Did you watch the beheading...

In My Humble Opinion
1

…of Mr. Berg?

For forensic reasons only (trust me, I’ve seen enough gore) I downloaded it last night. And while the video is brutal…I’m not convinced it is what it appears to be. And I’m not OK with that.

That the kid was alive at the beginning and was who he says he was, I can’t refute that, only his family can. Maybe the original video quality is poor or maybe the copy I loaded had been compressed one too many times, but, there were some things about it that didn’t wash.

-While they were working on him, Mr. Berg can be heard screaming. OK. I can’t say I’d do any different. But the only vocalization is an amorphous “AAAAAAAAHHHHH AAAAAHH AAAAAAH.” No words at all. No plea, not a simple “no,” nothing. An eternity of 20 seconds of vocalization, and not one word.

-Also, he was bound only at the wrists and the ankles, and yet he tipped right over and held more or less still. Yes, his body can be seen to squirm, but c’mon! Who here has had someone hold them down for a tickle torture? How many people would it take to make you hold still? This guy appears only to have been restrained by the hair and his elbows (from behind). No Kicking? No thashing about the abdomen–doubling up into a sitting or kneeling position? Nothing even resembling this. The only motion seen in him is the afore mentioned squirming which could just as easily have been his captor moving his body by the elbows/shoulders.

-When his head is held up, the eyes are closed. I’d expect them to be open as he did not pass peacefully in his sleep. And his headless body is as still as a log–no twitching despite the copious amounts of adrenaline which must surely have been present. Ever knocked the head off a chicken? The headless bodies positively flop if they don’t take off and run away! I expected some motion.

-Lastly, immediately before the “execution” begins, the camera cuts and changes angles and zooms in too close so that the picture blurs. Plenty of opportunity to switch the “alive” Berg with a dead one.

And that’s my point. Not that he ain’t dead now, but that he WAS dead before the beheading. And so :tin foil hat time: who dunnit? Did Al Qaida do it exactly as shown? Did they shoot him immediately prior to the beheading (for mercy? or to make sure there were no “complications?”) Or did WE find him (dead I pray, but what was up with our guys detaining him just before he disappeared?) and make a propaganda film out of his corpse? The latter sounds like a bad film, but we *are *the ones who have set the standard for staging photos for the benefit of psy-ops. And now the merican Public’s attention is safely away from our troops’ misbehavior in the dungeon.

As a rule, I’m not a flake, nor do I really wear a foil hat, with or without condiments. And while I am shocked by the whole deal, and recognize the possibility that I could just be in denial about the veracity of what is shown, my question is, “Has anyone seen a good quality version of the video that accounts for my misgivings as posted above?”

2

Very solid. So the only thing we have to figure out now is who gave the order, Bush or Rumsfeld.

I knew it — I just knew it

3

I did see the video, and it is one of the bigger regrets I’ve had in my life. Curiosity got the better of me, and because of it, I have the baggage of the most grotesque images I’ve ever seen to carry around with me for the rest of my life.

Having said that, I noticed the above as well. I assumed that he was either starved, sleep deprived, mentally and physically exhausted, or possibly drugged. Sapping his strength before execution would probably make it easier on the executioners, in that he would be too weak or incapacitated to struggle. The eyes being closed could be from the flinching instinct.

4

Point duly noted - -

5

Just because you aren’t paranoid, doesn’t mean “they” aren’t out to get you!

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I hope it’s not a train!

Finally, I’d rather have a lobster on my piano than a crab on my organ :eek:

6

Point well taken.

Regarding baggage . . . we all have that! In my “junior executive on the rise” position (perhaps) - - I have said to myself too many times - - I would have been happier “going to my grave” without ever having known/heard <x>! That said, I hope we are all mature enough to know life is not all “milk and honey!”

I think I’ll pop “Apocalypse Now” into the DVD player . . .

7

I have not watched the whole video (though, admittedly, I have watched similar such things…). Oddly enough, when I saw the first part of the video, I also thought it looked not quite right.

I guess I’d have to watch the whole thing to come to a conclusion; overall I don’t agree with you.

Push on your throat. Its very difficult to vocalize anything. Imagine now a knife there instead - I think its likely near impossibe to vocalize anything other that amorphous noise.

A doctor would be able to address this better than myself. It seems to me that its if you’re in a great enough state of shock you may infact become paralysed. I know there have been a few times I’ve been in great fear for whatever reason, and my whole body went numb. Imagine how surreal it would be in his position - I could completely see how his body may cease to function.

The reason that happens with chickens is because the chop isn’t usually clean and often the brainstem is missed. This allows enough neural control to keep the chicken “alive”. AFAIK, this NEVER happens with humans.

