Joined Oct 2003
Evil Bert
Forum Thread
American Hostage Reportedly Beheaded
June 18, 2004 at
10:41 AM
American hostage reportedly beheaded [msn.com]
Demands had given Saudis 72 hours to save Paul Johnson's life
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:33 p.m. ET June 18, 2004RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Arab satellite network Al-Arabiya reported Friday that American hostage Paul Johnson had been beheaded. It did not immediately provide details and the report could not be independently confirmed.
Thousands of Saudi security forces had intensified their search of fundamentalist strongholds Friday as the deadline approached Johnson to be executed by his Islamic militant kidnappers.
The kidnappers did not set a specific time when the deadline runs out. A videotape with the threat appeared on a Web site at about midnight Tuesday Saudi time, and if counted from that point the 72 hours would run out by midnight Friday, or 5 p.m. ET Friday.
In the video, the kidnappers vow to kill Johnson unless the Saudi government released all the militants in its prisons. The Saudis have rejected the demand.
Police vehicles drove through the Sweidi, Dhahar al-Budaih and Badr districts overnight and into Friday, but the authorities gave no indication they were any closer to finding Johnson, an employee of the U.S. defense corporation Lockheed Martin who was kidnapped last weekend.
A June 12 posting on the Sawt al Jihad Islamist Web site, shows the photo of Paul Johnson, whom militants said they had kidnapped that day.
People living in the three districts, which lie in western and southern Riyadh, suggest that the kidnappers enjoy popular support, partly because of U.S. policy in Iraq and its perceived backing for Israel.
"How can we inform on our brothers when we see all these pictures coming from Abu Ghraib and Rafah," Muklas Nawaf, a resident of Dhahar al-Budaih, said at a restaurant called Jihad, or holy war in Arabic. He was referring to the pictures of Iraqis abused by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and the Israeli military's killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their homes in the Gaza refugee camp of Rafah.
"This is not a little skirmish. It is a war," Nawaf added.
But a top Saudi cleric, the preacher of Imam Sultana Mosque in Riyadh, implored the kidnappers to release Johnson in a column published in Al-Riyadh newspaper on Friday.
"O, youth of the nation who have trodden the wrong path, come back to the fold of the community of Islam. Avoid this sedition and be obedient to the ruler of the Muslims," Sheik Mohammed bin Saad al-Saeed wrote, referring to King Fahd.
And Johnson's Thai wife, Thanom, appealed for her husband's release on the Saudi-owned satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya. "When I see him in TV, I remember the medicine he needs," she said, her voice wavering. "I am afraid. I will do my best for him. Please bring him back to me."
Few leads
A senior Saudi official in the United States said officials have had few promising leads in their search for Johnson, whose kidnappers claim to be the al-Qaida chapter in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said there had been no communications from the kidnappers except for the video and statement on the Web site.
The FBI has sent a team of about 20 specialists in hostage rescue, hostage negotiations, profiling and other specialties who were working directly with Saudi officials, the official said.
More than 15,000 Saudi officers have been deployed in the search of Riyadh, going door-to-door in some neighborhoods. More than 1,200 Saudi homes had been searched as of Thursday night.
"We are even using the fire department, for instance, because they have knowledge of their neighborhoods, and districts," the official said. The Saudi official said the suspected leader of al-Qaida in the kingdom, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, whom the video tape identified as the hooded man making a speech, is also the main suspect in the shootings of a German citizen and an American in the kingdom recently.
Johnson, 49, had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade.
Vigils back home
Friends and relatives of Johnson sang "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" as they held candles and small flags at a vigil late Thursday in Eagleswood, N.J., a town where the engineer had lived.
"Your love, your prayers and your support are appreciated," his niece Angle Roork said at the vigil.
More than 200 people attended the service in Port St. John, Fla., where Johnsons son, Paul Johnson III, lives.
We feel helpless here. I bet most people here have an awful feeling that this might be futile, said Father Tony Quinlivan of Blessed Sacrament in Cocoa, Fla. But its never futile when a community comes together.
Amid concern over Johnson's fate, the U.S. State Department updated a 2-month-old travel warning for Saudi Arabia, pointing out that attacks on Americans there have resulted in deaths and injuries and, in a reference to Johnson, a kidnapping.
Demands had given Saudis 72 hours to save Paul Johnson's life
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:33 p.m. ET June 18, 2004RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Arab satellite network Al-Arabiya reported Friday that American hostage Paul Johnson had been beheaded. It did not immediately provide details and the report could not be independently confirmed.
Thousands of Saudi security forces had intensified their search of fundamentalist strongholds Friday as the deadline approached Johnson to be executed by his Islamic militant kidnappers.
