Tape showing US soldiers killing an unarmed and wounded Iraqi

[Az]

Oh, I missed this gem!

Originally posted by Ned


Bull. He'll be given the Silver Star and run as the Democrat presidential candidate in 30 years.

[Sprayber]

Another Unarmed Person Killed In Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20041116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_hostage_15

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan was believed to be dead Tuesday after a video received by Al-Jazeera television showed a hooded figure shooting a blindfolded woman in the head.

The British government and Hassan's family in London said they believed the longtime director of CARE in Iraq (news - web sites) was the victim. CARE said it was in mourning for the 59-year-old Briton who worked for decades providing food, medicine and humanitarian aid to Iraqis.

The video shows a militant firing a pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan," he told The Associated Press.

The station initially said it would air parts of the video, but Ballout then said it would not.

Hassan was abducted in Baghdad on Oct. 19, the most prominent of more than 170 foreigners kidnapped in Iraq this year. Her captors later issued videos showing her pleading for Britain to withdraw its troops from Iraq and calling for the release of female Iraqi prisoners.

Ballout said the station received the tape a few days ago but had not been sure of its authenticity.

"We invited British diplomatic officials to come and view it ... with the aim of helping us ascertain whether it was Mrs. Hassan or not," he said. "It's now likely that the image depicts Mrs. Hassan."

In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that based on the experts' examination of the video, "we have today had to inform Margaret Hassan's family that, sadly, we now believe that she has probably been murdered, although we cannot conclude this with complete certainty."

In an emotional plea on Al-Jazeera, Hassan's husband said he had heard of the video but did not know whether it was authentic. He asked the kidnappers to return his wife to him.

"I appeal to those who took my wife (to tell me) what they did with her," Tahsin Ali Hassan said, his voice choked with tears. "They can contact me or the Iraqi Peace Organization. I want my wife, dead or alive. If she is dead, please let me know of her whereabouts so I can bury her in peace."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) expressed sympathy Tuesday with Hassan's family. His office said Blair "shares their abhorrence at the cruel treatment of someone who devoted so many years of their life to helping the people of Iraq."

Hassan's four brothers and sisters said they believe she was dead.

"Our hearts are broken," they said in a statement released by the British Foreign Office. "We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended."

The family did not indicate why they now believed Hassan was dead, but said: "Those who are guilty of this atrocious act, and those who support them, have no excuses."

"It is with profound sadness that we have learned of the existence of a video in which it appears that our colleague Margaret Hassan has been killed," CARE said in a statement. "The whole of CARE is in mourning."

On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the mutilated body of what they believe was a Western woman on a street in a Fallujah during the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold. The body's identity, if known, has not been made public. Besides Hassan, the only Western woman known held was Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq who was seized last month.

Al-Jazeera reported on Nov. 2 that Hassan's captors had threatened to turn her over to followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Zarqawi and his men have been blamed for numerous deadly car bombings and the slayings of foreign hostages, including three Americans and a Briton. More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq this year; more than 30 of them have been slain.

Born in Ireland, Hassan also held British and Iraqi citizenship. She lived in Iraq for 30 years and married an Iraqi. She became well known among aid agencies for her work, helping distribute food and medicine to Iraqis during the more than a decade that Iraq was under U.N. sanctions.

Britain's Straw expressed his sympathy to Hassan's family and condemned the killing.

"To kidnap and kill anyone is inexcusable. But it is repugnant to commit such a crime against a woman who has spent most of her life working for the good of the people of Iraq," Straw said in a statement.

In its statement, her family said: "Nobody can justify this. Margaret was against sanctions and the war. To commit such a crime against anyone is unforgivable. But we cannot believe how anybody could do this to our kind, compassionate sister.

"The gap she leaves will never be filled."

[Arrian]

Not that any of the hostage killings have been ok in my book (far from it), but this has got to be the most repulsive. The women had dedicated her life to helping Iraqis.

Ah, which is basically what Jack Straw said. I agree. It's appalling.

-Arrian

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
"Terrorist" and "freedom fighter" are still not mutually exclusive.

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[Ned]

To be fair, Azazel to the other side in this argument, the woman hostage posed a grave risk to her kidnappers. She had been allowed to be by herself for a while. What did she do? Pick up an AK47 and start spraying the brave jihadist with bullets. When overpowered, she pretended to be dead to get the sons of Allah to drop their guard.

Her beheading, by Zarqawi, the commander in chief, was a simple act of self defense by rattled young men in the heat of combat.

[GePap]

This incident is exactly why you can't crush insurgencies with brute strenght- the regular forces will invariably do something to piss of the local population, always giving the enemy a base of support to sustain them. You can control an insurgency with brute strenght, but you can only end it by removing their base of support-and unless you decide to do it with concentration camps (like the Spanish and British at the turn of the 19th century) or by genocide like the Turks, you have a hard task ahead.

[Kidlicious]

Gepap is right. Just imagine this happening by the hands of a foreign army in your country.

[Last Conformist]

@GePap: Where were the Spanish doing it?

[Odin]

Yup, we are really winning thier heart and minds when we kill an unarmed person IN A PLACE OF WORSHIP.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
@GePap: Where were the Spanish doing it?

Cuba in the 1890's.

[Patroklos]

Or we can just kill them all.

Actualy GePap, I would be more mad at the self deluded reactionary insurgents who put my father on trial for owning a bottle of liquor, killed/kidnapped/beheaded the aid workers giving me food, kept me without electricity for a year because they kept sabotaging the utilities, and then got me killed by dressing like me and hiding in my backyard.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Azazel
OMFG AMERICA = NAZIS

Get the **** over it. The person who did it should be punished, or institutionalized if he's mental. HOWEVER I would like to see everyone posting like they have a candle in their pants if the "freedom fighters" did it. I would also like to point out that some outraged posters in this very thread support "freedom fighters" who do much worse things on a regular basis.

There are certainly a lot of hypocrats running around.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Niessuh
The worse thing is not the boy murdering a wounded man. Buddies reaction is the worse thing: no reaction. No "What the **** are you doing!". Just keep on walking.
That says it all

The version I saw cut out after the shot was fired. It showed nothing after that event.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Or we can just kill them all.

Actualy GePap, I would be more mad at the self deluded reactionary insurgents who put my father on trial for owning a bottle of liquor, killed/kidnapped/beheaded the aid workers giving me food, kept me without electricity for a year because they kept sabotaging the utilities, and then got me killed by dressing like me and hiding in my backyard.

Yay for you. You aren't quite as evil.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
This incident is exactly why you can't crush insurgencies with brute strenght-

You most certainly can crush insurgencies with brut force. Just look how Saddam crushed the insurgency against him in 1991 or how Asad crushed the insurgency in 1982. We just don't have the balls to do what is necissary as it would entail mass killings and group punishment.

We did it in the Philppine Insurection but I don't see any western power doing it again in modern times. That's probably good in the long run but it means we won't have the will to win in Iraq.