Word: berges
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...time for Abizaid and the forces he commands to accentuate the positive. By many measures, the U.S. enterprise in Iraq remains a chaotic, costly slog. The prison scandal has plainly made the goal of winning Iraqi hearts and minds remote. Last week's brutal videotaped decapitation of American Nicholas Berg, 26, showed again just how dangerous Iraq remains. Even Donald Rumsfeld, the embattled Defense Secretary, acknowledged at least the possibility that the grand American design for Iraq--a stable democracy at the heart of the autocratic Arab world--might end in failure. "Is it possible it won't work...
...country where foreign businessmen are reluctant to travel even in armor-clad SUVs with security guards, Nick Berg crisscrossed Iraq by hailing cabs and hopping onto buses. Usually clad in a baseball cap and jeans, he made no effort to blend in with the locals as he lugged around sophisticated electronic equipment in search of work. His Arabic was awful, and he had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In January, during his first prospecting trip to Iraq, Berg was picked up during a police sweep in the southern town of Diwaniya, where "there...
There are many haunting questions about Berg and his odyssey in Iraq, which came to a tragic close last week when his body was found and a video of his horrific execution was circulated on the Internet. Why was this communications-tower repairman imprisoned for 13 days this spring in the city of Mosul--and who had custody of him there? After his release, why did he refuse offers of help to get home? And perhaps the biggest mystery of all: How did a former Boy Scout, who had spent time doing humanitarian work in Africa, stumble into the path...
...Berg, who was 26 when he died, was one of a small number of free-lancers in Baghdad hoping to make a buck and, his family recalled, do some good. A "tower guy," he figured he could earn as much as $20,000 a month repairing antennas in Iraq, a job that sometimes involved climbing hundreds of feet of latticework in 120° heat, according to business consultant and fellow free-lancer Andy Duke, who says he drank some beers with Berg the night before he disappeared...
...Berg embarked on his first trip to Baghdad in December. Friends say he assumed he could find work the same way he had launched his tower-repair shop in a Philadelphia suburb: by cold-calling potential clients and sweet-talking his way into assignments. He came home in February to West Chester, Pa., with some promising leads as well as rich tales of his adventures in the war-scarred land. "He had a comfort level in Iraq that is beyond our comprehension," says colleague Dave Skalish, a technical supervisor at a Philadelphia radio station...