Zarqawi Group Beheads U.S. Hostage Armstrong
By Ed Cropley
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheaded American Eugene Armstrong and posted a video of the killing on the Internet on Monday.
The hostage's body was later recovered and identified, a U.S. official in Washington told Reuters.
The video, broadcast on an Islamist site, showed a masked man sawing the construction contractor's head off with a knife.
It also showed the banner of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group, which said it had kidnapped him along with another American and a Briton from their house in central Baghdad on Thursday. The other two now face death within 24 hours.
In the video, five armed and masked men stood around the hostage, who was blindfolded and dressed in orange overalls typical of U.S. jails and associated around the world with images of Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay.
After reading a lengthy statement, during which the hostage sat rocking on the floor, one of the men decapitated him.
They said they had killed Armstrong because the U.S. authorities had failed to free women prisoners in Iraqi jails. They gave another day for the United States to do so, or Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley would also be killed.
President Bush, however, vowed to keep up the pressure: "We will stay on the offensive against them," he said at an election event in Derry, New Hampshire, before the video.
"They will behead people in order to shake our will. These people are ideologues of hatred."
Tawhid and Jihad said in an Internet posting on Saturday it would kill all three men unless Iraqi women were freed from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr jails.
The U.S. military says no women are being held in the two prisons specified, but that two are in U.S. custody. Dubbed "Dr Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax" by U.S. forces, they are accused of working on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and are in a special prison for high-profile detainees.
The hostages' families have appealed for their release. The men were seized from their house in an upscale neighborhood of Baghdad early on Thursday morning by a group of gunmen.
Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for most of the bloodiest suicide bomb attacks in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
It has already beheaded several hostages, including U.S. telecoms engineer Nicholas Berg in May and South Korean driver Kim Sun-il in June.
MORE THAN A DOZEN HOSTAGES
The group released Filipino captive Angelo de la Cruz in July after Manila bowed to its demands to pull out troops.
The United States has offered $25 million for information leading to the death or capture of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, and has launched a series of air strikes on his suspected hideouts in the rebel-held town of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
The latest strike was on Monday afternoon, residents said. Doctors said at least two people were killed.
Another Islamist group freed 18 Iraqi soldiers it had threatened to kill, but more than a dozen other hostages are still facing death unless demands from their captors are met.
Two French journalists were seized a month ago, and two female Italian aid workers were kidnapped in broad daylight in central Baghdad earlier this month.
A statement purportedly from the group holding the Frenchmen said at the weekend they were o longer captives but had agreed to stay with the group for some time to cover it. France said on Monday it was preparing for a long wait for their release.
Another group has threatened to kill 10 workers from a U.S.-Turkish firm unless their company stopped doing business in Iraq within three days. Most of the workers seized are believed to be Turkish.
On Sunday a guerrilla group said it had captured 18 Iraqi soldiers and would kill them unless authorities freed an aide to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Hazem al-Araji, within 48 hours. Araji was arrested on Saturday night by U.S.-backed forces, Sadr's supporters said.
The release of the Iraqi soldiers -- shown on a video given to Reuters on Monday -- followed an appeal by a Sadr aide, Ali Smeisim, for the hitherto unknown group, the Mohammad bin Abdullah Brigades, to free them.
It was not immediately clear if Araji had been released.
One U.S. soldier was killed when guerrillas attacked a U.S. patrol north of Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said.
In the northern city of Mosul, a car rigged with explosives blew up killing all three inside the vehicle in what was probably a premature detonation of the bomb, police said.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group, said two of its members were assassinated in separate incidents over the past 24 hours, raising concerns guerrillas were targeting clerics to try to spark sectarian war.
More than 300 Iraqis have been killed in a surge of violence over the past 10 days, casting doubt on whether elections can go ahead in January as scheduled.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted on Sunday the polls would take place as planned. The U.S. military says it has launched a drive to regain control of rebel-held areas ahead of the elections.
I say they find out which mosque this bas is cowering in and level it.
Agreed.
I know how it can be done relatively effectively and limit civilian deaths...
Just strap a bomb on Nbadan*, send him in there to make sure there are no non-combatants inside...then level it. Then send his family a check for $25,000.
* That was a joke, btw.
When you hear like this....it's very difficult not wonder if fighting fire with fire is necessarily a bad thing--a 100% pure emotional reaction.
What really is the best way to deal with these psychopaths? Cave and give them what they want? Ignore them? Why should we be forced to fight *fair* when they don't even know the definition of the word?
If not Iraq, where? If not now, when?
