Good article on Berg - are we making things unnecessarily complicated

"HE WAS not like anyone else his friends from West Chester had ever known - an adventurous dreamer, a driven idealist, part philosopher and part inventor who was bored with college but could rig together a sophisticated alarm system for his summer camp cabin from aluminum foil and a Walkman.

But when 26-year-old Nick Berg walked into the kettle of paranoia and violence that is Iraq, people suddenly didn't see the same guy his buddies from Henderson High knew. Suddenly, Berg's stubborn wanderlust made him a target of suspicion - a religious Jew riding around Mosul in a taxi with a copy of the Koran."

snip

"In Iraq, an eccentric young man with his own ideas about life became a kind of Rashoman-like figure - the same person perceived by the various players in radically different ways.

His friends insist that Berg's real story is simpler than it looked - that in the most cynical place on earth, he was merely trying to help."

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/8654371.htm?ERIGHTS=-4176555458365428355philly::lucianneg@aol.com&KRD_RM=7onnuouunusvptvwpwnnnnnnnn|Lucy+James|N

and I know how they think.. An unmarried, unfettered man of that age is likely to still have that cloak of invincibility about them.. Life has not knocked them around much yet, and they bounce from one adventure to another.. He probably thought this was a way to make big bucks, have an adventure, and since he had "ties" to the Iraqi people throough his late sister, he thought "he would be ok".. Once he got there, he saw the error, and came home...but he was drawn back..

His luck just ran out..