WASHINGTON — An Islamic militant group
released a video on Tuesday showing the second
beheading of an American hostage in two weeks
and blamed President Obama for the killing. The
video raised the pressure on the president to
order military strikes on the group in its sanctuary
in Syria.
The hostage, Steven J. Sotloff, is shown in the
video kneeling like the previous victim, James
Foley , while a masked figure stands above,
wielding a knife. Mr. Sotloff addresses the camera
and describes himself as “paying the price” for
Mr. Obama’s decision to strike the group, the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in northern Iraq.
The apparent murder of Mr. Sotloff, 31, came
despite televised pleas from his mother to the
leader of ISIS seeking mercy for her son, a
freelance journalist who was captured in northern
Syria a year ago. Although the administration
said it had not yet authenticated the video,
members of Mr. Sotloff’s family issued a
statement saying they believed he had been
killed.
The videotaped beheadings and threats by ISIS,
which have followed its lightning conquest of
broad areas of Syria and Iraq, have transformed
the group into one of the most urgent threats
facing a president who is also wrestling with
crises from Ukraine to Gaza.
Steven J. Sotloff in 2010.
MAZEN MAHDI / EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO
AGENCY
The killing raises difficult questions for Mr.
Obama, who last Friday said he had not yet
formulated a strategy for using military force
against the militants in Syria. As news of Mr.
Sotloff’s death broke on Tuesday afternoon, just
before Mr. Obama left for a weeklong trip to
Europe and a NATO summit meeting, the White
House struggled to deal with the implications for
the president’s policy.
“If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder
of an innocent American journalist, and we
express our deepest condolences to his family
and friends,” a spokeswoman for the National
Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said of the
video. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/world/middleeast/steven-sotloff-isis-execution.html?referrer=

God! These rebel Islamists are heartless.chai