The kidnappers did not set a specific time when the deadline runs out. A videotape with the threat appeared on a Web site at about midnight Tuesday Saudi time, and if counted from that point the 72 hours would run out by midnight Friday, or 5 p.m. ET Friday.
In the video, the kidnappers vow to kill Johnson unless the Saudi government released all the militants in its prisons. The Saudis have rejected the demand.
Police vehicles drove through the Sweidi, Dhahar al-Budaih and Badr districts overnight and into Friday, but the authorities gave no indication they were any closer to finding Johnson, an employee of the U.S. defense corporation Lockheed Martin who was kidnapped last weekend.
A June 12 posting on the Sawt al Jihad Islamist Web site, shows the photo of Paul Johnson, whom militants said they had kidnapped that day.
People living in the three districts, which lie in western and southern Riyadh, suggest that the kidnappers enjoy popular support, partly because of U.S. policy in Iraq and its perceived backing for Israel.
"How can we inform on our brothers when we see all these pictures coming from Abu Ghraib and Rafah," Muklas Nawaf, a resident of Dhahar al-Budaih, said at a restaurant called Jihad, or holy war in Arabic. He was referring to the pictures of Iraqis abused by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and the Israeli military's killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their homes in the Gaza refugee camp of Rafah.
"This is not a little skirmish. It is a war," Nawaf added.
But a top Saudi cleric, the preacher of Imam Sultana Mosque in Riyadh, implored the kidnappers to release Johnson in a column published in Al-Riyadh newspaper on Friday.
"O, youth of the nation who have trodden the wrong path, come back to the fold of the community of Islam. Avoid this sedition and be obedient to the ruler of the Muslims," Sheik Mohammed bin Saad al-Saeed wrote, referring to King Fahd.
And Johnson's Thai wife, Thanom, appealed for her husband's release on the Saudi-owned satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya. "When I see him in TV, I remember the medicine he needs," she said, her voice wavering. "I am afraid. I will do my best for him. Please bring him back to me."
Few leads
A senior Saudi official in the United States said officials have had few promising leads in their search for Johnson, whose kidnappers claim to be the al-Qaida chapter in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said there had been no communications from the kidnappers except for the video and statement on the Web site.
The FBI has sent a team of about 20 specialists in hostage rescue, hostage negotiations, profiling and other specialties who were working directly with Saudi officials, the official said.
More than 15,000 Saudi officers have been deployed in the search of Riyadh, going door-to-door in some neighborhoods. More than 1,200 Saudi homes had been searched as of Thursday night.
"We are even using the fire department, for instance, because they have knowledge of their neighborhoods, and districts," the official said. The Saudi official said the suspected leader of al-Qaida in the kingdom, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, whom the video tape identified as the hooded man making a speech, is also the main suspect in the shootings of a German citizen and an American in the kingdom recently.
Johnson, 49, had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade.
Vigils back home
Friends and relatives of Johnson sang "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" as they held candles and small flags at a vigil late Thursday in Eagleswood, N.J., a town where the engineer had lived.
"Your love, your prayers and your support are appreciated," his niece Angle Roork said at the vigil.
More than 200 people attended the service in Port St. John, Fla., where Johnsons son, Paul Johnson III, lives.
We feel helpless here. I bet most people here have an awful feeling that this might be futile, said Father Tony Quinlivan of Blessed Sacrament in Cocoa, Fla. But its never futile when a community comes together.
Amid concern over Johnson's fate, the U.S. State Department updated a 2-month-old travel warning for Saudi Arabia, pointing out that attacks on Americans there have resulted in deaths and injuries and, in a reference to Johnson, a kidnapping.
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Seems to me that when dealing with the militant Islamists, these polices simply do not work. At all.
oops my bad i went back and reread it and still dont get it.. maybe im slow who knows.
GAZA CITY (LifeStyle) -- Israeli bulldozers and tanks rolled into the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip again yesterday, demolishing a dog kennel and killing a litter of golden retriever puppies inside. Later that day, an Israeli Apache helicopter fired rockets on the Gaza City children's petting zoo, killing two rare Giant Panda cubs on loan from the World Wildlife Fund.
An Israeli spokesman said that the targets were legitimate, noting, "You have to ask yourself, what were those puppies and cubs doing in Gaza?"
At the same time, a European Union official condemned the killings in what most analysts described as thinly-coded anti-Semitic language, saying, "We condemn these killings."
