Well, they said they'd do it if O's pinpricks didn't stop:
An Internet video purports to show the beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State group.
Sotloff, who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines, had last been seen in Syrian in August 2013 until he appeared in a video released online last month by the Islamic State group that showed the beheading of fellow American journalist James Foley.
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit against the backdrop of an arid Syrian landscape, Sotloff was threatened in that video with death unless the U.S. stopped airstrikes on the group in Iraq.
In the video distributed Tuesday and entitled "A Second Message to America," Sotloff appears in a similar jumpsuit before he is beheaded by an Islamic State fighter.
Of course, if O stopped the pinpricks, ISIS would just up the demand ante - withdraw from the Middle East entirely, force Israel's unconditional surrender, whatever. All of which are on the Obama foreign policy to-do list already. He's just moving too slow for their tastes, and paying too much attention to his own political agenda and not enough attention to theirs. Which gives the Islamic State one more thing in common with "red" state Democrat senators.
The point is to terrorize the American public in preparation for ISIS's imminent North American offensive, and to humiliate Barack Obama by making him look powerless and helpless on the world stage. Sort of like if Republicans could ever confiscate his pen, his phone, his prompter, and his putter. He would be completely lost, appear nakedly clueless - or pretty much the way he made himself look last Thursday evening. In essence, he infringed on ISIS's gimmick. No wonder they were pissed enough to lop off Sotloff so quickly. Assuming, as I do, that these beheadings didn't take place months ago and they're just rolling them out every few weeks to create this effect, only to cruelly reveal it at the opportune moment, and for even greater terroristic impact
Exit thought: In the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, the mullahs didn't seriously harm any of the 53 Americans they held captive for 444 days, releasing them only when a POTUS took the reins whom they couldn't be certain wouldn't annihilate them if they didn't. Now ISIS holds who knows how many American hostages and they're publicly reveling in an orgy of gore. Does that mean that the mullahs were more civilized than the Islamic State jihadists, or is Barack Obama that much less respected and feared than even Jimmy Carter was?
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