8

I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to. I saw the video of pearl’s execution and that was quite enough. I don’t enjoy watching people being tortured.

9

Same here, I saw Pearl’s video and haven’t been able to forget it. I told myself that if anything else like that ever came along I wouldn’t watch it. I know the world isn’t all milk and honey but that doesn’t mean I have to actually view to know.

10

Yes, I did see it, and though I’m a little confused by the time code stuff, I don’t think it’s fake.

There’s no comparison. The human brain is responsible for all voluntary motion, in chickens some simple behaviors like walking are controlled by the spinal cord.

I’m not sure one’s eyes wouldn’t close even if you died violently.

[quote[And his headless body is as still as a log–no twitching despite the copious amounts of adrenaline which must surely have been present.[/quote]

Aside from peopel being totally different from chickens, he may have been dead for a while by the time they finally cut his head off. It’s hard to tell from the video.

I saw the video a few times, but without watching again: I think they took him by surprise; there were five of them; and I thought his legs were bound together as well. He was also flat on his stomach, so I’m not sure how he could’ve doubled up.

11

I haven’t watched the video because I don’t want the image forever in my head.

I did see a television program recently about the fear response in humans being the same as in animals. When startled, there is an initial physical reflexive reaction and then a period of seeming paralysis before the ability to react appropriately sets in. I don’t know what applies and does not in this situation.

In my own opinion, human beings in such circumstances cannot be expected to behave in any given manner. What we may think would be a natural response may not be natural at all – or at least not natural for that person under those particular circumstances.

These men don’t strike me as being particularly merciful and surely they would know that the truth of a live beheading would be determined by pathologists anyway.

12

I did not see the video, and I do not plan on searching it out.

A few years ago, I was on an FTP looking for music and found a video that was titled “An Unknown Russian Soldier”. I watched a man get his throat cut. It was one of the most graphic and disturbing things I have ever watched.

13

True enough. I’ve watched both my grandfather and my mother take their dying breaths. In person. But theirs was a natural end to a foregone conclusion. They were both terminally ill when they passed away.

Mr. Berg’s demise did not share that characteristic.

14

I have also seen enough gore in my life. I watched the video and came to similar conclusions–I went so far as to think that the creators of the website (one well known to have this sort of video) had created the video to get more traffic. I think that the timestamp also showed an 11 hour differential between the self identification of Mr. Berg and the beheading. I have no doubt that he was killed, and, honestly, I hope that this video is verifiable Mr. Berg was a very drugged man in his last minutes.

15

I’m not a video expert, but it looked pretty darn real to me.

Almost exactly 11 hours, yes. I’d still like an explanation for that- could there have been two cameras? I doubt they just sat around for that long.

It didn’t look - or more awfully, sound - that way to me.

16

I am not a video expert either, it just didn’t seem right to me. This is just my mistrust of the media, especially internet media when a profit is at stake. When I realized that there was an 11 hour differential it began to possibly make more sense (in that maybe he was drugged in the interim).

I have been told that the timestamp only tells you when the video was uploaded. Is it possible that they drugged Mr. Berg in the interim and then beheaded him?

The quality of the video I saw was extremely poor–both in visual and audio contexts, I could only hear (poorly) the repeated chants of the executioners. This is why I questioned the veracity of the video I saw.

17

I didn’t see it, and I ain’t gonna. But how is this possible?

Did they start cutting at the back of the neck? Wouldn’t that have severed the spinal cord pretty quick (and rendered him numb)?

Did they start cutting in the front? Wouldn’t that have severed his vocal chords? He would have been able to make some noises, but not scream, right?

18

It appears that they started in the front or more likely on the side of his neck–maybe to get him to bleed out and calm down. I don’t know if my video was corrupted, but the sound doesn’t match up with the video, there’s like a 5 second delay. So it’s hard to associate sound with movements and thus hard to gauge when he lost consciousness/had his airway severed.

FTR. Looks like a lotta people are having doubts about the thing. One person identified one of the killers as wearing a gold ring which is supposedly forbidden by Islam. But then again, Islam forbids a lot of things…

19

If only I were that wise.

20

I’ve not watched the video – probably won’t. I’ve no interest in watching a snuff film.

So for the quality/authenticity of the video I really can’t speak, though I’m curious – is what’s available a VHS quality video? Or is this something that’s been compressed so it could be uploaded to the web? It seems like most videos in Real media or Windows media formats have trouble with audio sync unless they’re saved as very high quality. If it was a studio shoot with a broadcast quality camera and sound crew, then video and audio discrepancies would be a red flag… But look at the stuff people make and post on the web with a hand-held digital camera. It’s pretty out of whack.

EZ