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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Obama, Outraged Over Beheading, Vows to Stay on Course - New York Times

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Politics |Obama, Outraged Over Beheading, Vows to Stay on Course



http://nyti.ms/1nah8MG






Politics |​​NYT Now





James Foley, in a photo from the website FreeJamesFoley.org, in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012, the month he disappeared. Nicole Tung, via Associated Press




EDGARTOWN, Mass. — President Obama declared Wednesday that the entire world was “appalled” by the beheading of an American journalist by militants in Syria, but vowed that America would not change course in Iraq, where the United States has been conducting airstrikes against terrorists, despite threats by the group to kill another reporter in the days ahead.


“The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people,” Mr. Obama said in a brief statement from Martha’s Vineyard, where he was vacationing. “We will be vigilant and we will be relentless.”


Before speaking to reporters, Mr. Obama said, he placed a phone call to the parents of James Foley, the slain reporter, telling them that Americans were “are all heartbroken at their loss.” He described Mr. Foley as a “journalist, a son, a brother and a friend who was “taken from us in an act of violence that shocked the conscience of the entire world.”



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  • James Foley, in a photo from the website FreeJamesFoley.org, in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012, the month he disappeared.

    ISIS Video Purports to Show Beheading of James FoleyAUG. 19, 2014




But the president’s harshest and most emotional words were reserved for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the militants who released a video of the killing of Mr. Foley on Tuesday. American intelligence agencies on Wednesday verified the authenticity of the video, which shows a masked man decapitating James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. It also shows another American captive, the journalist Steven Sotloff, and warns that he would be the next to die.




An image from a video posted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which the group said was the execution of James Foley.

The president called ISIS a “cancer” in the region and accused them of having “rampaged across cities and villages, killing unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence.” He said it had committed torture and rape against innocent women and children and continued to enslave those they did not kill.


“No faith teaches people to massacre innocents,” Mr. Obama said. “No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by people who build and not destroy.”


Mr. Obama gave no indication that the gruesome video would change United States strategy in Iraq, although he vowed to protect Americans from the militants and bring those responsible to justice. He made no mention of Mr. Sotloff, who was shown in a similar orange outfit to the one Mr. Foley was wearing. Mr. Sotloff’s life depends on Mr. Obama’s “next move,” a masked militant in the video says.


“When people harm Americans, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done, and we act against ISIL standing alongside others,” the president said Wednesday, using another name for the militant group.


But the killing of Mr. Foley and the subsequent threat of another slaying if the United States continues to target militants in Syria and Iraq creates a searing and personal dilemma for the president: he cannot give in to demands from terrorists, but continuing the bombing of militants in Iraq could lead directly to another gruesome death of an American.


The video could intensify pressure on Mr. Obama to broaden the American military offensive against ISIS, which the president has described as a limited mission to protect American personnel and provide humanitarian aid. As recently as Monday, Mr. Obama said it was up to Iraqi and Kurdish forces to take the lead in fighting the militant group, promising “strong support” from the United States if they worked together to do so.


The Pentagon was not told warned beforehand that ISIS was going to behead Mr. Foley, officials said.


Less than an hour after Mr. Obama spoke, the United States Central Command announced that American warplanes had conducted 14 airstrikes on ISIS targets in the hours after the video was released. The strikes all took place near the Mosul Dam, central command said in a news release.


“These strikes were under authority to support Iraqi security forces and Kurdish defense force operations, as well as to protect critical infrastructure, U.S. personnel and facilities, and support humanitarian efforts,” the release said.


The State Department also forwarded a request to the Pentagon — which the State Department is evaluating —to send around 300 more troops Io iraq for security, a United States official said.


Republican lawmakers who have been pressing for a more aggressive American response against ISIS seized on the beheading as evidence that Mr. Obama had not done enough to confront the Sunni militants and to acknowledge them as a direct threat to Americans.


“I remain deeply concerned that despite the preponderance of evidence that proves ISIL is a fundamentally evil and dangerous terrorist threat to the United States, President Obama continues to appear unwilling to do what is necessary to confront ISIL and communicate clearly to the American people about the threat ISIL poses to our country and to our way of life,” Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said in a statement after the video’s release.


The killing of Mr. Foley triggered a fierce response.


In a statement on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry promised that the United States would not back down in the face of threats from the militants. “Make no mistake: we will continue to confront ISIL wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred,” Mr. Kerry said. “ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous, vicious atrocity will be held accountable.”


The New York Daily News and The New York Post both used the same banner headline on their front pages: “Savages.” Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain released a statement saying “the brutal murder of James Foley is shocking and depraved.”


At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement condemning ISIS for “the horrific murder of journalist James Foley, an abominable crime.” Mr. Ban said “the perpetrators of this and other such horrific crimes must be brought to justice.”


The four-minute, 40-second video was posted on YouTube but the website later took it down. Titled “A Message to America,” it shows Mr. Foley kneeling in a desert landscape, clad in an orange jumpsuit in an apparent reference to the uniforms worn by prisoners at the American military detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Standing to his left is a masked ISIS fighter who begins speaking in English, with what sounds like an East London accent. Pulling out a knife, he says that Mr. Foley’s execution is in retaliation for the recent American airstrikes ordered by Mr. Obama against the extremist group in Iraq.


“I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers — the U.S. government — for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality,” Mr. Foley says in the video, which was uploaded to the online account of the Al Furqan Media Foundation, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that tracks jihadist groups. Mr. Foley ends saying that when American soldiers began dropping bombs on Iraq this month, “they signed my death certificate.”


After Mr. Foley was slain, Mr. Sotloff was shown on screen as the masked man suggested that he would be next. “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision,” the man says.



Rukmini Callimachi contributed reporting from New York, and Helene Cooper from Washington.




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