The family of Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist beheaded in the past two weeks by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- or ISIS -- is reportedly “outraged” at President Barack Obama and his staff for making “deliberate leaks,” which the relatives interpret as “an attempt to absolve the administration of inaction.”
While this might seem to be the basis of an extensive news article investigating that angle of the conflict between the terrorist group and America, the New York Times reported on it -- in the final three paragraphs of a lengthy article in its Tuesday edition.
The title of the report was “ISIS Says It Killed Steven Sotloff After U.S. Strikes in Northern Iraq,” which doesn't address the family's fury.
Last Thursday, Mr. Sotloff’s mother, Shirley, appealed to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world, to grant amnesty to her son. “I ask you to use your authority to spare his life,” she said in videotaped remarks seen around the world.
A person close to the Sotloff family expressed outrage at what he viewed as a pattern of deliberate leaks in Washington suggesting that Mr. Sotloff was killed the same day as Mr. Foley -- a strategy he said the family sees as an attempt to absolve the administration of inaction.
“It was incredibly frustrating for us because it was as if basically they were saying, ‘Don’t hope for any positive outcome,'" said the person, who requested anonymity because he did not have the family’s permission to speak publicly.
John Nolte, who covered the situation for the Breitbart website, stated that he believed the first Twitter message “to catch the burying of this notable news” was posted by English author Louise Mensch.
In the tweet, Mensch stated: “NYT makes clear Sotloff family disgusted with Obama, furious at his inaction and leaks.”
Entitled “A Second Message to America,” the Sotloff video was staged much like the one with James Foley, another American journalist who met a similar fate at least two weeks ago, the Times reporters stated.
Sotloff, wearing an orange jumpsuit while on his knees, said: “Your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be about the preservation of American lives and interests. So why is it that I’m having to pay the price of your interference with my life?”
The disguised figure in the background spoke with a British accent when he stated: “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State.
“Just as your missiles continue to strike our people,” the terrorist stated, “our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
“ISIS then threatened to behead another captive, a Briton identified as David Cawthorne Haines,” Landler and Schmitt noted. “ISIS is currently holding two Americans and three Britons, most of them aid workers.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, Eric Holthaus, a writer for Slate magazine, blamed global warming for the rise of the al-Qaeda offshoot since drought in the area supposedly spurred on the ISIS movement of “imposing Sharia law on captured territory, ethnically cleansing Shia Muslims and persecuting other religious groups like Christians.”
At first, the big three TV networks ignored the territory taken over by members of the extremist group, and even when they began covering the situation, ABC, CBS and NBC refused to call ISIS members “terrorists,” instead favoring “rebels” and “militants.”
In mid-August, a Fox News Sunday panel dubbed the Democratic occupant of the White House the “Underestimator In Chief”, and Mark Arabo, a U.S. spokesman for Iraqi-Christians, told MSNBC that ISIS is carrying out a “full-blown genocide.”
Even Hardball host Chris Matthews expressed his dismay when Obama failed to respond sufficiently to an attack from “a group that has declared war on us.” Soon after, the MSNBC anchor encouraged the president to “fight like a street fighter when it comes to defending the lives of Americans.”
Perhaps the strongest reaction to the struggle with ISIS came after Obama declared in late August that he doesn't “have a strategy” to deal with the terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, Nolte asserted: “It wasn't so long ago when major stars at the New York Times argued that anguished and angry mothers enjoyed an absolute moral authority over a sitting president -- and answers."
“Today, the Times refuses to give these mothers a headline,” he added, “and then goes so far as to bury their outrage at the sitting president.”
“Democrats sure got it good,” Nolte concluded.
