Ashcroft on Nick Berg

On the very day his family laid their son and brother to rest, AG John Ashcroft comes out with this:

Federal officials said Friday that they were satisfied that Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American decapitated in Iraq, had had no terrorist links even though his computer password had apparently been used by a terror suspect.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation first interviewed Mr. Berg in 2002 after his e-mail password appeared to have been used by that suspect, but the connection "was just a coincidence," a senior official of the bureau said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft echoed that assessment, rejecting any suggestion that Mr. Berg "was in some way involved in terrorist activity."

This case just stinks more and more all the time. If the CPA or CIA or someone held him for 3 weeks for no good reason, I can understand why Nick Berg would not have accepted their alleged offer of safe passage out. After all, Nick probably knew that under Bush and Ashcroft, people disappear in this odd web of secrecy.

This isn't conspiracy theory since there are many documented cases of people without proven links being "lost" in the system, only to be shuffled in and out of different holding places in different countries, including Syria, the country Bush likes to stick in the Axis of Evil category. He (Berg) certainly must have heard about the torture going on, certainly before we did here.

Should Ashcroft have cleared him? Hell, yes. But these folks chase so many normal people like Berg while they don't seem to be able to catch or keep those that really seem to want to do us harm.