[guest post by Dana]

After the ghastly news of the ISIS beheading, Jim Geraghty pointed out a significant and telling difference in the response of two world leaders:

Over there: “U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his summer vacation to return to London and chair urgent meetings on the threat posed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, calling the video ‘shocking and depraved.’”

Over here: President Obama went back to his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard Tuesday evening following less than 48 hours in Washington, leaving people puzzled over why he came back in the first place.

Obama’s two days in Washington were mostly quiet, and concluded with the president receiving his daily national security briefing in the morning, and joining Vice President Biden to huddle with members of his economic team in the afternoon.

–Dana

Tough to know what to make of this, since it’s based on anonymous sources and Ferguson P.D. never mentioned it before.

Then again, their messaging has been, shall we say, somewhat imperfect.

Just awful. The video was apparently on YouTube yesterday but was removed by Google, and Twitter has begun suspending accounts that share images of the beheading.

Poking around Twitter and the blogs, it seems that most people seem to be in agreement that this is the right thing to do. I guess I am an outlier here, but while I certainly understand the concerns of those who don’t want such images out there, it’s my personal view that violence should be confronted head-on. I think videos of what happened at the World Trade Center should be available. When Nick Berg was beheaded, over ten years ago, I believed people should have the ability to view that video.

For what it’s worth, at least one version of the video (which I assume is the same one pulled yesterday, though I have no way of knowing it) has popped back up on YouTube and was linked by Ben Howe on Twitter. If you want to view it, Howe’s tweet is here — at least until Howe gets suspended from Twitter, or the new upload of the video is pulled by Google.

If you don’t want to watch it (and I can’t blame you), I have a brief description below. If even that is too much, go on to the next post. I’ll bury the description under the fold.

But I would like to note, authorities are trying to determine whether the voice of Foley’s murderer — a man who speaks proper English with a British accent — was one of the people we released from Guantanamo.

R.I.P. James Foley. This is just horrible.

P.S. Apparently the Obama administration had been warned before the release of the video of the threat to Foley’s life, as well as threats to a second journalist, Steven Sotloff, also depicted alive in the video.

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