Reply #7: oh please

[ant]

From the article:

Mr Duke had been unable to watch the whole of the horrifying murder video. "I looked at the beginning of the pictures on the internet," he said. I had to turn my back but I listened to the sounds."

A ring around his neck, he added, showed that he had "clearly been tortured".The horror of the beheading reverberated throughout America yesterday, nowhere more so than in the town he called home in his last few words before he was murdered.

In context it's clear the guy's saying he was tortured by his kidnappers. Note that no one who saw him at the hotel has described such a thing.

I'm also not sure that you could even notice such detail, given the quality of the video and what Berg was wearing. Maybe I'm not remembering it accurately, though.

Edited to add another quote from Mr. Duke, in the same article, and this one does refer to Berg's time in US custody:

Mr Duke said Mr Berg had given him a similar account of what happened in Mosul. "His attitude was that it was all a bit of fun. Inconvenient, but in the bigger picture not a big deal.

Torture's all a bit of fun? Maybe Berg was a fan of Rush Limbaugh...