Link to the alleged, NSFW but not-really-that-gory-because-it’s-so-badly-faked “full” video of James Foley being “beheaded” (fast-forward to the 4 minute mark to skip all the blah blah blah):
How the fuck has anyone thought this is real? Why are major news outlets reporting that it’s real? They FADE TO BLACK when the actual beheading is supposedly occurring then cut to a really badly Photoshopped STILL IMAGE of his supposedly beheaded head resting on his supposedly beheaded body? Not to mention that there is no blood whatsoever as the guy starts supposedly slitting his throat. There are tons of videos on the Internet of actual, real beheadings and the blood starts gushing pretty much immediately. And real terrorists like to show the actual event, as terrorizing people is kind of the fucking POINT of being a terrorist.
This PG-13 shit is a joke. It makes me angry that people are acting like it’s real “omg let’s bomb ISIS because DECAPITATION!” and it’s actually on the news, being accepted as real.
But is it a fake made by someone else, or a fake made to pretend like they killed him? The latter was my initial assumption on hearing about this, but the former seems more likely to me now.
The only other beheading video I’ve seen was the Nick Berg one by that Zarqawi guy ( who was later killed, thankfully). There wasn’t much blood in that one, either.
The one thing that does kind of make the Foley one suspect is the way he was so cooperative in reading that bogus statement. I mean, if he knows they’re gonna decapitate him, why be so accommodating?
I thought about that & maybe the choice was “We can slit your throat quick & behead you if you cooperate or we can saw through your neck while you’re still living if you don’t.”
And ISIS has more than warranted its extermination before this.
I’m wondering if maybe Foley WAS beheaded, but not in that video. Reflecting on the Nick Berg beheading, there were at least 4 guys with Zarqawi who held Berg down. And Zarqawi used a big, monster blade.
This guy used a relatively small blade and Foley never moved when the guy allegedly started cutting on him. I don’t care how cooperative you might be, NOBODY is gonna sit still when someone starts sawing on their neck.
It’s possible they made Foley think it was a show just to get him to read the statement. Then afterward, they did it for real.
The reason he was so compliant is because he very likely had been put through many many false executions already, possibly daily. It’s a common psychological torture tactic. Read this in full like you mean it or we torture you painfully. Over and over and over until eventually he just does as he’s told and had no idea that today’s “execution” is actually the real one.
And the video is real. I watched it (unfortunately) and you clearly see his throat being cut into severely before it fades to black.
Why would you think it was faked? We were already bombing the fuck out of ISIS with a fair amount of approval.
I think a grisly death struggle is precisely what the thugs would like an audience they are trying to cow to see. If they wanted to appear to be professional assassins, they would have just AK’d him in the head.
2). Nah. I don’t think they had the expectation that even a diluted beheading video would last on YouTube for long.
They’re not trying to appear to be professional assassins, but professional terrorists. The image they want to project is people who are competent at doing horrific things.
My understanding is that a lot of “amateurs” underestimate the effort required in beheading. If you don’t have a decent weapon, you’ll probably end up looking like an idiot if you try to cut someone’s head off.