President Donald Trump announced the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Sunday morning in an address to the nation after a Saturday night raid in northwest Syria.
“He died like a dog, he died like a coward,” Trump said.
Baghdadi’s death marks the execution of the world’s most dangerous terrorist since Osama Bin Laden’s killing in 2011. Baghdadi, the founder of the Islamic State, otherwise known as “ISIS” or “ISIL,” oversaw the extrajudicial killings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Muadh al-Kasasbeh capturing international attention in addition to the slaughtering of hundreds more.
The obituary from the Washington Post however, framed one of the world’s most brutal terrorists as an “austere religious scholar.”
“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48,” read the initial published headline from one of America’s leading newspapers.
The headline published was actually the second headline picked by the paper, which at first read, “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s ‘terrorist-in-chief,’ dies at 48.”
They had it right the first time.
The Washington Post changed the headline on its Al-Baghdadi obituary from “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-Chief” to “austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State.”
The headline has since been changed to “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
While the Post eventually made the headline somewhat better, though they were spot-on the first time, the obituary still reads remarkably well-disposed touting the ISIS leader’s academic credentials and career building his vast terrorist empire responsible for torturing countless innocent people.
The Post, after chronicling Baghdadi’s rise to power, waited until the 40th paragraph of the obituary to mention Baghdadi was also a serial rapist for much of the last decade.
“Later, former hostages would reveal that Mr. Baghdadi also kept a number of personal sex slaves during his years as the Islamic State’s leader, including slain American hostage Kayla Mueller and a number of captured Yazidi women. U.S. officials corroborated the accounts,” the Post wrote.