The body of Tom Fox was found in Baghdad today. There is no mention of time of death, but perhaps we now know why he was missing from the video. Forensics will be done in the US as to time & cause of death.
I certainly admire him for having the courage to stand up for his convictions, and extend my condolences to his family & friends.
And here’s hoping that the remaining hostages will be found alive soon.
crossposted at Waking Up On Planet X
UPDATE: As a guest blogger but frequent commenter, I admit to questioning the wisdom of posting this on SDA. If people are going to go on the attack on a post intended to bring to light the distressing news of a dead hostage, and what that may or may not mean for the fate of other hostages, and without regard to just WHO might google & find this site (like family) that would be hurt beyond belief by said attacks, I will either turn the comments off for this post so that the information is available, or delete it.
Conservative bloggers like to believe that they would never stoop to the levels that can be seen on progressive-blogs-that-shall-not-be-named. Here is an opportunity to prove it.

“I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution.�;

Catch up on what the fashion conscious martyr is wearing this year;

The interwoven syntax/cotton satin weave revolutionized the world of detonating fashion, allowing would be jihadi�s to pass through even the most dedicated checkpoints, and look fabulous doing it.

Publius Pundit

Strange, however, is the connection between the bombing the of al-Askariya shrine in Samarra and who benefited the most from it. Al-Sadr, that�s who. It should not be a surprise that one of the many theories surrounding the attack is that it was staged by Iranian agents, loyal to a fundamentalist regime whose religion is pure power. And whose intention is to ignite sectarian strife in neighboring Iraq.
We know right off the bat, as I already explained, that there is no chance in hell that it was the Sunnis. Ironically, though the Sunnis have been the ones throughout the entire affair to denounce the attacks, it was al-Sadr who organized the mass extra-judicial killings of hundreds of Sunnis afterwards. It was his Medhi Army militia, along with men infiltrated into the Interior Ministry through the UIA, who ran people off the streets in fear to their homes, and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques. He was the first to call for revenge, yet he was the one praised for brokering compromise between the Shias and Sunnis afterward. Throwing dry leaves on the sectarian fires, just like the bombing in Samarra, has only helped al-Sadr. The Shias have taken advantage of it in order to stress the importance of a government with them in charge and the importance of having their own federal region, things they may have had to compromise on otherwise.

Via Instapundit, where there’s more.

Arabian Dissent is watching the situation in Iraq and finds signs that a major meltdown over the attack on the Golden Mosque may be avoided. Let’s hope.
Keep your eye on the Iraqi bloggers on the sidebar, too. They’re invariably more accurate in their analysis than the mainstream media.

Retaliation has begun for the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq, a Shia Muslim shrine. Jack’s Newswatch is all over the developing story, so I’ll just send you there.

Via Kevin Sinclair

Weekly Standard;

WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped when he went looking for the leader of a group called Jamaat al-Fuqra in the terrorist bazaar of Pakistan. At the time he disappeared, Pearl was tracking reports that Fuqra had hosted would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid at its walled compound in Lahore. In the end, it was agents of another group that spirited Pearl off to his death, but Fuqra remains a subject of interest, and not only because of its activities in Pakistan. For Fuqra has had a disturbing U.S. presence for more than 20 years. Today, half a dozen Fuqra residential compounds in rural hamlets across the country shelter hundreds of members, some of whom, according to intelligence sources, have been trained in the use of weapons and explosives in Pakistan.
[…]
Gilani launched his U.S. operations in 1980. Within ten years, Fuqra’s communes were billing themselves as havens where Muslim converts–many of them inner-city blacks, sometimes recruited in prison–could build new lives. At least seven such communities are active today, in Hancock, N.Y.; Red House, Va.; Tulare County, Calif.; Commerce, Ga.; York, S.C.; Dover, Tenn.; and Combermere, Canada. While some of these enclaves contain only rudimentary buildings and trailers, the California compound has 300 residents on a 440-acre spread, according to a recent report by a local ABC station. Residents deny any involvement with terror, but Fuqra has a history of getting into trouble with the law.
Over the years, at least a dozen Fuqra members have been convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers’ compensation fraud in the United States or Canada. And Fuqra members are suspects in at least 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 firebombings between 1979 and 1990. Nor is Fuqra’s criminal activity all in the past. In the last year alone, a resident of the California compound was charged with first degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff’s deputy; another was charged with gun smuggling; the state of California launched an investigation into the fate of more than a million dollars in public funds given to a charter school run by Fuqra leaders; and two residents of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations, while a third awaits trial.

(Emphasis mine.)
Via Canadian Sentinel, where there’s more.

The motorcades screech to a halt, lights flashing; burly bodyguards jump out and usher their charges into the conference hall. They have been summoned here from their palaces, their holiday villas, awakened from their beds, rushed here in their private jets. This is THE big meeting of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. So are they finally going to resolve the Darfur conflict, the Brown-Muslim-on-Black-Muslim genocide that has already claimed an estimated 300,000 lives?

Not exactly.

And the benefits are only so-so…

C- If the vacation exceeds what is allowed, then, the relative salary will be withheld (prorated) except if those in responsible positions (in order of hierarchy) approve a holiday extension.

Other clauses cover salary, medical coverage,torture.
This sounds like a job for secret agent Buzz Hargrove! Unionization has brought down bigger outfits than this, I tell ya!

The cover-up continues…

These images are quite damning. They clearly show that prisoners in Iraq continue to be abused. More than abused, these images show prisoners in Iraq being murdered by the troops involved. Yet, nothing from the mainstream media.

The images are graphic.

(In the comments, Walter P. argues the caption should read “Meet the new editor, same as the old editor.”)

So far no photos of one stuck to the wet chest of a busty blonde. (Give that a day, I’d say.)

The staff of an alternative weekly have walked out over their publisher’s refusal to reprint the cartoons. The Editor-In Chief;

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization.

Daniel Pipes distills the issue down to it’s core question;

Will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones. Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?

The answer is far from clear at the moment.
Powerline has a big roundup on the orchestration of the protests. The campaign is being funded by a number of M.E. governments, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some of it is designed to water down attention on Iran’s nuclear crisis with the UN. Quoting Fred Siegel;

The Arab world understands Europe�s weaknesses far better than the other way around. Criticism of Islamism is usually described by Muslim spokesmen as “racist” as if religious ideology was a biological given. Even more important, they have learned how to game Western liberalism. When Muslim spokesmen deny the Holocaust, they defend themselves on the grounds that they are only exercising their free speech rights. When they insist that images offensive to Muslims should be barred, they drop the free speech bit and argue on the grounds of multi-cultural sensitivity. The latter argument received strong backing from most of the European left which, looking upon Muslims as the new proletariat, insists that Islamophobia, not Islamofascism, is the great issue of the day.

Lots of that here, too.
In the meantime, Iran is hosting Holocaust cartoon contest and the Jewish street explodes.