The United States' reaction was more even-handed. Scott McClellan, press secretary for President Bush, released a statement to the press that read, "We believe that the Israelis have the right to defend themselves against cute animals. However, we ask that all sides show restraint. The Israelis could have simply punished one or two puppies. The Palestinians could show restraint too, for example by not having so many children."
In America, opinion was solidly behind the latest Israeli attack. "Normally, I would be totally against crushing puppies and blowing up Giant Panda cubs," said Nancy Moore, a 32-year-old attorney working in Boston. "But since this is the Israelis, somehow I think, like, if you're against them on this, the next thing you know, you're going to start putting Jews in gas chambers. You know?"
Hanni Alawi, a 15-year-old Palestinian who studies rock-throwing at a local institute, was outraged. "I can understand killing us -- I mean, who wouldn't want to -- but killing cute baby animals? That's just wrong."
In an interview, Alawi expressed hope that his rock-throwing could eventually get him a full-time position as a member of the Arab Street. "I've been practicing chanting angrily while shaking my fist, learning how to say things like, 'This is the last chance for peace' or 'We just want to live like normal people.' The trick is to keep from laughing."
Alawi, who lives with his pregnant 13-year-old wife and their four children in a single room which they share with nine other Palestinian families, is optimistic about the future. He hopes that he will be able to raise his family, which he plans to increase by a factor of nineteen, in an independent and unbearably overcrowded Palestinian state. "I get lonely and a little paranoid if I'm not being crushed by a seething mob," he explained.
As far as he and others like him are concerned, the goal is within reach. "Our plan is ingenious -- we will blow up an Israeli bus, and you know what they will do? The fools, they will attack us again and destroy more of our camps, which will help us recruit more suicide bombers, which will lead to more refugee camps being destroyed. The main thing is to get rid of the damn refugee camps. They really suck, man."
Just as important to their plan of using free Israeli military labor to rid the Gaza Strip of poorly-constructed refugee camps is the strategy of eventually wearing the Jewish state out and forcing them to leave. "So far, the plan's working brilliantly. The Jews are exactly where we want them! Um, all except for that Jew... WATCH OUT!"
The interview was tragically cut short when Alawi was flattened by the wheel of an Israeli bulldozer. Before medical help could arrive, the bulldozer ran over him 52 more times, in what Israeli authorities described as an "accident... or series of unrelated accidents."
But Alawi's death was not entirely in vain. In an unexpected twist that could give pause for hope, his remains were returned to his family along with the 3-ton Israeli bulldozer wheel. The official reason was that they could not scrape Alawi's deeply-embedded carcass from the wheel, even with the help of sophisticated tools and water drills. A large chunk of Silly Putty was used to get an impression of the remains, but Alawi's family refused to bury the Silly Putty as it was against Muslim tradition. Thus, the entire wheel was offered, which led some observers to believe that perhaps the two sides may yet find a way to work together.
"We believe that the Israelis did this as a peace gesture, and we welcome it," said a Bush Administration official.
At Alawi's funeral the following day, thousands of angry Palestinians dragged the bulldozer wheel through the narrow streets. It was an unexpectedly hopeful display of two traditional enemies fused together, Palestinian remains and Israeli wheel. Irony, or a turning point? Only time will tell.
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Seems to me that when dealing with the militant Islamists, these polices simply do not work. At all.
A non-interventionist foreign policy would rest on a simple principle:
We're always ready to defend ourselves, but we threaten no one.
A non-interventionist foreign policy is the only foreign policy consistent with libertarian ideals.
How can you say that non-intervention won't work in the Middle East when it hasn't even been attempted?
In fact, US intervention is a large cause of the problem.
Why did 19 hijackers sacrifice their lives? Bush says it's because they hate Americans' freedom and democracy.
I think that's absurd. "Gee, I hate America's freedom. I think I'll blow myself up, and take a few of them with me."
Maybe they were protesting the way the American government has been using force for half a century to overrule the wishes of people in the Middle East and elsewhere.
There's no way to eliminate all terrorism in the world.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is being unrealistic.
What is realistic is the goal of reducing considerably the threat of terrorism against the U.S.
----------------------------
According to Harry Browne:
Our government has overthrown democratically elected governments, it has supported with money and weapons dictatorial governments that have tortured and killed dissenters (just as George Bush keeps saying Saddam Hussein was doing), it has bribed foreign governments to join in enterprises of the U.S. government (as it did with Spain and tried to do with Turkey before Operation Kill Iraqis).
Because of very little press coverage, most Americans have no idea that our government has been doing these things. How many people know, for example, that Iran had a democratically elected government until the U.S. and British governments engineered a coup to install the tyrannical Shah of Iran in 1953?
