Posted on 08/02/2004 5:14:46 AM PDT by a_Turk
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A video posted on the Internet shows a masked gunman pumping three bullets into a man's head in what appears to be the murder of a Turkish hostage by militants in Iraq. In another video, militants said they would free a Somali captive because his Kuwaiti employer agreed to stop working in Iraq.
A video posted on a Web site used by militant groups shows a man identified as a Turk kneeling in front of three armed men. The man reads a statement in Turkish, identifying himself as Murat Yuce from Ankara, the Turkish capital. He says he works for a Turkish company that subcontracted for a Jordanian firm.
"I have a word of advice for any Turk who wants to come to Iraq to work: 'You don't have to be holding a gun to be aiding the occupationist United States ... Turkish companies should withdraw from Iraq," he says.
At the end of the statement, the leader of the three presumed kidnappers takes out a pistol and shoots the Turk in the side of the head. The Turk slumps to the ground, and the kidnapper shoots him in the head twice more. Blood is seen on the ground next to his head.
A black banner on the wall behind the kidnappers identifies the group as the Tawhid and Jihad, which is led by the Jordanian militant linked to al-Qaida, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It was not clear when the hostage was killed and his name did not match those of the two Turkish truck drivers kidnapped by Tawhid and Jihad last week.
The same group said Monday that it will release a Somali truck driver it kidnapped because the Kuwaiti company he works for agreed to stop working in Iraq, al-Jazeera television said.
Tawhid and Jihad had threatened in an earlier video aired July 29 to behead Ali Ahmed Moussa within 48 hours if his company failed to leave the volatile country. It was not known exactly when he was kidnapped.
In the video broadcast Monday on the Arabic-language network, Moussa appears kneeling before three black-clad, masked militants armed with assault rifles. One of the militants reads a statement.
He says the group is releasing Moussa "in appreciation of the attitudes of the Somali government and people toward Iraq and the Kuwaiti company's commitment to stop doing business in Iraq."
There was no word on when the Somali would be released.
The Kuwaiti company Moussa works for has not been publicly identified.
Al-Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility before for a number of bloody attacks across Iraq and, since April, the beheadings of several foreigners, including U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov.
On Sunday, Iraqi gunmen released one of two Lebanese businessmen, a day after they were snatched on a Baghdad street. The fate of the other hostage is unknown.
Militants have abducted over 70 foreigners, many of them truck drivers entering Iraq with supplies for the U.S. military or contractors involved with Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
The kidnappings are apart of an insurgent campaign aimed at forcing coalition forces out of the country and scaring foreign companies away.
; )
Sorry to hear about your countryman. In a front page article in the San Diego Tribune on Tuesday, it was stated that this guy and others were taken hostage after terrorists were "encouraged" by their success in scaring the Phillipines out of the country.
As sad as I am for the man shot, I am even sadder that the response of turkish truck drivers is to boycott deliveries to Iraq. 300 shipments a day.
Score another victory for terrorism.
Soon as the other two were set free the word out of the trucking sector was that the shipping will continue.
Just don't forget the days when the PKK used to suicide bomb our schools and malls while fundraising freely in DC.
Those who raise money for terrorists are as guilty as the terrorist themselves in my book. Those that appease them are little better. Those that cave in to them deserve what they get as they guilty of aiding terrorism by default.
I make no distinctions for race, creed, color, or religion in this regard. Neither does my daughter who arrived home this week for two weeks leave from Iraq where she and her comrades have had to deal with the effects of our "allies" bailing out on us.
There is a whole new generation of Americans who are learning who our friends really are, and are keeping tabs for future reference.
Had the 4th been allowed to come in from the north many of those who are now killing turkish drivers and my daughter's friends would have been killed or captured before they could ditch their uniforms and go to ground only to return as terrorists.
>> Those who raise money for terrorists are as guilty as the terrorist themselves in my book. Those that appease them are little better.
That's exactly why some folks in Turkey had trouble trusting you and your 4th to sit in the area of southeastern Turkey where the PKK whom you appeased and helped fundraise are active.
>> I make no distinctions for race, creed, color, or religion in this regard.
How about in any other regard..
Turks are false friends to the US...hopefully the disgusting nature of Turkish Islam indeed all of Islam will be exposed.
This is typical of what Turks do. Ask Christians who have had to deal with these barbarians about it.
"The ripping up of pregnant women to decide a wager as to the sex of the unborn child, the wholesale outraging of women and girls, not to speak of the torturing of men, and even little children, in the most inhuman fashion, indicate a fiendish barbarism that seems absolutely incompatible with the kindness and hospitality to which so many bear witness"
Bliss, Rev. Edwin Munsell . Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities.
Your comments remind me of an old, old Addams Family cartoon from an old, old copy of The New Yorker:
A movie theater is packed people silently crying, sniffing, and wiping tears from their eyes, watching a profoundly tragic scene on the screen. Uncle Fester, however, is wringing his hands in fiendish glee, and cackles hysterically in amusement.
As nice as it would be to round up and execute everyone suspected of cooperating with terrorists, such as those who might be fund-raising for them, the United States is still a democracy and not a police-state. People actually have to break our laws before they get jailed.
Not eveything that is morally wrong is illegal here. That is one of the many reasons why people prefer to live in the United States rather than where they were born. Democracy and liberty have inherent problems, but they are preferable to the problems of other forms of government. And we are a nation of laws, not political whimsy (though it seems that way at times).
