When I originally decided to mirror the video of Nick Berg’s beheading (WARNING: extremely graphic), I cautioned readers that no one who already grasped the extent of al-Qaeda’s evil had any need to watch it. I didn’t think it offered anything newsworthy, except for those who needed to see a picture before they could appreciate the 1,000 words. I don’t think that anymore.

Now, theories abound concerning the authenticity of the tape, who filmed it, and even whether or not it depicted an actual murder. Many of these theories are too moonbatty to warrant a response, but now that at least one confirmed non-moonbat believes Berg was already dead at the time of the video (a theory which she later describes as a “fact”), it is worthwhile to consider the evidence. I’m not entirely convinced, but these points are definitely worth considering. Without reaching any firm conclusions, here are my intial thoughts:

• Lack of Movement. Some skeptics make much of the fact that Nick Berg hardly moved throughout the segment leading up to his apparent decapitation. I don’t. Watch the first segment, which according to the time stamp is actually two different segments that are almost 13 hours apart (time stamps run from 13:26:24-27, and quickly jump to 2:18:33-43). He talked during both segments, so obviously he was still alive at that point. However, while his lips moved, almost nothing else did. Perhaps he was sedated. More likely, perhaps he was physically restrained so that he couldn’t move much. Or, for all we know, maybe he thought he wouldn’t be murdered if he acted calmly enough and cooperated with his captors. We don’t know. All we do know is that he didn’t move much during the segment where he was clearly alive, so I don’t think we should make too much of the fact he didn’t move much during the rest. Most of the video is too grainy to tell if he blinked, but I’m pretty sure he did blink his eyes a few times alternately at 2:41:24-28, 2:41:45-46, and on several other occasions. I don’t know how they would have gotten a dead guy to blink. Also, he did move some, e.g., at 2:40:11-13, 2:40:20-22, 2:40:26-30, 2:40:40-42 and 2:41:09-12, generally in ways that do not appear consistent with anyone behind him having nudged a corpse.
• Lack of blood. Some expected a Friday the 13th style bloodbath. I don’t. Given the disagreement as to whether or not a beheading from the back would necessarily lead to massive spurting of blood, and the relative ease with which Zarqawi and his fellow thugs could have faked such spurting if they knew they were decapitating a corpse, it strikes me as plausible. Also, if you watch closely enough, you will see a fair amount of blood on the floor, despite its dark color that would tend to obscure it (as would the black suits all of his killers were wearing).
• The cut was too clean for the head to have been sawed off. No, it wasn’t. Trust me on this. If you don’t, advance to 13:47:48 on the time stamp (or 5:19 on the Windows Media File I linked to)
• Time Stamp Anomalies. There is a curious eleven hour jump (2:44:12 to 13:45:48) between the scene where the knock Berg over and where they actually cut his head off. Kate believes he died in the interim period, and that the murderers did not intend to hide this fact from their fellow Muslims, as desecrating a corpse violates everyone’s understanding of Islam (as does killing a prisoner in captivity). That theory seems plausible enough to me; it’s unfortunate that the media hasn’t reported on this fact, which it could do without showing the video itself. Another possibility is that two different video cameras were used, which were set at radically different times. This would also explain the jump in reverse during the intro segment. However, if my math is right, the length of time elapsed between the end of first segment and the beginning of the last should have registered a 0:25:29 jump instead of the 0:19:21 jump that we got. I suppose there could have been a third camera involved, which was 6 minutes and 8 seconds slower than the first. Or maybe the first two halves of the intro segment were spliced in together in the opposite order that they were filmed. It doesn’t take too much to account for a six minute discrepancy, but it does take something, as the first actions shown in the final segment clearly do not overlap with the last actions taken in the portion that preceded it.

UPDATE: The Dork, a.k.a., Mr. Fork, has more on the two camera theory.