Another 15-minute propaganda video purporting to be produced by ISIS shows about a dozen Syrian soldiers being beheaded. Near the end of the video, a man wearing black whose face is covered speaking with an English accent sounding much like the infamous so-called Jihadi John of prior supposed beheading videos is shown standing over what he claims is the head of Indianapolis native Peter Kassig, also known as Abdul-Rahman Kassig. The video's authenticity has not been confirmed yet. Earlier beheading videos have been debunked as staged. This one is made to appear more realistic, at least the part showing the beheadings of the Syrian soldiers. Interestingly, before this latest video was released, the U.S. military claimed Jihadi John had been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq that supposedly killed ten top ISIS commanders.
Kassig, a 2006 graduate of North Central High School, is a former Army Ranger who served for a brief time in Iraq. He attended Hanover College and Butler University, received training as an EMT and then decided to convert to Islam. We're told he started an obscure charity known as Special Emergency Response and Assistance ("SERA") to assist victims of the civil war in Syria being provoked by Western countries seeking to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad. In 2013, he was supposedly kidnapped by terrorists, although his kidnapping had not been revealed to the public until recently. The media in Indianapolis had never once reported on his work in Syria until last month after he appeared in another beheading video as ISIS' next target.
As I previously pointed out, the website for SERA was only put online about two months before Kassig was reported kidnapped in Syria. True to form, CNN just happened to have stock footage of a profile the cable news network had done on Kassig, which seemed equally contrived. Kassig was providing medical assistance to rebels fighting the civil war in Syria, as well as civilian victims of the conflict. At one point in the video, one of the rebel fighters insisted to the CNN reporter they weren't terrorists or al Qaeda as some claimed. That was before we heard of ISIS, and yes, the very people to whom Kassig was supposedly providing humanitarian assistance were responsible for his kidnapping and now, we're told, his beheading. Almost all of these Western beheading victims have had dubious backgrounds which strongly hint of their roles as Western intelligence assets whose purpose is to convince the American people we should be fighting wars in the Middle East we have no business fighting. We've been lied about so much is difficult to know where the truth begins and the lies end.
UPDATE: The White House claims U.S. national security officials indicate the video confirms Kassig's death. That's no proof of the authenticity of what the video represents. This is the same administration which faked the shooting and capture of Osama bin Laden so nothing we are told by this White House on such matters can be believed. I'm not sure what to make of this statement on the New York Times' website:
The video footage circulated by the Islamic State, the violent jihadist group also known as ISIS or ISIL, was significantly different from the execution videos of four other Western hostages, whose televised deaths were carefully choreographed.
Those videos were shot with several cameras from different vantage points to give the appearance of a professional production. By contrast, the footage of Mr. Kassig’s death is shot with a single camera and appears amateurish, with the harsh lighting obscuring the executioners’ visage.
While in the earlier videos the hostages are seen kneeling in orange jumpsuits and are forced to make speeches before the executioner lifts the knife to their throats, in the one released Sunday, the moments leading up to Mr. Kassig’s death are not shown. The change in format — combined with the lower production quality of the clip — may suggest that the Islamic State is on the run and unable to pull off the same cinematic production as before.
The camera pans across the boots of the hooded killer. Between his feet, a decapitated head is seen, blood smearing the cheek.The reporter must not have watched the same videos I watched. The earlier videos were very fake-looking, while the latest was replete with Hollywood special effects. The beheadings of the Syrian soldiers were made to appear as real as possible. Kassig's beheading was not shown; rather, the Jihadi John just stood over what was depicted as his head in front of him on the ground after the alleged beheading had occurred. It could have easily been photo-shopped into the frame.
See this analysis of the video:
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