I think we should all be increasingly terrified as the Bushies get more desperate. It gives them the motivation, the necessity even, to do something horrible. Something really, really, stupid and beyond the pale evil. Think Karl Rove with his back to the wall.
Like this (but on a larger scale, of course):
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/international/europe/17mace.html?hp
As for the Nick Berg murder, how indeed do we know it wasn't staged? There is a lot funny about it. And I don't mean the white plastic chair! (There must be ten million of those in the world, and thousands of them in Baghdad.) But it is exactly the kind of idiot trick the fools at Abu Ghraib would try to pull off, and the timing, the video, and his recent detention are very suspicious. I'm not delineating any conspiracy, who knows what happened (not me), but I say doubt is in order.
This kind of crap will bring the house down on us. Not just on Bush, on us all.
The bad old Soviets, who had real espionage and intelligence professionals, used to call ours the Caught In the Act boys (CIA).