CNN reports on the latest ISIS propaganda video, which features 21 captured Kurdish fighters paraded through the streets of an Iraqi city (evidently near Kirkuk) in cages ominously similar to the one that held Jordanian pilot Mu’ath al-Kaseasbeh when he was burned alive.
While CNN notes that it cannot independently confirm the video, which began to circulate on social media this weekend, that the video does feature the Islamic State flag prominently and shows individuals alleged to be Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in cages, forced to call upon their fellow soldiers to “give up their fight against ISIS.”
“We say to the Peshmerga: Leave your jobs, or your fate will be like these, either the cage, or under the ground,” says one man in the video.
The New York Post clarified that 16 of the prisoners appear to be Kurdish Peshmerga, while two are Iraqi army officers and three are policemen from Kirkuk. The Kurds were evidently taken prisoner while repelling an ISIS attack on Kirkuk in late January.
You can see from the clips of this video provided by the UK Daily Mail that the supposedly “degraded and ultimately destroyed” junior varsity team of terrorism is drawing sizable crowds for its war-crimes-on-wheels road shows:
The Western world takes great pride in maintaining strict standards of military conduct, but somehow the worst, most flagrant violators have a way of ending up at the bargaining table with most of the respect civilized people would be afforded, while the United States and Israel are endlessly hounded over dubious technicalities. ISIS represents the ultimate distillation of this insanity, gleefully filming its atrocities to intimidate conquered people and prospective enemies.The Obama Administration responds by conjuring up an imaginary Generic Violent Extremist enemy it feels more comfortable discussing.
The media consensus used to be that the Islamic State stuffed its prisoners into orange jumpsuits because they were enraged by the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Why are these Kurdish and Iraqi prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits?