AL-QAIDA LOVES LITTLE CHILDREN

“A reporter embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq reports a government official has recounted a new atrocity by al-Qaida: several instances in which terrorists baked a young boy, then invited his family to lunch with the victim as the main course. “

My friends, I thought I had heard just about everything that is evil. When I stumbled across the above statement, I could not believe what I had read. That first paragraph forced me to read on.

This hideous report is from Michael Yon, a Special Forces soldier in Baqubah listening to the statements of an Iraqi official who asked that his name not be reported. Yon, who has earned widespread respect as an independent journalist, reported that Iraqi officials told him about al-Qaida terrorists baking children and serving them to their families.

Yon said the Iraqi told him al-Qaida arrived in Baqubah and united criminal organizations, leaving death and destruction behind. These gangs became absorbed into al-Qaida. They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93. Each child was each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone complete with prepaid phone cards, and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al-Qaida. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first they would only target Shia, but over time the new al-Qaida directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al-Qaida invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy of approximately 11 years. Needless to say, attendance at this meal was not a negotiable matter. Attend or be shot.

Yon said that at these luncheons, the families, surrounded by scowling armed members of al-Qaida, were sat down to eat. The main course was brought out, proudly carried on a large tray by several young men. The main course? It was their boy laid out on the platter, usually with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al-Qaida served the boy to his family and forced them to eat or be shot and share the child’s fate. If they did not smile as they ate, they were warned to look as if they were grateful for this meal!

Michael Yan went to army officials. "I gave the name of the village, grid coordinates, photos and posted video, and published names of Iraqi and American officials who were very easy to reach. Nobody lifted a finger. This upset a lot of people at home, and rightfully so. I was here with hard evidence – photos, video, grid coordinates and plenty of witnesses, yet flat line from MSM."

But he stayed in the area, asking questions. "That's when one Iraqi official mentioned the baking," Yon said, a report he said later was confirmed for him by other Iraqi sources.

He said while he did not witness this, there have been myriad other atrocities. I have not just heard about them, I have seen them."

Yon said in another dispatch he witnessed the excavation of the heads of decapitated children. “There is no imaginary line of credulity that al-Qaida might cross should it go from beheading children to baking them," he wrote. This is the same Al-Qaida who proudly broadcast their penchant for sawing off the heads of living breathing people, and in such a manner as to ensure lots of spurting blood and gurgles of final pain, in some cases with the added flourish of the executioner raising up the severed head and squealing excitedly.

According to many soldiers, people at home might find it incredible, improbable, and even impossible. Yet there in combat with al-Qaida, the idea is no more improbable-sounding than someone saying 'The chicken crossed the road.' Maybe the chicken crossed the road. Maybe not. The veterans I've been talking with here have no difficulty imagining the chicken crossing the road, or al-Qaida roasting kids. This is sickening but more than probable.

A clear indicator of just how bad a terrorist group is is when battle-hardened soldiers don’t find it hard to believe a story which purports that al-Qaida had baked a child and set his roasted body out as the main course at a lunch for his parents.

The moral equivalency argument needs to be crushed. We detain someone without due process and these creatures bake a child and feed him to his family. Yet many people in the West are saying, 'We're no better.'"

A Washington policy analyst, Jeremy Sewall, responded to these reports by saying it is "pretty extreme." He then added that, knowing what he does, and with the documentation of various other tortures used by al-Qaida, that this report of such atrocities was no great surprise.

Officials with the Barnabas Fund, an international Christian group working to help persecuted Christians, particularly those in Muslim-majority contexts, then confirmed Yon's report aligns with one of their own reports about such an atrocity.

The Barnabas Fund said its sources inside Iraq confirmed "a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice."

"We received a number of inquiries about its veracity," the organization said about its December 2006 report. "More questions followed when a reporter at the [London] Telegraph blogged about it on their website on March 31 of this year."

"A few sites on the web not only openly doubted it, but also published statements saying that we surely invented it for purposes of fundraising and/or because of Islamophobia. After seeing Michael Yon's report, we hope such horrific incidents will indeed be reported upon and recognized as the dark works of terrorist jihadists, not ours and others' imagination.

"We heard this story from two separate sources, both of them senior Christian leaders in the region, one of them with direct pastoral responsibility for the family involved," he said. "We were offered a photo, but the UK office [of Barnabas Fund] said we did not want to see it. The family has some relatives living in the UK."

But he, also, said he'd witnessed the results of atrocities, such as the unearthing of the heads of decapitated children, which convinced him al-Qaida certainly was capable of such a heinous crime.