Tuesday 22 June, 2004 at 8:34PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (10)

The decapitated body of South Korean man Kim Sun-il has been recovered in Iraq, apparently booby-trapped with explosives. American Nicholas Berg was beheaded in similar circumstances a little over a month ago. In a video broadcast last Sunday, the murderers had gave the South Korean Government 24 hours to cancel their plans to send 3,000 additional troops to Iraq, threatening to behead Kim otherwise.

"To the South Korean citizens, we warned you!" one of the militants said in another video broadcast Today. "This is the result of your own doings."

Yeah right, asshole, like they were forced to cut off his head. I get so pissed at that kind of behavior (I mean the, "hey, I'm gonna break your toy if you don't do as I say, and it will be all your fault!" kinda bullshit). Unfortunately, blowing up a train to successfully bribe the Spanish government not to send troops to Iraq seems to have given these terrorists all the encouragement they needed to believe that this form of terrorism works. Gee thanks Spain..

South Korean officials have confirmed they are going ahead with their plans, but are obviously very angry as their 'mission' in Iraq is to focus on reconstruction efforts there only, without engaging in hostile acts. After this episode I hope they change thier plans to include hunting down and wiping out these fucking murderers.

Kim, Berg and Paul Johnson (killed last week by his captors in Saudi Arabia) were all shown in videos wearing orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by prison inmates in the United States.

In no way do I condone the actions of these terrorists, but there are some US soldiers in Iraq that haven't exactly been behaving either, although their actions fall far short of beheading innocent non-military non-insurgent citizens and sending videos of it to the media. Everyone has heard about the prisoner abuse, but some more telling stories I have read come from independent reports by non-military personal such as Stephanie Sinclair, an independent photojournalist.

Stephanie writes earlier this month in her journal, "three weeks ago [in Baghdad] American troops shot up my car for no apparent reason. Alaa and I were approaching what looked like a US checkpoint and when we stopped to wait for a signal from the soldiers on whether we could continue to move forward, two soldiers ran toward us and shot our vehicle destroying our radiator, a/c and fan."

Stephanie also notes that, "It is truly worse [now] than I have ever seen it in a year and a half of working in Baghdad."

Americans are often accused of staging attacks that are actually carried out by Iraqi insurgents; "In Iskandariyah hundreds of people were convinced that an American plane shot a missile at people applying for jobs the police station. Then they said that the police were cowards for cooperating with the Americans and started breaking the windows of one of the new police cars." I think that one was actually a car bomb driven by Iraqi insurgents.

"At another site, the locals claimed the American soldiers set off the explosion and that is why all the soldiers were behind the concrete barrier when it happened, resulting in Iraqi casualties only." ..err, they are always behind the barriers, that's what the barriers are for, but try explaining that to an angry person convinced otherwise regardless of a total absense of logic, proof or motive.

Personally I think this 'operation' should've been carried out a lot quicker. The longer the US occupy Iraq, the more the Iraqi citizens seem to forget about Saddam Hussein and instead resent the US troops that occupy their country.

Eight days to go until the 'hand over' to an Iraqi Governing Body (of which several of the top officials have already been assassinated). I hope there is an end in sight after this.