> It is odd that someone would go to Iraq to
> drum up business
Not at all. And while some of the circumstances really do look weird (his detention by the US -- let's not pretend that the "Iraqi police" are any kind of independent entity worth considering), I'm still inclined to the simplest explanation, which is that the guy was a run-of-the-mill war profiteer.
I shouldn't HAVE to do this, but I suppose I will: the fact that Berg was a war profiteer doesn't make his death any less gruesome or the aims of his killers any less reactionary, as Hizbollah has pointed out. Nevertheless, civilians who have actually been through war tend to have a more jaded view of war profiteers -- even the low-level ones -- than people in the relatively comfortable confines of the US, or indeed, the US military. My partner tells the story of how wandering peddlers selling overpriced goods to the desperate would occasionally make their way to the Dobrinja neighborhood, on the frontlines in Sarajevo, and ask the resentful locals for directions to such-and-such a place. The people from the neighborhood would tell the unsuspecting parasites to go down streets with known Serb sniper nests.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!