The news of the fate of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl finally arrived on Friday, and I feel sick. It?s been reported that he is dead and that his captors slashed his throat and decapitated him. Almost equally disturbing is the fact that it was videotaped.

In the past, journalists covering wars have always been in the eye of the storm and risked being injured or killed. But the unwritten rules in war seem to have changed. Pearl was not a soldier and he wasn?t fighting for government. He was in search of truth.The brazen disregard for human life shown by the kidnappers is disturbing. Hopefully, the kidnappers are tracked down and executed. Ahmed Omar Saed Sheikk, who is in custody and has admitted participating in the kidnapping, should be killed immediately after his “trial? in Pakistan.

Maybe instead of feeding bagels and cream cheese to the Taliban prisoners in Cuba, we should start lining them up and blowing their brains out. The United States is not bound by the restrictions of the Geneva Convention because war has not technically been declared and Afghanistan doesn?t acknowledge the prisoners.That may sound like hate speech, but these individuals have shown that they have no respect for humanity. It?s clear that the rules have changed. Before Sept. 11, people hijacked planes and made demands for money or the release of prisoners. Sept. 11 changed that, and now we prepare for the worst and hope that some lunatic doesn?t use a 747 as a missile.

The problem is that the United States is not prepared to fight like this. We don?t know what it is like to battle for thousands and thousands of years over religion. We like our wars clean. We use “smart” bombs and we launch missiles at blips on screen. We don?t like to get our uniforms dirty.

The European and Eastern world understands that there are no rules in war. The Vietnamese strapped bombs to their children in Vietnam. The Irish Republican Army has been bombing cars and bars for decades.

The murder of Pearl should be a cause for reflection in the attempt to sort out the nonsense of this mythical war on terrorism.

Disagree? Give Matt Wagar a piece of your mind at [email protected].