The Washington Post ran an obituary Sunday morning for ISIS leader and serial rapist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who killed himself and at least three of his own children Saturday night during a U.S. military raid.
The Post apparently struggled to find an appropriate headline for the article. At first, the headline described Baghdadi as the “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-chief,” but then changed the headline to describe him as an “austere religious scholar.”
They had it right the first time.
The Washington Post changed the headline on its Al-Baghdadi obituary from “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-Chief” to “austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State.” pic.twitter.com/cs243EVz7W
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 27, 2019
The headline was changed a third time Sunday afternoon after the outlet faced backlash for its lenient treatment of the terrorist.
“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic state, dies at 48,” states the current headline.
The Post was criticized for seemingly romanticizing Baghdadi’s early life, saying he “maintained a canny pragmatism” and was remembered as a “shy, nearsighted youth who liked soccer but preferred to spend his free time at the local mosque.”
The article begins:
When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took the reins of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2010, few had heard of the organization or its new leader, then an austere religious scholar with wire-frame glasses and no known aptitude for fighting and killing.
But just four years later, Mr. Baghdadi had helped transform his failing movement into one of the most notorious, vicious and — for a time — successful terrorist groups of modern times. Under his guidance, it would burst into the public consciousness as the Islamic State, an organization that would seize control of entire cities in Iraq and Syria and become a byword for shocking brutality.
It’s not until the eighth paragraph that The Post reveals Baghdadi’s gruesome treatment of captives.
“His followers carried out mass crucifixions, turned women into sex slaves and gleefully executed prisoners by stoning, hacking or burning them alive—always with Mr. Baghdadi’s implicit blessing,” The Post writes.
And it’s not until the 41st paragraph that The Post writes about Baghdadi’s “personal sex slaves.”
“Later, former hostages would reveal that Mr. Baghdadi also kept a number of personal sex slaves during his years as the Islamic State’s leader, including American hostage Kayla Mueller, who was later killed, and a number of captured Yazidi women,” states the article.
Reports estimate that Baghdadi’s network of extremists murdered at least 2,043 people in more than 140 terrorist attacks in 30 different countries.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
[…] is from the same newspaper that called ISIS terrorist leader and serial rapist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi an “austere religious […]
To those who love, honor, and respect Albaghdaddi…may you seek him out in Hell. You apparently love and respect those followers of him who burned people alive in cages, dressed hostages in orange jump suits and cut their heads off, delivered unspeakable horrors to their captives in many other ways.
I think Mitt Romney would have done a better job in taking out the ISIS leader.
Some of the so-called Christian terrorists that we have on U.S. payrolls such as these I.C.E. agents of both genders who molest undocumented children in U.S. detention centers are the same breed of cat as several of these ISIS terrorists against whom we pit our soldiers. What I find really weird about ISIS is that they support the same right-wing bigoted values as the NeoConservatives and NeoLiberals (their attitudes towards gays/lesbians, abortion, gender roles, western liberal permissiveness, etc.) and yet their most strident enemies are–you guessed it!–the right-wing Christians like Mark Green, Betsy Devos, et al.
Does my hatred for what ISIS stands for mean that I support U.S. military action against them? No, we should get the hell out of the Mid-East and tend to our own domestic problems. We also have a major set of domestic terrorists like the Proud Boys (and Girls), the Alt-Right that the leadership of both parties (when I say both parties, I mean leadership persons like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, not the rank-and-file progressives like Bernie Sanders and A. O. Cortez) choose to ignore because personally, I suspect that our own government is secretly in cahoots with domestic white-skinned right-wing terrorists like the persons who shot up Synagogues in Pittsburgh, etc.
By continued military action in the Mid-East, the U.S. is actually HELPING I.S.I.S. trick Muslims and others with resentments against the U.S. into thinking the I.S.I.S. is their friend despite its attacks on Muslims as well as against other ethnic groups.
To defeat I.S.I.S., we need to quit blindly defending Israeli Zionists and show to all other Muslims and other secularists that we are bigoted against those who don’t believe in fundamental religious fanaticism. Let’s go after our own televangelists who spread hatred and who promote persecution of those who disagree with them!
Once again William, you display your bitterness of your creator by your pent up anger towards televangelist who are merely trying to warn those such as yourself into obeying God’s commands. Obviously since you place yourself above God’s power and sovereignty, His words, commands, and love for you falls on deaf ears. Your passive nature to sin explains your anger towards morality and normality. That being the case, we’re forced to disregard your viewpoint once again.
Beautiful! I hope you find al-Baghdaddi and deliver your eulogy to him personally.
I would like to add a couple of short comments.
Antifa are the true violent actors, not the proud boys, who came about in defiance of these wanna be leftist violent extremists who’s behavior the MSM ignores. President Trump is working to remove America from acting as the worlds police force in the Middle East, yet I’m pretty sure you hold him in very low regard.
Your comments exhibit the contempt (bigotry) that the Left holds for anyone who does not embrace their ideology.
This reminds me of the news statement on the 18th anniversary of 9/11….”two hijacked passenger jets flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center”. The MSM has no problem vilifying President Trump, but God forbid they present someone of another nationality completely in a bad light.