Terrorists kidnap, torture boy to bully Iraqi policeman

FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) -- Like many young boys, Khidir loves playing with toy cars and wants to be a policeman like his father when he grows up. But it was his father's very job that caused the tiny child to suffer the unimaginable.

Terrorists kidnap, torture boy to bully Iraqi policeman - CNN.com

This is one of the sickest stories I've read in quite a while.

They beat me with a shovel, they pulled my teeth out with pliers, they would go like this and pull it

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"This is where they hammered a nail into my leg and then they pulled it out," he says, lifting up his pant leg to show a tiny wound.

He says his captors also pulled out each of his tiny fingernails, broke both his arms, and beat him repeatedly on the side of the head with a shovel

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If we needed reminding they are not even human but animals and need to be wiped out this was it :/
It would make me no better than them if i wished them the same fate they inflicted on a child but a bullet in the head would suffice.

Laila said:

If we needed reminding they are not even human but animals and need to be wiped out this was it :/
It would make me no better than them if i wished them the same fate they inflicted on a child but a bullet in the head would suffice.

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Exactly! They need to be put down, but we are better than they.

Kid sounds pretty hardcore, though. "Look, this is where they drove nails into me and pulled them out!" Bet he's going to make an awesome cop some day.

Laila said:

If we needed reminding they are not even human but animals and need to be wiped out this was it :/
It would make me no better than them if i wished them the same fate they inflicted on a child but a bullet in the head would suffice.

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" "The kidnappers called me on the phone and demanded that some prisoners that we had be released or they would slit his throat," Khidir's father says. "But I said no to the release. I would not put killers back out on the street that would hurt other Muslims. So I thought to myself, 'Let my son be a martyr.' "

He even held a secret funeral for his little boy. He didn't want to tell the rest of the family that he had refused the kidnappers' ultimatum, allowing them to hope that he was still alive."


Um... the kidnappers are not the only monsters in this story, in my opinion.

The people of this culture are alien to me, they are beyond my ability to understand.
The article tries to make it seem like this boy is like any other kid, but in truth he'll probably grow up to be just like his father and everybody else in that culture, and say things like "Let my son be a martyr", and I find I have a very difficult time working up much feeling about this one way or the other.
These people are from a world we don't understand.
As with females and hijaab, I just don't feel concerned or interested enough to venture an opinion, because I know it would be the wrong one.
I don't understand these people well enough to tell them what they need to do, or even to have an opinion on it. Or even to care, really.

I care more about the kidnappings in Mexico, which are rampant. When children in Mexico are kidnapped, their parents actually care. They react as we would. Our cultures are similiar enough that it's at least possible to understand them.

Better if the policeman had capitulated to terrorist demands?

No, I think there was much honor in his decision, and this was one of the rare, lucky occasions when the price for honor was lower than it could have been.

Korimyr the Rat said:

Better if the policeman had capitulated to terrorist demands?

No, I think there was much honor in his decision, and this was one of the rare, lucky occasions when the price for honor was lower than it could have been.

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Yeah, I'm sure there's tons of honor in their culture, far more than in ours... I just find that I don't really give a crap about them or what happens to them, because their collective mindset is so different then our that I can't understand them. Like, at all. They are alien to me.
It's really hard to empathize with a people on a personal level (although I can on a more general level) when they are so different from you that it is impossible for you to understand them.

The kidnappers called me on the phone and demanded that some prisoners that we had be released or they would slit his throat," Khidir's father says. "But I said no to the release. I would not put killers back out on the street that would hurt other Muslims. So I thought to myself, 'Let my son be a martyr.

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That is not being a Monster.
I think that shows courage and honour rarely seen and i salute the father for not giving in and releasing more killers

Laila said:

That is not being a Monster.
I think that shows courage and honour rarely seen and i salute the father for not giving in and releasing more killers

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Well, I disagree.
But, as I mentioned, it really doesn't matter.
I don't really care one way or the other what they do.
I just think we should get the hell out of their country and leave them alone.

1069 said:

I just think we should get the hell out of their country and leave them alone.

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You and me both.

Iraq was a country we should never have stepped foot on.

There have been numerous analyst and experts over the years that have discussed root causes of extremism and terrorism, but this is almost a new breed. Political, social, and economic oppression has certainly bred all kinds of criminality from organized crime, to criminal gangs, to terrorists, and to extreme political movements. But even then this simply does not answer the why to this level of inhumanity and cruelty. I think in cases like this we can ascribe these root causes. I am strongly in the conviction that if al-Qaeda did not exist, these individuals would be somewhere else committing sadistic acts; either as serial killers, mass murders, torturers, or other craven acts of violence.

