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Just killing isn't enough for these guys. Killing is for wimps. The GIA started coming up with new touches to keep the game interesting: burning people alive, bayoneting babies, raping and killing children in front of their parents. All in the name of God, you understand.

It got so bad that your ordinary run-of-the-mill Islamic lunatic in the street was getting sick of it. The GIA leadership started arguing about whether they might have been a little OTT. They settled the argument in their usual way: by killing each other. The Army was helping out too by killing any GIA leader it could find. What you ended up with was a bunch of little gangs of Islamic fanatics instead of one big group.

But the Algerian Army never really tried to wipe out the GIA. They shot a few of the leaders, but there are a lot of reports about GIA crazies going into villages right next to Army bases, killing and raping for hours, then strolling out with no reaction from the Army. Supposedly Army helicopters even hovered over one of the worst massacres, where 800 villagers had their throats slashed, without sending troops or doing anything to help. It takes a long time to kill 800 people with nothing but knives. Plenty long enough to send troops-if you want to.

One theory is that the Army brass wanted to let the GIA make Islamic extremism look so sick that the voters would never go for it again. If that was the idea, it's worked, because the latest polls show Algerians turning against the Islamists. But there are other rumors that some of the Islamic loonies were actually Army men in disguise, killing off villagers to settle private scores.

First: Islam DOES glorify violence. When groups like the GIA say they're doing Allah's will by killing people who ain't following the right path, they've got the Quran on their side. The Quran is absolutely in favor of violence against everybody who's not already a Muslim. Anybody who tells you different is a liar. Speaking as a recovered Pentecostal, I'd say all religions are crap-but Islam is way, way the sickest and most violent of all. Dubya goes around sucking up to the Saudis with this crap about Islam being "a religion of peace." Islam is NOT a religion of peace and never has been. Face facts, damn it!

Second: the GIA is not just a few loonies. It'd be nice to believe that, but it's just not true. The GIA has at least 15,000 soldiers. You can't feed and supply that many men without cooperation from the civilian population. The news people like to tell you the GIA terrorizes the poor villagers, but that's bullshit. The GIA is recruited from those villagers, supported by them, fed and sheltered and hidden by them. If the GIA is sick, it's because a whole lot of Algerians like it that way.

The war got even sicker as it went on. My personal favorite for coolest group of crazies is this GIA splinter group I read about, the Disciples of Satan. Sounds like a biker gang, but these guys make the Hell's Angels look like a book club. They started out as GIA fighters, but they got so messed up by what they'd seen and done that they decided there must not be a God at all. They turned into Islamic Satanists and went around trying to find newer and sicker ways to kill people as a way of making Satan happy. So they were doing the same sick shit as ever, but in Satan's name instead of Allah's.

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