Berg's killing brings home full horrors of war

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE in West Whiteland

Nick Berg liked to play the saxophone. He was a member of the high school marching band and neighbours would hear him practising in the evenings, the music seeping out through the walls.

He was a friendly young man. His friends said he had an independent spirit. The 26-year-old liked science and he liked to travel.

When he was at college he went to Ghana and helped build houses out of mud, returning home much thinner and with his pockets empty because he gave away most of his money.

Now Berg is dead, murdered in the most terrible way in a place thousands of kilometres from his home and light years away from the pleasant, suburban life he led.

His family is heartbroken and his friends and neighbours, probably along with every other American, are sickened to the core.

"It's a very sombre mood," said one neighbour, Janet Conrad, yesterday. "He was very well liked. It's an unbelievable tragedy."

Berg was beheaded in Iraq by extremists apparently closely linked to the senior al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who took him hostage and then made a video of his execution which they posted on an internet website.

In a statement they read out before sawing off Berg's head with a knife, the five masked men claimed they were killing the self-employed telecommunications engineer in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by United States troops at Abu Ghraib Prison.

It is not certain whether Zarqawi, on whose head there is a US$10 million ($16.5 million) reward, was among the killers.

Berg's body was due to be returned to the US today.

But for many Americans, the coffin being flown to Dover Air Force base in Delaware will be bringing home not just the young man's remains but also the visceral horror of the war and the ongoing occupation by US forces.

"I was adamantly opposed to the war," admitted another of the Bergs' neighbours, who asked not to be named. "But here it is."

One senses that Berg's murder has shocked America in a way perhaps more powerful even than the 700 US soldiers who have been killed in prosecuting President George W. Bush's mission to oust Saddam Hussein. He, after all, was not a soldier but a communications engineer who had travelled to Iraq independently to try to secure contracts to repair radio antennas.

He had supported the war and wanted to help rebuild Iraq, said his father, Michael, who was opposed to the invasion.

Newspapers declined to print the most graphic of the images of Berg's murder, but they were available on websites such as the Drudge Report, where the execution, complete with Berg's screams as the knife was placed to his throat, could be viewed.

One could argue that the pictures of Iraqi hospitals full of children maimed and killed by Coalition cluster bombs are equally horrific, but that would miss the point.

Most Americans never see, or never choose to see, images that portray the horror the war has wrought on Iraqi civilians.

But thanks to the same digital technology that ensured the pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib were dispatched around the world, Berg's five killers carried out what was, in effect, a public execution.

As a result, the image of Berg, wearing an orange jumpsuit and bound to a chair before he was beheaded, will become as much a fixture of the iconography of Bush's war on terror as has the photograph of journalist Daniel Pearl before he was beheaded by an al Qaeda gang in 2002.

Last journey

March: Nick Berg, a telecommunications expert, travels to Iraq through Jordan after first working in Iraq in December and January.

March 25: Iraqi police arrest Berg in Mosul.

April 7: Berg is released from custody.

April 10: The last time Berg makes contact with his family.

April 11: The last time Berg is in contact with US officials in the Iraqi capital.

May 9: The US military discovers Berg's remains in Baghdad.

May 12: A video posted on an al Qaeda-linked website shows Berg's beheading.

- INDEPENDENT