U.S. Marine Beheaded on Fourth of July

[Winston Smith, American Patriot]

Bring 'em on!!!

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Militants say they beheaded Marine
Seven Iraqi soldiers killed in roadside bomb attack
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 4, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Violence flared anew in Iraq yesterday, as an Islamic
terrorist group claimed it beheaded a captured US Marine, a bomb killed
seven Iraqi national guardsmen, and another US Marine died from wounds
suffered a day earlier.

A group calling itself the Ansar al-Sunna Army said it killed Corporal
Wassef Ali Hassoun, according to a written statement addressed to
President Bush and posted on an extremist website commonly used to claim
responsibility for attacks and release video evidence. US military
officials in Washington or Baghdad could not confirm that Hassoun, 24,
had been killed, and his body had not been recovered by early today.

Hassoun, who was born in Lebanon, had been missing since June 20 and
shown a week later blindfolded in a video aired on Arab television.

''We would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese descent has
been killed, and you will soon see the movie with your own eyes," said
the statement, which was signed by the leader of the group, Abu Abdullah
al-Hassan bin Mahmoud. ''The slaughter of the soldier took place."

The group, which professed its allegiance to Al Qaeda, previously claimed
responsibility for four suicide attacks Feb. 1 that killed more than 100
Iraqi Kurds in the northern city of Erbil and an ambush last week that
killed an Iraqi Finance Ministry official and two of his aides. It is
believed to be loosely connected to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted
terrorist in Iraq blamed for hundreds of deaths in the last year, who has
been connected to Osama bin Laden.

Media reports last week had quoted a Marine officer as saying Hassoun may
have left his unit after watching one of his sergeants killed by a mortar
and was subsequently captured by the militants.

His reported killing would be the second of a US soldier in a recent
spate of kidnappings by extremist groups in the region. A different
militant group claimed last week that it had killed Army Specialist Keith
M. Maupin, who had been held captive since April. The US military has not
yet confirmed whether Maupin was the man shown in video footage last week
of a man being shot in the back of the head.

Word of Hassoun's reported death came as attacks against US-led forces
and their Iraqi allies rippled across the country, less than a week after
the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi
government. Insurgents detonated a roadside bomb at a checkpoint in
Baghdad, killing seven members of the new Iraqi national guard and
wounding two others.

Meanwhile, a US Marine died of wounds suffered Friday in Anbar Province
west of the capital, a Sunni Muslim-dominated area that includes
Fallujah, Ramadi, and Qaim. The Marine was the fourth to die this month
in the hotbed of anti-US resistance...

[story continued at http://tinyurl.com/3ffb3]

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Bush supporters beware: ignorance is its own reinforcement.