The horror of Nick Berg’s beheading is perhaps best expressed in the bizarre conspiracy theories that people are taking solace in to convince themselves that he wasn’t just a random victom of brutality and hate. Within the past 24 hours, I’ve witnessed a discussion among left leaning people who are speculating on whether or not the execution was somehow staged to distract the American people from the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. I could try to explain these theories, but I honestly don’t understand them. By the same token, this morning I heard people talking about how Berg was perhaps an al-Qaeda sympathizer who was executed because he made the mistake of trusting the terrorists. I have no idea whether there’s any truth to these theories, but I suspect that the people who are coming up with them don’t know either. Apparently the idea that Nick Berg was what people said he was, a businessman who was on his way out of Iraq when he was abducted by terrorists, is just too much to take.