Beheadings are Bad PR, Terrorist Tells 'Sheikh of Slaughter'
Patrick Goodenough
International Editor

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi-based terrorists have been urged by Osama bin Laden's deputy to stop beheading foreign hostages and shoot them instead - not because decapitation is wrong but because it may be counterproductive in the battle for Muslims' "hearts and minds."

A lengthy letter from al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, and evidently written to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, has been made public by the staff of John Negroponte, the U.S. director of national intelligence.

In the letter, Zawahiri, a 54-year-old Egyptian, sets out plans for taking control of as much of Iraq as possible after American forces leave, spreading the jihad to neighboring secular countries including Egypt and the Levant - Syria and Lebanon - and establishing an Islamist superstate in the Middle East, culminating in a final showdown with Israel. Story