[SACBEE] Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
bully boyz hammered, bulldozed and ultimately blew up parts of the ancient Iraqi Assyrian city of Nimrud, destroying a site dating back to the 13th century B.C., an online hard boy video purportedly shows.
The destruction at Nimrud, located near the hard boy-held city of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, follows other attacks on antiquity carried out by the group now holding a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. The attacks have horrified archaeologists and U.N. Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
, who last month called the destruction at Nimrud "a war crime."
The seven-minute video, posted late Saturday, shows bearded bully boyz using sledgehammers, jackhammers and saws to take down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. A bulldozer brings down walls, while bully boyz fill barrels with explosives and later destroy three separate areas of the site in massive kabooms.
"God has honored us in the Islamic State to remove all of these idols and statutes worshipped instead of Allah in the past days," one hard boy says in the video. Another hard boy vows that "whenever we seize a piece of land, we will remove signs of idolatry and spread monotheism."
The bully boyz have been destroying ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violate their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, including the ancient Iraqi city of Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Authorities also believe they've sold others on the black market to fund their atrocities.
Some of the figures in the video released Saturday at Nimrud appeared to have rebar, ribbed bars of steels designed to reinforce concrete that are a technique of modern building. An Iraqi Antiquities Ministry official, speaking Sunday on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to talk to journalists, said all the items at Nimrud were authentic. In March, both Iraqi and United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
officials warned the site had been looted and damaged.
The video conformed to other News Agency that Dare Not be Named reporting about the hard boys' attack.