Kidnappers Set Deadline For Killing Hostage

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | Colin Freeman/Philip Sherwell

[traumer]

Those rules have to change. We are dealing with a whole different 'culture'....

[Go Gordon]

I am heartsick. Nothing that can be done to these people will bother me in any way.

Faluja update: A 24 hour deadline is announced to release all hostages. During that 24 hour period, all women and children are allowed to leave, submitting to searches and interrogation. During the first hour, leaflets are dropped explaining the conditions and instructions and that Faluja will temporarily become US territory in 24 hours.

After 24 hours, the B52's carpet bomb the place into ashes, highlighted with a couple MOAB's and Daisy Cutters. This must be done at night, so it comes off as fireworks, to be filmed and distributed to the other cities that think they're gonna start shi'ite with the coalition.

A press conference is held the next day, reaffirming the 6/30/04 deadline for turnover of political power, but expressly points out that the US military will remain until all Iraqi security forces and elements of its military are able to put down a city the size of Baghdad. It may take a few years, and the US may have to replicate Faluja, but we will not be intimidated.

A second press conference is held, politely putting Iran on notice that it must control its borders, reign in its militia, and stop the logistical support. Hence forth, for each Iranian killed or captured in Iraq, will result in a MOAB being dropped on a mullah home, at the time and location of our choice. Syria is given the same message.

Wait to see who blinks....

[traumer]

Lease some of those Israeli BULLDOZERS !

[TheLion]

Some strong conservative should stand up in the Senate or House and publicly thank the Democrats for making the enemy think we are weak and divided in the time of war. They have given our enemies hope, strength and courage in their fight against us.

This has directly caused the loss of lives and will cause even more.

The longer the Democrats insist in tearing down our national resolve, the more emboldened will our enemies become.

Thanks Democrats!

[blam]

"And just 5 minutes ago I find out they are holding a hostage from just a town or so over from me in Mississippi, and they are saying his death will be even worse than the four civilian contractors. "

I don't expect the folks in Macon, Mississippi are feeling to kindly toward the Iraqi people tonight.

[blam]

"I am just about over it."

Me too.

[Travis McGee]

Good intell report, even by a British traitor.

[Gunrunner2]

Agreed.
Announce that children (under 10) must leave within 24hrs, then all those left will be enemy combatants and shall die.

[Gunrunner2]

No matter what the US does the "world" will howl in outrage. Might as well make is really something to howl about.

[txhurl]

There is only one sentiment left - that worked in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 'example'.

[mystery-ak]

I like your idea the best....God help this poor man.

[don-o]

I'm hating that tex. Really bad. But, the lines are drawn clear.

Big time smack up side of head, then see if they want some more.

If not in Falluja, then where?

If not now, when?

I keep asking myself.

[txhurl]

Fallujah's innocents will have (had have) the benefit of escape prior. That's what makes it doable.

[don-o]

I am hip Tex.

I just hope that what our guys have in mind. Could be that the bad guys will also slip away, as rats will. But, some will remain, jonesing for their 72.

Time to kick the tires and light the fires.

[homemom]

This just breaks my heart for the hostages, the people trying to provide aid, our troops.

It's time for another round of shock and awe--this one unmistakable!

I'm with Squanto, here . . .

***Make a leaflet drop on that ville stating they have 6 hours to release the hostages AND leave the city on foot submitting to a search by GI's at checkpoints . After that 6 hour mark level the entire city with B52 strikes for about 2 hours and then sweep and bury whats left with D9 Cat's..........time to make the rules and live by em.***

We need to state unmistakably that these kinds of action WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. It will just continue unless we do.

God bless the souls of all the hostages.

[homemom]

***Thank God we have the Commander in Chief that we do and not some wishy washy lefty.***

YES! Prayers for President Bush. You know this is breaking his heart, too.

[Bobibutu]

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vincent200404081542.asp
The Ungovernable Shiites
It’s their tradition.

By Steven Vincent

There is a story told among Shiites today that as the revered Imam Hussein lay dying on the fields of Karbala in 680 A.D., he cursed the people of what is now Iraq for having deserted him in his hour of need. "May you never satisfy a ruler," he gasped. "And may you never be satisfied by a ruler."

While I'm not sure how widespread that legend is among rank-and-file Shiites, it's worth remembering as we watch radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr lead his nation off a cliff. As Hussein's anathema implies, there is something unstable and ungovernable at the heart of Shiism — something that is not specific to Sadr's intifada, but which in fact runs through the entire religious sect: a deep attachment to lost causes, alienation, failure, and death. And this, in turn, suggests that our struggle with radical Islam has only just begun.

As I've written here before, during my two trips to Iraq I've studied the Shia — praying in their mosques, attending their religious gatherings, interviewing their clerics and, most of all, examining their teachings and iconography. This last aspect particularly startled me: severed heads, amputated hands, Arabic letters dripping blood — and that's what found in mosques. On the street, you can buy Iranian-made posters which depict Hussein, resembling a bearded 1970s rock star, in a number of pathetic scenes from the Battle of Karbala: Hussein holding his six month-old son Ali Ashgar, an arrow protruding from the baby's throat; Hussein cradling, Pietá-style, the bloodstained body of his nephew Qasem; Hussein's own decapitated head, rapt in orgasmic death-ecstasy. It's as if the Shia conflated the myths of Mary and Christ into a single masculine image of martyrdom and sorrow. (So intent is Shiism on gender-cleansing its mythology that, as one story relates, it wasn't Fatima who suckled her infant sons Hussein and Hasan, but Mohammad, using saliva from his tongue.)

