Hogan's Alley

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Kidnapped In Iraq Includes A German Woman

The so-called insurgents in Iraq have taken four more westerners hostage, this time including a German woman, Susanne Osthoff, 43, who is an archeologist who has worked in Iraq for some time. She was taken with one American and two Canadians, all unidentified, who were affiliated with a peace activist group called Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Their crime was being infidels and being in Iraq. The fact that Germany refused to send troops into Iraq has proven to be no protection for their citizens from the ire of these murderers. According to the NY Times the kidnappers, from a group ironically named the Swords of Truth, regard them all as spies.

Unless anyone miss the true message in acts such as this, it is that any non-Muslim setting foot in the Middle East is fair game for such treatment. If Sadaam had not been deposed these vile criminals would be in their home countries hunting for a ticket to paradise in the Jihad in which we all are potential victims.

Update: CBS News is reporting that the kidnapping of the Susan Osthoff, the German archeologist was a separate event from the kidnapping of four Christian Peacemaker Teams males. They report, via al Jazeera, that the four were and American, a Briton and two Canadians.

The NY Times has now posted a story, with the byline of Kirk Semple and contributions from a number of Times reporters including John F. Burns in Baghdad, on the four kidnapped men. They are now reporting it as a separate incident from the Osthoff matter. There is now no longer any connection reported between Osthoff and the Christian Peacemaker Teams. The four men have now also been identified. The Times has now pulled the original AP story from its website and replaced it with one written by Semple and Richard Bernstein. The LA Times site has, as of this writing, essentially the same confused AP story first published by the NY Times.

Thank God the MSM have editors and fact checkers to prevent such screwups.