By Mitchell Prothero
Tribune News Service
IRAQ — The Islamic State on Monday posted a third video featuring imprisoned British journalist John Cantlie, this one mocking President Barack Obama’s Sept. 10 speech in which he laid out his strategy for confronting the group.
Cantlie, who has been a prisoner of the Islamic State for nearly two years, appears pale and thin. He wore an orange shirt that mimics the uniforms of prisoners held by the United States at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
His presentation seemed less polished than in the previous videos. He described the American-European-Arab intervention against the Islamic State as unpopular and unlikely to succeed and said that it was not supported by the American people, but then noted that direct action against the Islamic State was supported by 70 percent of Americans.
He also took issue with Obama’s statement that the Islamic State had murdered or abused Iraqi Christian and Yazidi women and children, or that it had killed Muslims. But in words that were no doubt written by his captors, Cantlie acknowledged that the group kills Shiite Muslims, saying that Shiites were “worse than Americans because they are apostates claiming to be Muslims while worshiping the dead,” a reference to the Shiite tradition of praying at the graves of dead religious figures.
