Beheading in Iraq

[godwulf]

Something occurred to me shortly after the beheading story came out, and maybe it says something about the state of my own cynicism, but...if I were in a position of authority within the military or the C.I.A. in Iraq, and I wanted to distract the attention of the world (and especially, of the American public) from the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal and refocus it on the cruelty of "the enemy"...do you see where I'm going with this?

Before you accuse me of reading too many spy novels or watching too many episodes of 'The X-Files', consider that there are undoubtedly individuals - not to mention 'cells' - within various agencies of our government to whom the sacrifice of a single civilian for "the greater good" would not be an unreasonable scenario.

I've been advised by somebody in a position to know that the voice of the supposed Joradanian Al Quaida leader on the tape is speaking Arabic with a distinctly Iraqi accent. What do you suppose it would cost these days to hire five Iraqi men to put on masks and cut off someone's head?