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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Baghdad’s view on Korean beheading: he deserved it |
| 2004-06-23 |
| ...On the streets of Baghdad, there was little sympathy for South Korean Kim Sun-Il, beheaded by his captors and dumped on the road between Baghdad and Fallujah. Abu Zaman, a 53-year-old driver, was blunt on the fate of the 33-year-old evangelical Christian: "He deserved it. I object to beheading, but if he was co-operating with the Americans he made a bad decision." ...In Baghdad, most ordinary Iraqis criticise beheading as offensive to Islam, but they draw distinctions between the different victims - American Nicholas Berg was the least deserving of their sympathy because of his Jewishness; and for them, Paul Johnson, the Saudi victim, had died in another crisis in another country. Ziad Omar, a 46-year-old unemployed postal worker, said: "If [Mr Kim] was working for a company that supplies the Americans then he was guilty." Saad Latief, a 36-year-old English literature graduate, was shocked on moral and religious grounds; and Alan Enwia, an interpreter about the same age as Mr Kim, argued the beheadings had to be seen in the context of Iraqi suffering. Asked if Iraqis were talking about the killing, he said: "Not much. It is ugly, but deep inside we are hurting and if you have to carry a heavy weight it doesn’t matter if someone puts a little more on your back."... The reactions of Iraqis are troubling. We have lost 900 American GI’s trying to help these losers. What’s the point? |
| Posted by:rex |
#6 What's the point?Congratulations! You've been suckered by the defeatist media. |
| Posted by: someone 2004-06-24 5:14:43 AM |
| #5 Come on guys. This moron probably made up all the "interviews" although there is a SLIGHT possibility he interviewed a hundred iraqis until he found a few scum bags to quote. Stop buying into this crap will you? |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2004-06-23 9:02:43 PM |
| #4 Paul McGeough, whose byline appears at the top, is known for being extremely anti-American in his both his news coverage and his op-eds (not that there's any real distinction here). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-06-23 8:08:42 PM |
| #3 Good point, #2. I thought about the bias as well, and there may be some of that, but the reporter included "neutral" reactions of the English Literature graduate and the interpreter, so it seems he tried to present a cross section of feedback, making it more believable to me. But what really troubled me was the visceral hatred that came out in 2 of the comments of Iraqis. But even if Iraqis are unhappy about the US "occupation," I would have hoped that ordinary Iraqis would have wanted to distance themselves from the barbaric actions of the terrorists because those actions reflect poorly on Islam. But they did not even bother doing that and that is very disconcerting. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 8:07:56 PM |
| #2 Hold on. Consider the source, the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Tim Blair it's to the left of the NYT. These are probably selective quotes sourced by a stringer who used to work for Saddam's Ministry of Information. |
| Posted by: Mr. Davis 2004-06-23 7:49:39 PM |
| #1 yea these guy would be much better if we just allied with old saddam, took up his offer of cheap oil and attacked iran from iraq..but no we took the moral road... |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-06-23 7:43:23 PM |