Look at this face.
Because it is believed to be the face of the “new” Al Qaeda chief in Iraq who, in a clear effort to earn his terrorist stripes and make a big international name for himself, is reportedly taking “credit” for brutally murdering two American GI’s — in keeping with the tradition of the man he replaced, the late, unlamented al-Zarqawi.
Yesterday was a sad day for all Americans (despite the inaccurate and truly execrable suggestion of a top radio talk show host who claimed leftist blogs “welcomed” the two young men’s brutal deaths). The news that two young American soldiers who had been captured in what clearly seemed to be a professional operation aimed at grabbing a couple of American GIs had been murdered in an unspeakable way sicked Americans of all walks of life and all political persuasions.
Perhaps the most poignant audio was a piece played on Los Angeles Talk Radio KFI 640 — a telephone answering machine message left by one of the now-dead soldiers to his parents…telling them not to worry. That he’d be all right. That he was worrying about them.
The New York Times:
The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been “brutally tortured.”
An American military official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that both bodies showed evidence of “severe trauma” and that they could not be conclusively identified. Insurgents had planted “numerous” bombs along the road leading to the bodies, and around the bodies themselves, the official said, slowing the retrieval of the Americans by 12 hours.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman, said “the remains” of what are believed to be the two Americans were found near a power plant in the vicinity of Yusefiya, about three miles from the site were they had been captured by insurgents.
General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.
“We couldn’t identify them,” the American military official in Baghdad said.
Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim, the chief of operations of the Ministry of Defense, said that he had seen an official report and that he could confirm the two Americans had been “killed in a very brutal way and tortured.”
“There were traces of torture on their bodies, very clear traces,” General Jassim said. “It was a brutal torture. The torture was something unnatural.”
The London Times Online:
THE bodies of two American soldiers who disappeared last weekend were recovered yesterday as al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed that it had slit their throats after kidnapping them. An Iraqi general said that the corpses showed signs of “barbaric torture�.
“Coalition forces have recovered what we believe are the remains of the soldiers,� Major-General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, told reporters. He refused to comment on how the young men abducted at a roadblock near Yusufiyah last Friday night had been killed.
An internet statement said that the new head of al-Qaeda in Iraq had “slit the throats� of the two men. It used the word “slaughter�.
“God Almighty has graced the leader Abu Hamza alMuhajir . . . with the implementation of the sentence,� said a statement from the Mujahidin Shura Council, a rebel association that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. If true, the act would be a brazen act by the successor to al-Qaeda’s former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US airstrike two weeks ago.
The council, which includes al-Qaeda, claimed on Monday that it had kidnapped the two men. The statement yesterday said: “We have carried out God’s verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders.�
Here’s a list of missing U.S. military and civilians in Iraq.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.