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from the when-you-DO-NOT-want-them-to-"think-of-the-children!" dept.
A couple of weeks ago this story was reported by The Daily Beast :
Members of an American-backed rebel group in Syria beheaded a young child in a grisly execution video.
The footage surfaced early Tuesday of members of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki and a captured child in Handarat, near Aleppo. The young boy, who appears to be prepubescent, is then executed on the back of a pickup truck.
The gruesome videotaped murder of a child drew outrage on social media and the promise of an inquiry from the group's leadership, which has previously received U.S.-made weapons and American funding. The group no longer gets such backing. But it's also renewed questions about which rebels the American government has supported in Syria's ongoing civil war.
[...] State Department spokesperson John Kirby told The Daily Beast. "We strongly condemn this type of barbaric action, no matter what group is responsible. We encourage al-Zenki to investigate the incident and expect all parties to comply with their obligations under the law of armed conflict."
[...] the group's leadership issued a statement condemning the beheading. It said it formed a committee to investigate how such a crime could have happened.
More video from the incident has been released:
The victim is seen among a group of fighters from the US and Turkish backed militant group, in the same red pick-up truck that features in their video of his execution. In a chilling exchange the jihadist militants can be seen taunting the child, taking selfies, and threatening him with 'slaughter'.
When asked about his final wish, the child asks to be shot rather than slaughtered. Their shocking answer? "Slaughter. We are even worse than ISIS"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @04:41PM
In our endless quest for oil we have destroyed millions of lives and created a monster fueled by religious nonsense.
We were better off with Saddam. We were better off with Qaddafi. We are better off with Assad. They might be dictator assholes but that's better than head chopping religious whack jobs.
Let's stop fucking them for their oil. It's their land, their oil. Let them do with it as they please.
If anyone should have their heads chopped off, it's the oil barons and their government cronies.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @04:53PM
I don't know about that. The dictator was left in place in Syria after a civil war formed, and that's not helping anything. We have one instance where it's a mess with the dictator left in place during a civil war and a case where the dictator was removed during a civil war, still leaving a mess. BOTH cases are messes.
A more accurate conclusion is that our intervention has had no clear cut benefit such that we probably should stop intervening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @07:35PM
So, if dictators just were greedy, they'd just sell the oil and be rich and powerful, but they don't do that now do they? Instead they try to be the most powerful assholes on the planet and force the whole world under their laws.
They will create an enemy, if they don't have one. There used to be education and science around that part of the world, but for centuries now, they've been just barbaric. You two are just dillusional, if you think it's about oil.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Monday August 01 2016, @08:45PM
They will create an enemy, if they don't have one. There used to be education and science around that part of the world, but for centuries now, they've been just barbaric. You two are just dillusional, if you think it's about oil.
Their regions have become so unstable due to religious fundamentalism that anyone who rises to power has to come up with a common enemy in order to prevent the guy next to them from plunging a knife in their back. The reason they can claim the west as a common enemy is because of our constant interference in their affairs in order to get at their riches (oil now, but the west has been attempting to exploit the Middle East and Mediterranean Africa for centuries before oil was the prize).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @02:13AM
Until I got to the word "centuries" I wasn't sure whether you were talking about the M.E or the U.S.A. But if it was U.S.A. then the word would have been decades.