The Shias' most holy day is Ashura, which commemorates the Battle of Karbala — a military disaster in which Hussein, leading an entourage of family and supporters, was besieged and massacred by his Damascus-based rivals, the corrupt Umayyad clan. To explain their hero's defeat, the Shia wove an elaborate web of fable and legend, complete with heroic last stands, valiant speeches, skies that wept blood and, above all, holy martyrdom. Hussein, we are told, knew he would die at Karbala, but went anyway, sacrificing himself — and, somewhat inexplicably, his family and friends — in order to discredit the Ummayads and keep the pure light of Islam alive. Echoes of Gethsemane and Golgotha are obvious, except there is no resurrection, no happy ending for the Shiites-only endless weeping for Hussein and guilt for those ancient Iraqis who failed to help him.

This year's Ashura was the first that Shias could publicly observe in years, thanks to the Coalition's overthrown of Shia-hating Saddam Hussein. Days beforehand, Baghdad and points south were festooned with religious banners, painted drops of blood frequently oozing from the beautiful Arabic script. Meanwhile, from seemingly every cab and kabob-stand boomed religious music — lugubrious lamentations for the death of the holy Imam. During this period, in fact, Shiites are not supposed to be happy. Weddings are banned, birthdays are not celebrated (although Muslims don't go much for birthdays — only death days), while this year, religious extremists forced Christian liquor salesman in Baghdad to close on Fridays — even though it is still legal, for now, to sell booze on the Islamic sabbath.

Ashura itself is an orgy of death imagery. Giant bloody signs spelling out Hussein's name draped down the facades of Karbala's two main mosques, while a fountain sprayed geysers of blood-red liquid. Mirrored replicas of Hussein's bier, decorated with ornate vases and artificial flowers, glittered everywhere, while winding through the crowd were men with blood-soaked bandages wrapped around their head and faces to stanch the bleeding from self-inflicted sword wounds. Meanwhile, cadres of male worshipers marched through the throng, chanting and beating their breasts or flogging themselves with metal chains.

Unless you have the instincts of a pre-Reformation Catholic peasant-or Mel Gibson — it is nearly impossible to grasp this appreciation of suffering and death. But here it is not death as a redemptive power, death as spectacle — a public expression that seeks the admiration of man as much as God. This is what, in my mind, separates Shia radicalism from its Sunni counterpart. Wahabbi and Palestinian suicide bombers seek honor and glorification by killing their enemies; the Shiites' spiritual apotheosis, on the contrary, comes from having their enemies kill them — a kind of suicidal exhibitionism that fetishizes Hussein's fate at Karbala. Early Christians felt that the blood of martyrs nourished the Church; Shiites believe that martyr blood will embellish their own holiness and that of their families for untold generations.

Seen in this light, it's not surprising that the first eleven of Shia's twelve sinless imams died by unnatural causes, their infallibility apparently unable to detect the poisons that dispatched each to Allah. (The 12th imam, Mohammad al-Mahdi, disappeared down a hole in Samarra and won't be seen again until Judgment Day.) Contemporary imams have likewise met grisly fates. Last August, a car bomb killed Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim in Najaf. An interesting Shia poster depicts the slain cleric along with over 60 extended family members — all of whom were executed by Saddam Hussein — superimposed over a bleeding map of Iraq. More prevalent is a poster that shows a stunned Moqtada al-Sadr cradling his father, whom Saddam's thugs murdered — along with Sadr's two eldest brothers — in 1999. In 1980, Sadr's uncle, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Sadr, and his aunt, Bint Hoda, also met death at Baathist hands — a legacy of martyrdom that gives the 31-year-old cleric a spiritual authority his youth would not otherwise warrant among the age-revering Shiites.

Not all Shia festivals are death-related, of course, nor are most Shiites radicals. But the religious sect is bound together in large part by a reverence for Hussein, who, in the Shia imagination, combines infallibility in the secular realm with absolute piety in the religious The problem is, of course, this creates an image of perfection that no human being — not even Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamofascist successors — can realize, leading to the Shiites' perpetual disappointment, alienation and eventual violence against governing authorities. Like the man or woman searching for the perfect spouse, no one living person is ever quite "right" for the Shia. For them, the best is always enemy to the good.

Now we have Moqtada al-Sadr holed up in Najaf, threatening to cast the Coalition as modern-day Ummayads in his own version Karbala, with the entire world as his audience. Unfortunately, there seems little American authorities can do to prevent Sadr, or any other equally radicalized, theatrical cleric, from sucking them into this archetypical narrative. Shiites need martyrdom to define their piety, their identity, their very selves. But in order to be a martyr, they must have an enemy — preferably one that loves life and its pluralism, diversity and messy compromises; an enemy, in short, is "corrupt." If America — or for that matter, Israel — didn't exist, Shiites would have to create them. Meanwhile, Sadr is following his predecessors' script to a T. That the drama may strike us more as Rebel without a Cause, than the holy Battle of Karbala doesn't bother him a bit. "Martyrdom," says the apocalyptic cleric, voicing the inner-most thoughts of his religious sect, "gives us dignity from God." Imam Hussein's curse, it seems, has come true.

— Steven Vincent is a freelance journalist who recently returned from Iraq.

[Brad’s Gramma]

I wonder, ARE THERE any innocents left in that place? Seriously...other than the small children, and I mean small, I firmly believe that place has been taken over by the devil.

I'm NOT throwing that out lightly.

[reg45]

Fallujah Extreme Makeover

[NordP]

Boy, you said it. Dear President Bush...all he must have on his mind these days. God Bless him for the man he is.