Real terrorism experts think Fox News is doing real harm by embedding an unedited ISIS video of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh being set on fire and burned to death in a cage.
Fox News suggested it aired a disturbing graphic of a Jordanian hostage being burned to death by ISIS out of some kind of patriotic duty. On Special Report, host Bret Baier said:
(T)he reason we’re showing you this is to bring you the reality of Islamic terrorism and to label it as such. We feel you need to see it so we will put up one of these images on your screen right now.
Coincidentally, Fox has been on a ridiculous and shameful crusade to smear President Obama as not sufficiently anti-terrorism enough to keep us safe because he does not say Fox’s magical “Islamic terrorism” mantra.
So it’s especially ironic that terrorism experts say that Fox is now doing exactly what Fox repeatedly accused liberals of doing - emboldening our enemy and endangering Americans – with its latest “truth telling” that smells a lot like a political ploy.
From The Guardian:
Malcolm Nance, the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideology thinktank and an expert on counter-terrorism and radical extremism told the Guardian that by posting the video Fox News was propagating “exactly what Isis wants to propagate”.
…Rick Nelson, a senior associate in homeland security and terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that posting the video actually empowers Isis.
…Nance told the Guardian that showing the video would also further endanger other hostages, including the 26-year-old American aid worker currently held by the militant group.
“[Fox News] are literally – literally – working for al-Qaida and Isis’s media arm,” he added.
That’s right. The network whose armchair terrorism opinionators are forever accusing everyone else of being soft on terror may actually be aiding and abetting ISIS.
Oh, and Fox? It has nothing to do with the words “Islamic terrorism.”
(H/T Raw Story)
And this time, no one on their payroll played a role in inspiring it! BONUS!
For people who are curious but don’t want to watch, Shep Smith did an incredible, calm but very human narrative rundown of the complete video, describing the whole thing — and there’s a lot more before and after this poor man was killed — which I watched as linked to somewhere yesterday. Maybe Mediate? Maybe TVNewser? Don’t remember. I’m sure Google could turn it up.
Shep, btw, says flatly the screaming was dubbed in, that the young man did not scream or carry on in any way but just submitted, apparently, to his inescapable horrible fate. Can you imagine? These psychopaths dubbed in the sound of screaming because the young Jordanian didn’t give them quite the entertainment they wanted as he was burning alive!