Dual outrages to end the week

Nick Berg, the 26 year old who was beheaded by what the CIA says was an Al-Qaida man, wasn't a Halliburton type. He was a small businessman who was trying to help Arabs with his telecom company that was supposed to connect small towns. He spoke Arabic and this is what in fact got him in trouble.

His family tells us (via Nick's emails) that he was detained by Iraqi police (if there really is such a thing) and then turned over US authorities. These guys questioned him because he had a book on Iran in his backpack and seemed to know Arabic. They wanted to know if he worked for Iran or was an Islamic Radical or Israeli Intelligence. And you don't say Israeli intelligence too loud in a prison filled with Angry (most likely radical) Muslims. That's like throwing a white guy into a mostly all black block and saying, "So you work for the KKK?" And maybe that's why he was ultimately abducted and beheaded.

Now the US denies that they held him, except for another email his family has contradicts this too. Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq, wrote on April 1st to Nick's Dad Michael that "I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly." They never said when the US turned him loose.

Weirder still, the family said Berg had been questioned by the FBI more than a year ago about a contact he had with a terrorism suspect in 1999, while he was a student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

A senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the terror suspect appears to have been acquainted with Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaida adherent now in federal custody and awaiting trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The official said an e-mail address traced to Berg had been used by the unidentified individual with purported terror connections, but a 2002 investigation showed Berg had never met the individual and had not given the e-mail address to that person. Maybe this is why they questioned him in Iraq. They thought he was Al-Qaida.

In any event, Nick was trying to get home as soon as possible (according, again to his e-mails to family) and the government claims he turned down offers to deport him home.

Michael Berg is so upset by this that he said "My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this." I will leave it at that.

On a seemingly more minor note, the Bush Administration is going ahead with its missile "defense" system despite repeated failed tests and warnings from scientists that it won't necessarily work (but hey they never listen to scientists on global warming or stem cells, why should we be surprised). There is "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Missile Defense really is, as one reporter wrote, a "Maginot Line in the Sky." That is, something that makes the people feel safe but would never really keep us safe/protect us. Even if this multibillion sinkhole project did work, it wouldn't keep us that safe.

Why? Who is going to hit us with a missile? North Korea? Russia? China? I don't think any of those countries are so stupid as to attack the US so obviously; we can track exactly where each missile came from. More likely, Al-Qaida will bring in a bomb via cargo container or something, not a missile. The real threat is not a missile coming over the pacific. This is yet another example of the Bush Administration being stuck in the Cold War era, when we live in an era of failing states and terrorism. And what is bad about this is not just the money that it costs, but the message it sends to the rest of the world, with India Pakistan China and North Korea accelerating their missile program and the EU creating their own military.

A George W Bush world is a dog-eat-dog world that Thomas Hobbs described oh so many years ago. You are on your own, even if you are an American citizen, like 26 year-old Nick Berg.