Nervous prison guards tried to hide a death in custody by drawing the whole world's attention to it with an elaborate mock-up (again, perhaps working on the principle that it's the last thing you'd expect them to do).

c. Some other party made it to implicate either the US or al-Qaeda (i'm starting to hear talk of Mossad and the Iranians tossed about now).

d. A terrorist cell in an occupied territory did a bad edit job on an execution (perhaps to make it look better if the killing didn't go right or they failed to get it on camera, or even cutting the head off an already dead body to make it look a more gruesome death than it was).

It's all conjecture, and it's quite possible we'll never know for sure, but to me the last still seems to be the most plausible explanation (if indeed it is faked), especially in light of who has least to lose from a stunt like this.

Not that i really want to dwell too much on what, at the end of the day, is still someone's son who never came home alive, but with all the speculation going on, i just want to try to look at it logically and get some perspective on it all.

Comments

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

...or maybe, as Occam's Razor suggests, it was all real and a lot of people are willfully deluding themselves because they don't want to accept what they're seeing. It's a depressing prospect, but that's war... :(

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

That too.

Simplest explanation to me is that it really happened, but the edits and cuts (and even the apparently dubbed sound) are a result of the killers having shitty equipment that kept stuffing up. And, as the conspiracy theorists point out, interenet video clips are a new M.O. for al-Qaeda, so you'd expect a pretty crappy job of it.

To be honest, i get a strong impression that people really want to believe anything that will support their opinion of USA as the Great Satan ("OMFG, it's a white chair, the CIA did it!"). It seems like the old thing of fitting evidence to suit what you already want to believe, which we all do from time to time ("OMFG, that fossil's in the wrong strata, the Book of Genesis must be true!")

Personally, i already know there's a special chair in Hell for Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest (right next to those reserved for Saddam and Osama, i expect), so i don't need to buy into every conspiracy theory about this to convince myself of the fact.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

The problem with applying the razor to the question is that, while it probably did happen as portrayed, we all know the US secret services are not only capable but willing to try something like this.

Hey, maybe it was the Iranians!

[jujulilianan.livejournal.com]

occams razor is generally most abused when people don't take the time to list *all* the possibilities..... how can you pick the simplest without knowing you even have it on your list?

as for me, well I'm just going by looking at who gained the most from it.... and we all know it was the USA pro-war camp... all those americans riled up about the death of another single american... all of a sundden it's OK to torture and humiliate iraqis again, isn't it?? all of a sudden, they have a reason to hide the rest of those torture pics from the public "look what happened last time we released any of these!!" all of a sudden "they" are barbaric godless (err....) animals who deserve to be exterminated.

personally, the chair/walls stuff is pretty tenuous..... what is NOT tenuous is that neither of the two (US or iraqi puppet agencies) that are said to have been holding him for over two weeks will admit to having been holding him!! despite the FBI contacting his family about it!! and the fact that the movie was allegedly hosted on some islamic fundamentalist website, but *immediately* on the breaking of the news there was no single reference to the file even on that site anymore??? and the fact that people looking at the "execution" have noticed a severe lack of blood for a decapitation... none of this adds up, but people are all so eager to shoot down the chair and wall observations.....

its fucked up, its really horrible what happened to the poor guy, and fuck knows how bad his friends and family must feel, the way the media was so *gleefully* reporting on the circumstances of his death.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

Certainly the US administration had a lot to gain from it, but far more to lose if ever found responsible for this. Given that, i can't see why they'd make a video with so many apparent credibility gaps, and use someone known to have been in their custody as a victim.

It is important that these questions are raised, but i just get the feeling a lot of people are very eager to jump to the conclusion they want to believe.

Which is not to say that it couldn't be the true explanation, but i guess i just want to add my own "hang, on, does that really seem the most likely?" into the mix.

[thorfinn]

Err, no. I had a look at the video. The guy is almost certainly dead when his head is being cut off. There's absolutely no reflex flinch response to being slammed sideways from a sitting position into the ground, and while they're cutting the head off, there is no motion at all, except those induced by someone holding the corpse from behind and shaking it.

That is genuinely a head being severed from a corpse on the video, but it's from a corpse. And what the hell is the corpse doing in a U.S. prison orange jumpsuit? And why has the guy who's named as the head-cutter magically grown back a normal leg? (The named guy is known to have a badly fitted prosthetic.)

No. This is not a real killing by real terrorists. It's a fake. See:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/5/15/22827/0477

for way more details.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

There has been talk that the fellow may have been drugged to stop him putting up a struggle, though other questions remain about the amount of blood etc. He may well have been dead already (in fact i rather hope so), but at the end of the day the 'whodunnit' is the big question.

To me it is quite conceivable that a terrorist cell could have staged a fake execution of an already dead captive, perhaps to capitalise on a 'death in custody' of their own. The orange jumpsuit makes some symbolic sense if it was a Abu Ghraib payback (though i haven't seen pictures of what, if any, uniform detainees there wear - hessian sacks aside). Why the credit for the killing would be ascribed to someone else i don't know, though there are a few reasons i can think of that are at least as plausible as a US 'black op'.

It's certainly a hazy subject, but my 2c worth of scepticism still leans toward terrorists being responsible.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a hazy subject, but my 2c worth of scepticism still leans toward terrorists being responsible.

Dude, the Americans are terrorists.
Unless of course this isn't terror:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1115596.htm

(eh, I couldn't find the wedding bombing link. But that link is sure amusing).

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Howard in the same room, or the fact that people were stupid enough to vote them into political office? (Either is pretty terrifying, i must admit).

Anyway, i realised last night that i've probably drifted too far off track with this, not having planned to debate the likelihood that the Berg video was the work of al-Qaeda. All i really wanted to say was that while healthy scepticism is a good thing, you need to be sceptical about the scepticism too.