With the exception of Russia and Israel, terrorism has been fairly quiet in the rest of the world.
These are the tactics to which they resort to solve every dispute, what would capitulating do except postpone the inevitable.
Kill 'em until they are broken.
I was listening to the radio and a guy, don't know who, I was flipping channels mentioned that Germany was in a similar state of chaos after Hitler was ousted and the US has similar problems with the remnant Nazis. The way they took care of them was fighting fire with fire, hunting them down and basically killing them. Don't know if that's true but I guess they didn't worry about political correctness back then. Maybe it's time to take the PC Kid gloves off and let our armed forces do what they are trained to do.
It's true and it last about 5 years beyond VE day.
Americans, today, have become weenies.
Incidentally, SJ, there were people like DeSPURate and Nbadanallah back then too.
Fortunately, FDR and Truman, stayed the course and saw the war through to the end.
Read up on Joseph Kennedy, he was a big Hitler appeaser.
...unlike Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, who were ardent Nazi supporters, and had assets seized under the Trading with the Enemy act in 1942.
One difference is that the Nazi's were actually afraid to die.
One difference is that the Nazi's were actually afraid to die.
True.
Yeah, but the Japanese weren't so we nuked 'em.
Maybe Fallujah needs some radiation.
The problem is politics have taken hold in America's actions in Iraq.
It basically goes back to what Osama said about America being true - that we're afraid to "get our boots dirty."
The political side dictates us treating these assholes with kid gloves. Look at Najaf - we pulled back twice after having Sadr and his henchmen surrounded. F it. If they're surrounded, just carpet bomb the entire lot and get it over with.
Unfortunately thanks to tree huggers and the political left, not to mention crooked foreign leaders/international diplomats. We have all this pressure to conform to kumbayah warfare, when these bas s really need to be kicked in the balls, and then kicked in the teeth repeatedly when they're crying on their knees.
Take the damn gloves off W., if they want their 72 virgins let's give them an express lane to do it.
The ignorance in this thread knows no bound. First off, we have tried killing 1,000's of these Iraqis along with 10,000's of innocent civilians and you know where it has gotten us - nowhere. The illegal invasion of Iraq, the killing of innocent civilians, the torture and rape of women and children at Abu Gharib, the recent hostage-taking of innocent Iraqi civilians to try and win influence over enemy fighters. The murder, the mayhem, the violence and slaughter of innocent men, women and children, and all this in the name of what? In the name of God?
If you are wondering what makes monsters like Al-Zarqawi possible maybe all of you ought to take a good long hard look in the mirror.
Give me a ing break, Dan. That has been going on long before the United States was even in existance.
God, if that didn't sound straight out of the asshole of Michael Moore I don't know WHAT does.
Great now the nutjob is comparing all of us to Hussein.
Terrorism cannot be killed in itself.
We cannot negotiate with terrorists, thus hostages will die.
Terrorism is like mosquito's. Your never gonna kill every mosquito that is out to get you by trying to kill them one or more at a time. The only way to kill the mosquito is to change the ecology. The only way to end terrorism is to end the reasons that Islamist turn to terrorism in the first place - a lack of job, education and a future.
Well if that's not hate fueled by right-wing talk radio I don't know what is. Here is a political novice telling me that I don't know anything about terrorism.God, if that didn't sound straight out of the asshole of Michael Moore I don't know WHAT does.
Which perhaps would come from liberating an oppressed people and helping them establish a freer society with a limited democratic government.The only way to end terrorism is to end the reasons that Islamist turn to terrorism in the first place - a lack of job, education and a future.
Damn, danny is starting to sound like a "Neocon" now.
What exactly do you think we're doing over there in the rebuilding of Iraq, building new schools, training teachers and so on?The only way to end terrorism is to end the reasons that Islamist turn to terrorism in the first place - a lack of job, education and a future.
It's not like they didn't have schools in Iraq before we invaded, and yes in secular Iraq girls went to school also. We can't cut these people down mortally and then give them a band-aid to cover up the wound. It doesn't work that wayWhat exactly do you think we're doing over there in the rebuilding of Iraq, building new schools, training teachers and so on?
"Here is a political novice telling me that I don't know anything about terrorism." ......Well Dan....your posts exhibit that you don't! And you have the nerve to call someone else a novice? Thats the joke of the century.Keep looking in the mirror and you'll be alright!
So your argument is that these people were better off being oppressed and without any hope for anything? In case you weren't paying attention Hussein didn't give a **** about his own people.
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