The terrorist group holding a Marine hostage now says in an Internet statement that he was beheaded -- and they're already touting the beheading video that'll soon be available for all to see on the Internet.
Reuters first report:
- BAGHDAD, Iraq - The militant group the Army of Ansar al-Sunna said in an Internet statement that it had beheaded U.S. marine kidnapped in Iraq.
“We tell your leadership that we beheaded the marine of Lebanese origin Hassoun and you will see the film with your own eyes soon,” said the Arabic-language statement which was carried on at least two Islamic Web sites.
An Arabic television last Sunday screened a video tape of militants holding a blindfolded Wassef Ali Hassoun with a sword poised over his head.
The group's FULL STATEMENT which is addressed to President Bush announces that the hostage has been "slaughtered" (apt word) -- and promises more of the same.
Meanwhile, the AP's latest notes that there is no confirmation yet from the U.S. military, which is looking into it.
James Joyner also sites a Reuters report that had section:
- Arabic television Al Jazeera last Sunday screened a videotape of militants holding a blindfolded Wassef Ali Hassoun with a sword poised over his head. They demanded the release of prisoners in Iraq. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, which was addressed to U.S. President George W. Bush and advised him to withdraw his troops from Iraq.
“Your soldier had romantic relations with an Arab girl and he was lured away from his base,” the statement said. “And we will soon issue a new tape showing a new infidel hostage,” it said without giving the nationality of the hostage.
Our initial thoughts on this report (assuming that this report is accurate and that he has been murdered and they will post a video):
(1) It's clear how much the new media technology plays into plans of Al Qaeda. The murder is timed to fall right around the time of the U.S. July 4th weekend. It seems less aimed at intimidation than an act of brutal goading. And we know as soon as the photos are out they'll be on certain websites (D-R-U-D-G-E) before a bucket of tears are shed. That's the new reality.
As someone who was trained as a journalist and worked in the media for nearly 20 years, this can be stated as a certainty: in the news media some things are done because everyone does them and no one wants to be last. The same with the new rule of thumb about helping Al Qaeda spread its publicity of terror.
(2) This is going to shove the Al Qaeda beheadings to a new level, because an American military man (if the report is true) will have been brutally butchered. Even though there is some controversy over whether this Marine was AWOL...he was above all a Marine.
And as someone who lives not too far from Camp Pendleton (and who used to cover the base for a newspaper) if the reports are true it may have some consequences in the short and long term. No matter what their assignment, the Marines do their job with steely determination; this will throw something new into the mix. You can read PROOF of this prediction by reading an incredible letter to the terrorists from a Marine posted here.
(3)Once again Al Qaeda will have gone for a qualitative act of terror -- picking a highly symbolic individual and also picking a highly symbolic timeframe.
(4)Each time a terrorist group beheads someone the general populace is becoming a mite more desensitive. A tiny part of the shock value and revulsion wears off, because human beings are basically resiliant. Reality is adjusted in a relationship akin to when you stick your hand in a sink of water: your hand goes in and the water adjusts around the hand. Similarly, our perception of reality (a more brutal world) adjusts.
If these reports prove incorrect, some of the above will be "inoperative" but not all of it.
CAUTION: So far there is no confirmation that the hostage was executed. Just an internet statement.
NOTE: Dean's World learned of this before it was on the wires from Jeff Quinton at Backcountry Conservative who cited blogger Chris Short's breaking-news post that Marine hostage Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun has been beheaded. Short posted it immediately upon seeing a bulletin on Fox.
A bit more background, on this case from the AP:
- Hassoun, from West Jordan, Utah was last seen about a week before the videotape was broadcast, the military said.
U.S. forces initially believed Hassoun may have gone missing, but last month's Al-Jazeera video had led to the military changing his status to "captured."
The New York Times, citing a Marine officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has reported on its Web site that Hassoun had been traumatized after seeing one of his sergeants killed by a mortar, and was trying to make his way back to Lebanon. The officer told the paper that Hassoun sought the help of Iraqis on the base, was betrayed by them, and was handed over the extremists.
Hassoun's eldest brother, Mohammad, who lives in a Salt Lake City suburb, denied the report.
As noted above, in the end the controversy over this will matter little. The brutality and gleefulness will trump all.
UPDATES:
--Running unpdate at Backcountry Conservative.
--James Joyner also has a roundup and writes:"Given that Hassoun is/was Muslim, it’s unclear why he was an “infidel.” And, since he is/was of Lebanese Arab extraction, why his relations with an Arab girl would be problematic is also unclear."
--Talk Left says of the video the terrists say they're going to release:"We won't be watching."
