Not so fast with that disinfo, bub

I ran across this piece about 50 alleged anomolies about the Berg video.

My intuition says no on this one.

The piece references a bunch of blog links, and media sites talking about the list. Totally self-referential, which makes me suspicious right out of the gate.

I'd like to see independent confirmation on some of those alleged discrepancies. For one, I doubt a professional intelligence agency would be that sloppy.

I suppose I trust a newspaper a bit more when it comes to vetting because reporters and even editors can be canned if they go over the line. Witness the UK newspaper editor stepping down over alleged staged Iraqi prison abuse photos portrayed as the real deal.

I guess it doesn't help their case that the original author(s) misspelled "Zarqawi" as "Zaraqawi" either.

In fact, I cannot find a single independent reference on the net that Zarqawi has a tattoo even. The terms "zarqawi tattoo" only led me to 273 links on Google, all apparently spurious or else repetitions of the 50 alleged points (i.e. only single-sourced). That's a damning lacuna, suggesting at least that one point was outright manufactured.

Even the alleged prosthesis isn't confirmed. It's intelligence. And I'm sure Zarqawi isn't about to correct any misconceptions about himself. Alternet as a whole surely has no vested interest in confirming the official American story. Look at this bit from 2003:

From there on, rumors have Zarqawi and his new (but unconfirmed) prosthesis visiting the Ansar group in northern Kurdistan to see how their poisons were coming along; traveling to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia; and attending a "terrorist summit" in south Lebanon. While in Bangkok, he is also alleged to have ordered the assassination of a USAID official in Jordan.

So no tattoo. So much for point 40. Even the prosthesis is in doubt. And that's merely one point I picked at random to hunt down on the net.

I grabbed a reasonable quality version of the video floating around the filesharing network. I watched it. Didn't seem that blurry to me, all in all, so I'd dispute point 23. There was plenty of blood on the ground; bye-bye point 16. Reality is more prosaic than the sensibilities of said piece's author(s). Points 19 and 25 are inconsistent when taken together: the time gap (as evident from the clock in the lower right) of over a minute during the beheading accounts for the apparent speed of beheading. Can't have it both ways, claiming that the beheading was in fact too fast and that the relevant sequence was cut. The lack of motion as alleged in point 17 is due to Berg being bound and pinned; no mystery there.

I'll stop here. It's just not worth it anymore. Not even a challenge.

I'd say the 50 "anomalies" are an excellent case study of disconfirmation bias to the point of overreaching in an effort to disprove something because it disagrees with the author's or authors' existing beliefs. There's not even a serious attempt to ensure that the line of argument is self-consistent. With respect to logic, the author(s) did a judo throw on themselves. Game over.