It's a Reach.

Aljazeera.Net is trying to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Nick Berg video by quoting anonymous bloggers and "chat room members" and "net surfers."

Even at first glance, internet bloggers were asking on Thursday why Nick Berg was wearing an orange jumpsuit – just like US prisoners wear.

Other net surfers point to the unlikely timing of the executioner's dubbed announcement that Berg was to die for "Iraqi prisoner abuse".

Berg was last seen alive on 10 April, when his father Michael Berg believes he was killed - two weeks before the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in the world's media.

Some discussions focus on the timing of the video's release - guaranteed to divert attention from the outrage over US abuse of Iraqis.

It seems clear that even Al Jazeera feels the beheading of Nick Berg was beyond the pale, and wants to distance themselves from it by insinuating that it was really Americans who committed the deed.

However, the circumstances of the video release are also strange. A Reuters journalist in Dubai first named the Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami website as the source for the video – at www.al-ansar.biz.

Although the site has now been shut down, Aljazeera.net looked at the site within 90 minutes of the story breaking – and could find no such video footage.

But Fox News, CNN and the BBC were all able to download the footage from the Arabic-only website and report the story within the hour.

[...]

Other questions presented by bloggers are Berg's peculiar circumstances in the weeks before his death. Why would a private Jewish American citizen choose to wander around Iraq by himself?

Additionally, some have pointed out that his last email on 6 April to his family stated he wished to return home as soon as possible – yet the FBI claims he refused an offer of help to get home.

Some claim the face in the video looks remarkably unlike Berg's

In the wider press, FBI involvement has also generated much discussion as to why Berg was really arrested and detained for two weeks in Mosul.

The unemployed visitor was suspicious enough for Iraqi police to arrest him – with FBI knowledge.

He had only just been released from prison where he had been held for 13 days by Iraqi police for reasons he said he did not know.

They are also trying to claim that Zarqawi could not have done it because he is dead.

An eight-page leaflet circulated this week in Falluja said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniya mountains of northern Iraq during a US bombing.

They've really gone out of their way to secure multiple, reliable sources for this article. They've laid their ducks in such a straight row that nobody - nobody could find a gap in their logic. I'm convinced.

Yeah, right.