Berg Conspiracies abound

Well, you probably won't be surprised to learn that conspiracy theories about the death of Nick Berg are popping up all over the web.

People point out the 'walmart' style plastic lawn chair, the orange prison jumpsuit, the less-than-svelte build of the putative al Qaeda members with their kevlar jackets and they say 'hmmmm'. They point out that the man who is wielding the machete has been 'identified' as someone who is known to have been fitted with a prosthetic leg and is correspondingly awkward, a trait he didn't display in the video.

Now CBS reports that "Berg was questioned by FBI agents who discovered he had been interviewed before because a computer password he used in college had turned up in the possession of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zaccarias Moussaoui.... It said the FBI had concluded there was nothing sinister in that. The FBI had no comment on the report. "

(Question for our readers: how does the FBI even KNOW someone's college computer passwords? Do they have them all in a big file somewhere?)

The most cogent conspiracy theory goes something like this: Berg was picked up by US forces while wandering 'suspiciously' around Iraq. The old 'password' thing raised alarms and he was severely questioned (perhaps at Abu Ghraib), so severely questioned that, oops, he 'passed away', as some guards have been heard to describe the 'accidental death' of those under the inquisition. Having a dead American on their hands, they decided to do a little counter-programming, and generated the video, in an attempt to Change the Subject from the prison abuse scandal that was showing no signs of abating.

I'm not saying I believe this theory. I'm just pointing out that it's Out There.

And I'm also pointing out that the number of right-wing true-believers who have embraced Berg's death as a Get Out of Abu Ghraib Free card are certainly making the conspiracy theory look awfully plausible.