--The great new blog Terrorism Unveiled explains why the terrorists feel he should be beheaded even though he is a Muslim -- as well as an incredible letter from a Marine to the terrorists. (Also linked above in our thoughts on this latest murder)
--Donald Sensing now mentions it on his site. Check back to his site often; he is one of the most thoughtful people around, of any ideology.
--Q and O: "Apparently the particular "branch" of Islam to which these ignorant pigs belong find it irrelevant that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is a Muslim. I'm sure that in their warped minds, his association with the US Marines was enough to have him declared apostate and could therefore be murdered. Rest in peace, Cpl. Hassoun. Once a Marine, always a Marine ... and I can promise you, the filth that killed you will soon get their wish when your comrades "martyr" them in the most horrible way they can fashion."
--Jihad Watch:"His family had pleaded for his life on the basis that he was a Muslim. But that wasn't enough this time -- he was still in the military of the Great Satan."
--CBS NEWS reports that Hassoun's brother, Sami says the family hasn't gotten any news yet. So as of this writing it is STILL NOT CONFIRMED.
--Fox News reports that Hassoun's family in Utah is in seclusion.
--The U.S. military still doesn't have confirmation but it's investigating it.
--Rambling Journal:"Hopefully, the powers that be will take the chains off of the Marines. I know that they are chomping at the bit to go and wipe out every last one of these bastards."
Check my post again, Joe. I've updated it. Reuters has it now too.
Wow... Spell check!
If you're referring to the lower case s on your name I fixed it. This was obviously done quickly and I'm fixing it up. There are many joys of blogging but a sad story like this isn't one of them and a comment in a comment box about needing spell check isn't one, either. Private emails are welcomed. My thoughts, regretfully, were on getting this on the dead Marine and getting this on the site quickly.
If anyone sees a spelling problem, email me in the future.
I agree with you Joe. Spell check!?!
Thank you for your good taste and dignity over this horrible news as it unfolds. Oh, this is terribly terribly sad.
I have a post on why he would still be killed according to "Islamism" even though he's a Muslim.
Save for some other occasion the bullshit about what the "steely determination" of the Marine Corps will be doing to avenge the murder of one of their own at the hands of an Arab terrorist gang.
Steely determination or no determination at all, the US Marine Corps are simply military instruments of a series of weakling US administrations that, that, under pressure of a media-engineered public opinion stampede, duck for cover and run away when the going gets tough in some foreign war in which the government chose to inject itself in the first place.
In Viet Nam this process took about seven years. It began in January 1968 and culminated in April 1975 in the national disgrace of a lone helicopter evacuating the last American personnel from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. Johnson's and Nixon's adminstrations both pretended that the war there was strictly for the Vietnamese people to fight, even though Kennedy and Johnson had decided to send more than a half-million American armed forces personnel into that country. So we lost the war and our enemies won.
It occured again at Mogadishu in Somalia, in the day and night of October 3, 1993. Then, a small group of US Army rangers and delta force personnel, were sent out to apprehend the leaders of a local Somali warlord's faction in the otherwise governmentless and periodically starving country, First one helicopter was shot down by the Somalis, and another force was sent out to retrieve the trapped US personnel. Then a second helicopter was sent out, and similarly shot down. Then a relief convoy was sent out and it too was shot to pieces in the narrow streets of Mogadishu. Almost immediately, the US government lost interest in the Somalia mission and all our forces were pulled out, as if we had never been involved. We lost the war and our enemies won.
Last year we started what was initially thought to be a relatively bloodless conquest of Iraq, for purposes -- among other considerations -- of deposing the brutal dictator. It turns out the brutal dictator is immensely popular with major segments of the local population, regardless of our intentions of democratic governmental reform in their country.
How, under the same kinds of pressure imposed on a government in frenzy to achieve some sort of paper victory in order to get re-elected, we are using smoke and mirrors to make it appear that we are turning over control to an Arab (shia and sunna) and Kurdish national government who are a democratic representation of the will of the Iraqis. A government that could not survive in power or survive in life in Baghdad for 72 hours, except for the heavily armed presence of the armed forces of the United States, augmented by the token contributions of a few other countries.
Meantime, the terrorists who truly rule Iraq have been successful in kidnapping and murdering Americans or other foreigners more or less at will. While the administration ducks and runs once again as in 1975 and 1993.
What will the US Marine Corps in particular do about this? Not one damned thing, except to obey orders of the US high command, and board their air cargo transports and go home, when they receive orders to do so.
The fact is, we routinely lose most of the conflicts we engage in these years. Simply because are troops are constrained to pull their punches in armed combat and to avoid civilian casualties. Instead of using our full military might to win, or to keep killing the enemy and his population unless and until they surrender outright. And our enemies know this and base their tactics on it. So we are losing this war and our enemies once again shall win.
