More on the Paul Johnson Beheading

Reuters now has the details

Al Qaeda militants beheaded an American engineer they had held hostage since last week after the Saudi government failed to meet its demands to release jailed militants, an Islamist Web site said Friday.

"As we promised the mujahideen, we have beheaded the American hostage Paul Marshall after the deadline that the mujahideen gave to the tyrannical Saudi government passed," a statement signed by the Organization of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said on al Islah Web site.

The Web site showed three pictures of what appeared to be Paul Marshall Johnson's severed head. One showed the bloodied head propped up on the back of a body in an orange uniform with a knife on the face.

A second picture showed a hand lifting up the head and a third image showed the body and the severed head from a different angle.

"This act of revenge is to heal the hearts of believers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula," the statement said.

James Joyner has some additional info as well.

This, along with the Nick Berg beheading, is a quintessential example of true terrorism: the use of kidnapping and execution via beheading amount to nothing more than an attempt to induce sufficient fear in the population that it will induce calls for policy change in the Middle East and, more specifically, to dissuade westerners from working in the Middle East. The events themselves, though horrific and utter tragedies for the families, aren’t by any means enough to affect the oil industry or the rebuilding in Iraq.

One thing is for sure: these lunatics are willing to damage the economies of their homelands (or, more broadly, the lives of Arabs and muslims) to damage the US. How much better of would “their people” be if similar amounts of energy was put into making the Middle East a better place to live for all.