Then there was all the U.S. government help to Diem in South Vietnam, Suharto in Indonesia, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Stalin during World War II, Lumumba* in the Congo, Saddam Hussein in Iraq (yes, that Saddam Hussein), and dozens more tyrants all of whom used American taxpayer money to oppress their own citizens.
Americans may not know about the support provided to these tyrants by the U.S. government, but I can assure you that plenty of people in those countries do know what our government has done to them.
Because Americans know so little about the history of our government's adventures of the last 50 years (and the last place anyone's likely to learn about them is in a government school), it's easy for Americans to buy George Bush's logic when he says, "See, these people hate freedom." Consequently, most people believe that the history of violence began on 9-11, when it's actually been building for 50 years.
It isn't even just history. Today George Bush is sending money and other resources to governments in Uzbekistan, Turkminestan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan governments that are oppressing their subjects in much the same way Hussein was supposed to have oppressed Iraq.
So if the 9-11 Commission has any interest in preventing future 9-11s, why isn't it discussing the role U.S. foreign policy played in creating 9-11 and is continuing to play today?
---------------------------
Government's role shouldn't be to police the world or even to win wars. Government's role should be to keep us out of wars to protect us from foreign enemies, not create them.
---------------------------
Bombing foreign countries doesn't end terrorism, it provokes it.
----------------------------
Until recently, the US was an impartial referee between Israel and the Palestinians. Not anymore! You might not have noticed the change, but millions in the Middle East certainly have.
I could go on and on, but you probably don't care.
A non-interventionist foreign policy would rest on a simple principle:
We're always ready to defend ourselves, but we threaten no one.
A non-interventionist foreign policy is the only foreign policy consistent with libertarian ideals.
How can you say that non-intervention won't work in the Middle East when it hasn't even been attempted?
In fact, US intervention is a large cause of the problem.
Why did 19 hijackers sacrifice their lives? Bush says it's because they hate Americans' freedom and democracy.
I think that's absurd. "Gee, I hate America's freedom. I think I'll blow myself up, and take a few of them with me."
Maybe they were protesting the way the American government has been using force for half a century to overrule the wishes of people in the Middle East and elsewhere.
There's no way to eliminate all terrorism in the world.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is being unrealistic.
What is realistic is the goal of reducing considerably the threat of terrorism against the U.S.
----------------------------
According to Harry Browne:
Our government has overthrown democratically elected governments, it has supported with money and weapons dictatorial governments that have tortured and killed dissenters (just as George Bush keeps saying Saddam Hussein was doing), it has bribed foreign governments to join in enterprises of the U.S. government (as it did with Spain and tried to do with Turkey before Operation Kill Iraqis).
Because of very little press coverage, most Americans have no idea that our government has been doing these things. How many people know, for example, that Iran had a democratically elected government until the U.S. and British governments engineered a coup to install the tyrannical Shah of Iran in 1953?
Then there was all the U.S. government help to Diem in South Vietnam, Suharto in Indonesia, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Stalin during World War II, Lumumba* in the Congo, Saddam Hussein in Iraq (yes, that Saddam Hussein), and dozens more tyrants all of whom used American taxpayer money to oppress their own citizens.
Americans may not know about the support provided to these tyrants by the U.S. government, but I can assure you that plenty of people in those countries do know what our government has done to them.
Because Americans know so little about the history of our government's adventures of the last 50 years (and the last place anyone's likely to learn about them is in a government school), it's easy for Americans to buy George Bush's logic when he says, "See, these people hate freedom." Consequently, most people believe that the history of violence began on 9-11, when it's actually been building for 50 years.
It isn't even just history. Today George Bush is sending money and other resources to governments in Uzbekistan, Turkminestan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan governments that are oppressing their subjects in much the same way Hussein was supposed to have oppressed Iraq.
So if the 9-11 Commission has any interest in preventing future 9-11s, why isn't it discussing the role U.S. foreign policy played in creating 9-11 and is continuing to play today?
---------------------------
Government's role shouldn't be to police the world or even to win wars. Government's role should be to keep us out of wars to protect us from foreign enemies, not create them.
---------------------------
Bombing foreign countries doesn't end terrorism, it provokes it.
----------------------------
Until recently, the US was an impartial referee between Israel and the Palestinians. Not anymore! You might not have noticed the change, but millions in the Middle East certainly have.
I could go on and on, but you probably don't care.
And whats with the hatred towards the Jews? Describing them as whiny bitches who are out to kill Arab babies for fun will get you nowhere in an argument.
Hmm, bomb a house from the air or send in a few troops on the ground to get shot at or blown up? I wonder which one I'd pick.