COMMENTARY: The Tragedy of Nick Berg

The latest terrorist video raises some of the darkest, most disturbing issues in recent memory.

There are a few facts about the terrorist murder-on-video of Pennsylvania businessman Nick Berg that raise the darkest, most disturbing issues of recent memory.

First off, Berg, who ran a small telecommunications firm in a Philadelphia suburb, was in Iraq for the second time this year, looking for work. With all possible respect to this man and sympathy to his loved ones, one has to start with the question, wasn't that in itself a particularly stupid thing to do -- seeking monetary gain in a war zone in a nation and culture increasingly hostile to his own?

The same day he'd told his family in late March that he would return home in a week, Berg was detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul. This was on March 24. He was then turned over to U.S. officials, who held him for 13 days without being allowed to make telephone calls or consultation with a lawyer. What was the reason for all of this? Berg's family was not notified of his detention until March 31, when the FBI contacted them to confirm Berg's identity, and he wasn't released until the day after his family filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia, charging the United States Military with illegally holding him. Question: why on Earth did it take two weeks and a lawsuit to get Berg released, and why was he detained in the first place? Certainly, the Military can't claim any language barrier.

Three days after his release on April 6, Berg told his father via telephone that he would be returning home immediately by way of Jordan. His family never heard from him again. Michael Berg, the victim's father, blames the United States Government for creating the circumstances leading to his son's death.

And from a different angle: when told Tuesday afternoon that there was a video of Nick Berg's murder released to the Internet, his family collapsed in tears on their front lawn. Michael Berg indicated that he knew his son had been decapitated, but that he hoped the manner of his son's murder would not have been publicised. Within two hours, ABC Radio and Fox News Channel talk show host Sean Hannity put links on his web site -- a site hosted by ABC's own servers -- directing his audience to videos of both Berg's beheading and that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Hannity then plugged the links on his site throughout his entire radio show Tuesday afternoon. Not only had they specifically done what the Berg family had expressed they did not want done, Hannity and ABC began using the Berg murder to attract an audience, generating sponsorship money and uttering anti-Muslim rants along the way. It is not far afield from what Josef Goebbels and Fritz Hippler were doing with their hate cinema of 1930s Nazi Germany. It should also be noted that ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, which is currently doing its best to suppress Michael Moore's latest film, FAHRENHEIT 911, which is critical of the Bush regime's conduct in Iraq.

Perhaps the most tragic element of all this is that Michael Berg is strongly against the war on Iraq, while the murdered man, his son Nick, was a strong supporter of both George W. Bush and the war. If nothing else, this whole shocking episode illustrates how deadly dangerous it is to believe what George W. Bush says.

King Daevid MacKenzie, for IndyMedia Radio, from America's Heartland.