The Nick Berg story gets weirder by the minute. 9/11 connections, his parents are members of ANSWER, and his father apparently said he was a"friend" of al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Read here, here, here, and here.

At first, I thought this was the stuff of your usual nutso conspiracy theorists. But it's looking more and more like there are some decidedly weird angles to this story.

UPDATE: In the comments section of my website,"Dave" points to this bizarre bit from a CNN story on one of the court martialled soldiers in Abu Ghraib:

Paul Bergrin, attorney for Davis, said his client was ordered to do what he did, but denied Davis" committed any criminal acts."

...Davis' superiors, Bergrin said, told the specialist it was important to"break the prisoners" in order to"save the lives of innocent soldiers on the outside and civilians and individuals like Nicholas Berg."

Berg was the Pennsylvania businessman whose beheading was posted on a Web page this week. The Abu Ghraib abuses depicted in the photographs took place last fall.

I guess that might lend some support to the circulating conspiracy theories.

Of course, it could also mean that Davis should get himself a competent lawyer.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/14/2004

Worldpress.org has an article from alJazeera arguing that the whole video is a US-staged hoax.