Real History, the CIA, and the Iraq War The THIS one’s interesting and we haven’t seen it linked about, except on a very obscure site. The author is an Australian private eye. His analysis doesn’t depend on facts so much as on logical reasoning — our guess is that he’s closer to an explanation of what really happened than anybody else so far.

The evidence that the video was filmed within Abu Ghraib prison itself — with all that that implies — may be the surest reason why the Bush regime is so anxious to see it torn down as son as possible. [ Original source ] 23 May 2004 The Nicholas Berg execution A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery THIS article aims to shed light on the apparent execution by beheading of Nicholas Berg .

I believe that most of the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a ‘black operation’by US psychological warfare specialists, the purpose of which was to provide the media with a ‘moral relativity’ argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib prison. MANY observers have drawn attention to features of the evidence — particularly the video of the beheading released by the supposed terrorists — which do not add up.

I find some of these features to be explainable without reference to a conspiracy by US security agencies. Most, however, are best explained by the black operations scenario. Even so, many puzzling anomalies remain. At a certain point in any investigation, in order to make sense of disparate, contradictory facts and to filter out background noise, an investigator must adopt a working hypothesis which integrates the main clues.

My hypothesis begins by trying to explain why, throughout the execution video, Nick Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the type issued at US military prisons such as Guantánamo Bay. Most commentators have been surprised by this. Some have rationalised it as a piece of mimicry by the executioners designed to taunt the US and drive home their point that the US imprisons and humiliates Arabs and Muslims. That might seem like the only reasonable explanation, but nagging doubts remain.

How would the terrorists have got their hands on such a jumpsuit? Is it reasonable to think that they carried one around just in case they got lucky and grabbed an American? Alternatively, does it seem likely that, having grabbed Berg, one of them had a bright idea and sent his mum to the markets for some fabric and got her to run up an orange jumpsuit? Under the circumstances, both explanations are highly improbable.

Remember, these people are supposedly members of an Abu Massab al- Zarwawi ‘s terrorist cell. They’re operating underground to carry out suicide bombings and the like. In order to do that they’d themselves be dressed like ordinary Iraqis. Dressing Berg in a facsimile of the US prison uniform or even a real one for his execution seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to — time-wasting nonsense that could unnecessarily expose them to the danger of discovery.

Why would they not keep Berg in the clothes in which he was kidnapped or, if they had had to dump these, in anonymous Iraqi street wear? (That’s another problem with the ‘terrorists’ in the video: why are they dressed in black uniforms with ammunition tabards and keffirs? Al- Sadr’s MA militia do dress like that, but al-Zarwawi’s boys aren’t militia, they’re underground operatives).

But if it seems very far-fetched that al-Zarwawi’s group would have filmed Berg in an orange jump-suit, why in heaven’s name would the CIA PsyOps boys have done so? Surely in setting up a piece of fakery they would ideally have stuck to the simple and obvious and kept Berg in his own clothes? AS I said above: to make sense of disparate, [and] contradictory facts and filter out background noise, a working hypothesis which makes sense of the main clues is necessary. What follows is mine.

I have made use of ‘Videoman’s’ excellent frame-by-frame analysis of the execution video available at the LibertyForum site. Videoman identifies 8 separate shots (A to H) and assumes two cameras were used (I call them Camera 1 and Camera 2). The hypothesis By the time the CIA PsyOps boys, dressed as terrorists, cut off Berg’s head he was already long dead. As noted by various qualified observers there was no spray of blood.

I further doubt whether even the hardest of the CIA hard boys would come at hacking off someone’s head while they were alive. They had no alternative but to do the deed with Berg dressed in the orange jumpsuit because, to dramatise the horror of the supposed event, they had to have footage that unequivocally showed him to be alive before his throat was cut. In the only such material available to them, Berg was dressed in the jumpsuit.

I believe that footage showing Berg in the white plastic chair, unrestrained and calmly giving his name and family details, was shot as routine investigative documentation by CIA and/or FBI interrogators while Berg was imprisoned — either at a US run facility or perhaps by the Iraqis, depending on who’s story you believe — after he was picked up by Iraqi police in Mosul. The footage looks so routine because it was routine.

Berg was arrested, his clothes were taken away, he was given the jumpsuit and then questioned. Quite probably he was asked a series of questions during the three ‘interviews’ we know took place, and his responses were videotaped in much the same way as police interrogations are audio and/or videotaped in most countries. After being interviewed three times in thirteen days, Berg was then warned to leave Iraq, released, and (according to some reports) booked on a flight out of Baghdad.

The CIA knew exactly where he was and what his movements would be. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see what may have happened next. The word goes out that the President needs a high- profile terrorist atrocity to counteract the gathering media firestorm over Abu Ghraib. The PsyOps boys are working against a deadline. Assessing their prospects, they decide that Berg is a highly suspicious character.

There’s a weird story on the files about his email account being used by Moussaoui , his parents are high-profile opponents of the war, he’s been running around Iraq unsupervised and visiting Iraqi in- laws in Mosul. Even if the man isn’t actually al-Queda, he’s an expendable idiot. They pick up Berg as he leaves his hotel and kill him (perhaps accidentally). Then they set about constructing the beheading video.

It is also possible that Berg met his death at the hands of the resistance, but that his intact body was quickly recovered by US forces. NOW, let’s go