PKK isn't the only group that has been able to fund-raise for terrorists here. Hamas, IRA, and others have been able to do so. Once most people find out about what they are really up to they stop sending money. Only recently have we gotten smart enough as a political body to make that type of fund-raising illegal (remember, most of these groups front themselves as charities).
As for you, you seem to take the position that two wrongs make a right. That Turkey should not be obligated to do the right thing just because they felt wronged. And if it were that simple, I might be more forgiving. But we all know that it wasn't about that. Turkey held us up for money. It was extortion plain and simple. Because of it, innocent people are dying in Iraq, including Turks. But I'm sure they'll find a way to blame it on us.
After all, blaming the U.S. these days has become an international pass-time. And it's certainly easier than looking at home for the root causes of the problem.
Do you really thing the PKK would have ceased to exist if it had not raised money here? How much did it raise elsewhere? It doesn't take a lot of money to make bomb and use it to blow up school. i suspect it would have happened whether they raised money here or not.
But then that's why I don't give money to very many charities (only local church groups). Most of them misuse the money they are given. But, until being stupid is made a crime in the U.S., stupid people will give money to other stupid people to do stupid or evil things.
The bottom line is that a stable, free and democratic Iraq is in Turkey's best interest, and your country's refusal to cooperate with us has been an obstacle to that. If the experiment fails, we can always go home and leave Turkey to deal with the mess it helped create on its own border--a fact they ought to consider carefully (Kerry has all but vowed to do just that and the failure of the Turks to help us is being used by his campaign as a reason he should be elected over Bush). Turkey's actions (or lack thereof) in this conflict have done more to encourage groups like PKK than anything we have done. Those actions also encourage the appeasers here in the U.S.
To use an old phrase, Turkey has cut off it's nose to spite it's face.
If turkish truck drivers and others allow themselves to be scared off the job, look for PKK to go on the attack in your own country. It's all connected.
>> After all, blaming the U.S. these days has become an international pass-time. And it's certainly easier than looking at home for the root causes of the problem.
Replace the mnemonic U.S. with Turkey, and you'll have heard my sentiment.
Gotto see more than one perspective. Always.
Can't take the truth Muslim Turk!
Turks and their genocides make the Bin Ladens and Stalins of the world look like choir boys.
The sordid Mulism Turkish past is catching up to you and no amount of lying and obfuscation and propaganda will suppress the truth about Muslim Turks and their evil deeds.
On terrorism there is only one perspective worth considering. Destroying it utterly, completely and finally. Equivocation and excuse making for any reason is not acceptable when it comes to taking action against it. New York burned because Bill Clinton fiddled and equivocated. Timothy McVeigh was just as evil and stupid as any PKK bomber. They're all cut from same cowardly cloth.
And while looking at both sides of a question or subject is required, that does not mean they are both equally valid. There are objective measures of right and wrong that trancend even nationalism and personal feeling.
History isn't over. A time will come when those who sat on the sidelines and pointed accusatory fingers at us will once again ask us for our help. Let's hope the goodwill of Americans hasn't been completely sapped by then.
>> On terrorism there is only one perspective worth considering. Destroying it utterly, completely and finally.
Agreed.
Had to happen sooner or later. ;-]
As Ben Franklin said, we'll all hang spearately or together if we don't defeat terrorism.
>> Had to happen sooner or later.
Why I agreed with that since age five :^D
Question is, does the leadership of the US agree?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185736/posts
The short answer in my opinion, is yes. As my example I will use the Isreali/Palestinain issue.
Over the past two years public statement from the White House have been equally critical of both sides--so much so that conservatives lambasted him for being soft on terrorism and of undermining Isreal's right to defend itself. However, in every U.N. vote we were solidly behind Isreal and when the chips were down stood behind all of their self-defense decisions. The seeming cognitive dis-connect was simply the administration be carefull not to say anything that could be used as anti-US propaganda in the muslim press.
Today in Iraq we face, I think, a similar situation (as I mentioned earlier my daughter is in Iraq assigned to a Military Intelligence unit). As far as I know we support the PUK not the PKK. But the latter is a major and formidable force to be reckoned with.
Right now the PKK is not actively attacking U.S. forces (as far as I know), but Syrian backed Sunni bathists and Iranian backed Shiites are. Our policy at the moment (near as I can tell based on what I've read and been told), is not to provoke the PKK until until we get a handle on things in the south.
In the meantime we are negotiating re-integration of Kurds into areas like Kirkuk where Saddam's efforts at "arabization" ran Kurds out of that city and others. The area is a powder-keg and we are doing our best to keep a lid on things with limited forces.
Also remember that PKK gets significant support from Syria as well as Iran (as stated in the article). When the new Iraqi interim president told Iran and Syria to stop sending foreign fighters and helping terrorists in Iraq (or else!), that meant the PKK as well I would have to assume. So, for now, the battle against the PKK is being fought through their main backers (Iran and Syria), while trying, I told, to get them to re-integrate into society.
Eventually, however, if they persist in terrorism, they will be gone after by U.S. and Iraqi security forces once those forces have been trained and equipped or cn be shifted from areas where the internal threat is more immediate.
I do not believe Bush will tolerate them continuing with terrorism. Unfortunately, we do not have the manpower to handle everything at once. But I think I can assure you that they are on the list. One thing you can say about presdident Bush--He means what he says. And he has said that he will fight terrorism whereever it exists. I believe him.
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