Zacarias Moussaoui in the end turned out to be a very mentally unstable person, probably bordering on insane. I think it is telling that it appears this specific movement of al-Qaeda seems to attract the psychotics, sadists, and mentally ill in the world. It is simplistic to just say they are evil, that label could be applied to anything we do not agree with. I think in the case of these individuals to say they are evil is simplistic as well, as it is by all appearance that they are psychopaths, and I mean this literally.

The irony was that it was acts such as these that turned the Sunni tribes ,involved in the insurgency, towards the U.S. to form an alliance.

And I really think you guys are being hypocritical, by the way, pretending to find this admirable, when we all know it's abhorrent.

This policeman was not withstanding torture in order to keep bad guys from going free. His son was.
There's nothing honorable, brave, or heroic about his actions. He even lied to the boy's mother, never telling her that the kidnappers were calling him to negotiate. Never telling her the boy was still alive.

If this happened to a policeman here, if organized criminals or an extremist political group kidnapped his son and held him for two years, calling dad up periodically to let him know the child was still alive and being tortured, and that they'd return him in exchange for the release of some of their incarcerated brethren, and if the father failed to take the action that would secure his son's release from the torturers because he "wasn't about to let any bad guys go free to kill other Christians" and said "let my son be a martyr"... we'd all avoid that cop like the plague. He'd be a pariah. He'd scare the crap out of us. We would realize instinctively that he wasn't human in the sense that we understand humanity. We wouldn't be able to relate or empathize in any way with that.
Sure, we might say, "Gosh, that's really darned, uh... honorable of you, Officer", but in the end, would we invite this person for dinner? Would we want him around our children? Would we want him in our homes?

There's nothing honorable about letting your child suffer when you have the power to prevent it. Nothing natural or human about it, either.
He should've just released the prisoners, and then rounded them back up again after his son was safe.
This is as bad as the parents who "prayed" for their diabetic daughter to get well while depriving her of medication. That wasn't "honorable" either, although other extremist Christians might think so.
Religious fanatics of any stripe are such a turn-off to me. So are Nationalists.
I don't care what happens to any of them.

1069 said:

And I really think you guys are being hypocritical, by the way, pretending to find this admirable, when we all know it's abhorrent.

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I don't.
I think it is beyond brave.

My Government has done it, as has yours.
We don't bow to a terrorists demands, infact british soldiers are being held hostage. They wanted US to release dangerous terrorists in return for British soldiers.

Should we release them knowing more people might die if they are released? Absolutely not.

Terrible but....Not Our Problem. (those people have been killing each other for centuries & will continue forever. I don't want American lives or American dollars being wasted for something that is not our problem)

We had no business going in & have no business still being there. (the only one benefiting is Exxon-Mobil)
Even though I understand Obama's lethargic troop withdrawal schedule, forced on him by political considerations, I disagree with his policy & say to get all our troops out of Iraq by noon-tomorrow!...ALL Of Them!!

Laila said:

I don't.
I think it is beyond brave.

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No; beyond brave would've been if the policeman had attempted to secure his son's release by exchanging himself as the hostage, and had withstood this torture himself so that he could "be a martyr" and "protect other Muslims".
But even so, we look askance at this sort of thing in our society.

My Government has done it, as has yours.

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That certainly doesn't do anything to persuade me that a given action is honorable, or even okay.

We don't bow to a terrorists demands, infact british soldiers are being held hostage. They wanted US to release dangerous terrorists in return for British soldiers.

Should we release them knowing more people might die if they are released? Absolutely not.

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And if the terrorists called the British soldiers' fathers and offered them their sons back in exchange for something that it was in their power to do, these fathers would do it. They wouldn't drone on about preferring their children to be "martyrs".

The whole story sounds fishy, anyway. The kid "says" they did this, he "says" they did that. Why is the reporter phrasing it that way? If the child was tortured, surely there is evidence beyond hearsay, and a "tiny wound" on the boy's leg where he claims a nail was pounded into him. Surely the fact that the terrorists made him "work on a farm gathering carrots" would be far down the list of indignities and torments inflicted upon him, not near the top.

And why would the father tell the reporter "The thing that hurts me the most [bold emphasis mine] is when they hammered a nail into my son's leg" (the alleged source of the "tiny wound" displayed to the reporter), when the son also allegedly was beaten with a shovel, had both arms broken, and had his fingernails and teeth pulled out (except that he obviously still has teeth; his mouth is closed over them in the photo).

Is the "tiny wound" on his leg the only physical evidence of this alleged ordeal?
It's the only one described by the reporter.

What is the second photo of? The first one is a picture of the boy; it says 1 of 2. My computer won't let me view the second one, though.