I don't believe in limited wars, because in war, there is no substitute for victory. And victory means that you have achieved total, absolute power of life and death over your enemies, and compel them to debase themselves in surrender to you.
Is this a nice way to treat people? I don't give a shit. It's the only way to fight a war unless you intend from the start to lose it. Can't take this sort of stuff? Then stay the hell out of other peoples' conflicts, blood feuds, mass starvations, and all the rest.
You say you don't want terrorism in the world? Then have nothing here worth stealing, and live like the AIDS-ridden Africans or the enslaved muslims of western Asia or north Africa. Or keep all these peoples from coming to this country for any purpose whatsoever.
Or find some way to control these populations exactly the way your fathers and grandfathers did with the nazis, fascists and japanese imperialists in World War II. Destroy them by the millions, including burning them to death in their own cities, and send their prisoners to sweat it out in the gulags of Siberia, like the Russians did with the captured Germans. Then they will never fuck with you again, and run from your troops in fright when they so much as approach them on the streets of their shattered cities.
That's real victory. And it's the kind that counts, in the long run.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Well said Arnold. We keep going in a half hearted way into these wars and cut out as soon as things go bad. All it does is encourage our enemies to keep fighting. and in the long run results in our losing soldiers and civilians at a steady drip. If we go to war, we should go full bore, and like Arnold said develop the reputation as people not to screw with. Which is not what we have now.
"I don't believe in limited wars, because in war, there is no substitute for victory. And victory means that you have achieved total, absolute power of life and death over your enemies, and compel them to debase themselves in surrender to you.'
Yes, I can totally agree. What the hell is America doing starting wars which they have no intention of completing with this quasi-liberation of the people piety.
We have enough military hardware to carpet bomb, Fallujah, Tikrit, the entire Sunni triangle and every other Saddam stronghold but will not even decide to even suggest a cynical warning much less an ultimatum.
Its now July 4, 2004. Somebody in Washington needs to wake-up and smell the gunpowder.
Arnold
You are a wise man.
Bill, Catch, jane, thanks for the boosts.
I'm not sure about the bit about being a wise man. Maybe just an old one, grown tired of all the lies told from both sides of the political spectrum about what has been happening to us around the world and here in the USA as well, for a long time now.
Nobody's likely to draft me, at age 70, to repeat military service that I performed for Uncle Sam 50 years ago. But I have four kids. They are young enough.
And if it ever comes down to a draft once again, and young people start getting pulled in by the millions, and mine are included, then I want to be damned certain that they are fighting for keeps.
That means no pulled punches. No letting some gang of middle eastern cocksuckers murder their buddies on Arab TV while the great United States sits around muttering about the evil of it all.
And when such a war is done, I want to see one of two things that got accomplished.
Possibility number one is that the people we just fought have shucked off whatever aspect of their culture induced them to begin strapping belts of C4 or Semtex around the waists of their 12-year-old children, then sent them out to commit suicide amidst the murder of numerous innocent people not of their culture. Or masking themselves in hoods like a gang of old time ku kluxers then ceremoniously sawing off the head of some prisoner on Arab TV.
If we can assured the survivors of such a war in such a country have truly changed from within themselves, we can then get out of there and treat them more or less the way we treat the Canadians or Norwegians.
Possibility two is that we have to change their culture for them, without which we have to replay the entire bloody, fucking scenario all over again 20-25 years later, like the first time around with Kaiser Wilhelm and the second time around with Fuehrer Adolf Hitler.
In that case, I want us to trash their entire damned society from inside out, even if we have to destroy all their temples of worship and schools, and start all over with a culture that we will force feed them.
This means that we have to insist on no compromises that lead to more of the same. We have to be just like the great US Grant in the 1860s, who told the confederates that no terms of any kind were acceptable except unconditional surrender. That -- and what followed in the 1940s -- that was the real America. And if I believe in anything at all, I believe that the tought core of the great America still lives inside every one of us and our children as well.
Because it is exactly that tough core that will needed to save the world from the endless slavery these bastards are trying to lock the entire world into.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
You forgot Beiruit.
Beirut, 1982. You're right, Max. I forgot all about it. But it certainly fitted the same pattern as I described above. Blow up a US barracks, there goes the entire mission. I guess this will go on and on until we get a government that breaks the chain.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Beirut, 1982. You're right, Max. I forgot all about it. But it certainly fitted the same pattern as I described above. Blow up a US barracks, there goes the entire mission. I guess this will go on and on until we get a government that breaks the chain.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI