I’m not saying it is, I’m not saying it isn’t. Frankly I don’t know and I don’t want to debate that here. The only thing I’ll say about its legitimacy is that we’ll probably never know for sure.
Now, suppose is was fake, and it was faked by our government, for purely hypothetical purposes. What would happen then?
I mean, we’re talking about a regime that lied to start a war (and that can’t be disputed at this point, can it?) and still has an approval rating somewhere around half.
That means half of our country doesn’t care that our leaders lied to us about something that negatively affects the whole world.
Would they care if those same people faked or misconstrued the death of one American kid?
I opposed this war from long before Day One, but I don’t think that’s how most people who support the war look at it. I think that to most people who still support it, the big issue is whether or not removing a terrible dictator was the right thing to do. I would wager most people don’t buy into the WMD or terrorist arguments at this stage and that it comes down to that.
If it was conclusively proved the government had lied about this, I think the reaction would be outrage.
Are you suggesting that Nick Berg might not be dead? Or that he is, but the masked killers were Americans? Or that there is no such person as Nick Berg? Each of these frauds have far different consequences and connotations.
Incidentally, Nick Berg was an absolute idiot. Collounsbury put it in his usual charming manner:
And when we’re done with this, we can argue about whether or not Superman can beat up Captain Marvel. To get me interested in this quesion * at all * you would have to establish that there was at least a remote possibility that the tape was fake. Until then, you might as well argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
You people have 'way, 'way too much time on your hands.
What kind and size of pin?
Wings spread out or folded in?
Dancing in place, square dancing, morris dancing or riverdancing?
Would there be a cover charge?
Mistake #1: You used Nick Berg as an example, instead of a purely hypothetical case where the government creates something fake for propaganda
Mistake #2: Your estimation of the hawk’s reasoning is way off. Most of them:
Don’t believe they were lied to, and expect us to find massive WMD caches any day
Believe the lie was necessary to justify the war in lieu of the true reason (whatever this is varies from Middle East peace to Pax Americana), because the dirty liberal hippies can’t handle it
Don’t care they were lied to, because the ends justifies the means
Think Iraq was the bed of all terrorism and now we’re safer
Only care about being lied to by Democrats
Now, on to your point. Half the people would be really pissed off, but they already are. The other half would justify it or disbelieve. I don’t think they would be sloppy enough to get caught, though. Also ,I don’t think Bush would be behind it. That isn’t his brand of tea.
It obviously was fake…to a degree. It was faked by the bad guys…IMO. I’m not sure why or how it enters this debate.
Watch the video paying attention to the timeline, that time stamp placed there by the camcorder. What I noticed is…
When the guy gets through reading and pullout his knife and "appears to stab Berg in the neck, the time is about 2:40:33
Then the camera shakes and the decapitation starts. The time has moved to 13:45:50
So it appears that he probably lay dead for some 11 hours before getting his head cut off.
But wait, look at the very start of the video when he says his name, The time is 13:26:24
So maybe that part of the video was 20 minutes before his head was cut off…which means he wasn’t really stabbed in the neck by the guy with the knife at 2:40:33.
The kicker is that there is no date stamp. These segments could have been days apart instead of 11-12 hours. What I really get out of it is to not take the video at face value. It has been spliced more than once.
I think the bad guys thought he was an Israeli spy. I can’t find any evidence to disagree with that assumption. It doesn’t make it right to kill him like that or present the assasination to the press.
I think if our government were to fake it, they would have done a better job. I’m not sure the bad guys are smart enough to put together an elaborate scheme other than simple splicing to create american disagreements about the war.
Well, that is a more honest way of putting it, thanks.
I’d like to think that if Bush were caught red-handed in a lie or fabrication, then a lot of people would change their opinion of him. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would march out and vote for Kerry - some people don’t mind the lie so much as they care about the other political stances.
It would drop his approval rating even lower than it is, that’s for sure. If it were scandalous enough, it may force him to resign, as in Watergate, leaving us with Cheney for now and another Republican who those people would vote for in a heartbeat, and it would ruin the basis of a lot of the ABB voters, which makes it more likely for whatever Republican candidate to win.
Where do you get this stuff from? I’m a hawk on this war and I don’t believe #2 through #5 at all. I only believe the first half of #1. It’s as if you believe that we’re all a bunch of demonic idiots.
One of my friend works with a lot of wealthy people out in the suburbs and was pretty much saying the same thing. So I asked him what his experience was. Did he find all of his cohorts to be demonic morons? Well no, he said, not when they’re at work, then he dropped it. What else was he going to say, that they are pretty decent bright people during the day but they save their cruel stupidities for politics?
Umm, camcorders aren’t flight data recorders. You can’t treat the time/day caption as introvertable gospel. They may have unplugged it w/o batteries and it reset. It may have had another time stamp superimposed while being copied/edited.
Either way, this isn’t some Columbo mystery. Al-Qaeda tapes executions all the time. This one just happened to get posted on the internet.
You are very, very wrong. And very, very naive. Bad guys?!? Are you kidding me?!
Well, obviously they aren’t all inclusive. Either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, or maybe a combo of them for some people. As you said yourself, you go along with 1.
If that is how you interpret it, that’s your deal, but people who are wrong about something often look foolish, yes.
shrugs Even the smartest people aren’t smart all the time. Don’t worry, I forgive you. You can fool all of the people some of the time, or all of the people some of the time. If you happen to fall into group 2, that’s your problem, not mine.
I dunno, I think that capturing and decapitating someone makes them count as a “bad guy,” and I’m about as liberal as they come. What is your criteria for being a “bad guy?” Did they have to piss down his neck, too?
Thank you. The timeline as suggested by the stamp wouldn’t make a lot of sense. There are no jumps in continuity, and it doesn’t make sense to kill him, sit around for 11 hours, and then chop his head off. It also doesn’t jibe with the sound.
Sorry, but I just found the phrase the bad guys thought he was an Israeli spy childishly flippant (combined with his whodunnit, or whendunnit, analysis of the video).
Maybe. I certainly don’t agree with that analysis of the video, and I’m dubious about his suspicion that they thought he was an Israeli spy (if other posts are right, calling him an Israeli spy is a discredit to all Israeli spies), but they are certainly bad guys.
True, to a degree it’s academic. I still think the mainstream is taking the video at face value assuming it is chronologically correct. I suggest the video has been spliced up for some reason. But why?
Camcorders don’t reset to 13:45:50 when the battery connection is reset. The timeline could be put in there afterwards, but why? Camcorders don’t switch from 2:45 to 13:45 with just a shake of the camera.
I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories and I wish I could take the whole situation at face value. I think there are enough small irregularities in the case to add up to more than meets the eye.
FWIW, I do think the Israelis have a great intelligence system that is mature and efficient, so I don’t want to insult them. It doesn’t mean that the bad guys are beyond accusing Berg of being a spy. And since they are heartless paranoid cowards in the first place, why shouldn’t they think he is a spy?
