Ramblings' Journal

Marietta man among group threatened with beheading in Iraq

48 year-old Jack Hensley, from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, is being held along with another American and an Briton by an Iraqi terrorist group. The trio is being threatened with beheading, unless the US and UK acceed to terrorist demands by tomorrow.

The three men work for Gulf Supplies & Commercial Services, a Bahrain-based construction firm working on rebuilding Iraq. They were abducted from their home in Baghdad on Thursday.

A video tape of the three was aired on Al Jazeera yesterday.

Hensley's wife, Patty, did not talk with reporters gathered outside her Cobb County home Saturday, but in an interview with CNN she pleaded with her husband's captors to let him return to her and their 13-year-old daughter "who misses her father very much."

She said: "It is your decision if he can come home back to her. Jack is a simple, generous man who loves the Iraqi people and has made many friends while in Iraq. Since Jack has been a guest in your country, he has been treated with honor and dignity. We ask for your mercy in freeing Jack and his co-workers so that they can continue to return home to their loving families."

Patty Hensley said her last communication with her husband was by e-mail, and she said she believes he was abducted within about 45 minutes after they signed off.

She said his residence was guarded around the clock by armed Iraqis, but "the morning they were abducted there was no guard as there should have been."

I have to commend Atlanta CBS affiliate WGCL-TV. In their report on Hensley's kidnapping this evening, they referred to the animals that grabbed the trio as TERRORISTS.

Not any handwringingly politically correct term like "rebels," or "insurgents."

TERRORISTS. That's what they are. And they need to be exterminated. As soon as possible.

Posted by mhking at September 19, 2004 11:50 PM