BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Philippines troop offer in Iraq: "A senior Philippines official has said his troops will leave Iraq 'as soon as possible', as a deadline nears for the beheading of a Filipino hostage."
... And they are off! It seems quite obvious what the Iraqi militants are trying to do: they are forcing the departure of every hostages' native country to choose between exiting Iraq, or facing an ugly P.R. scandal over its peacekeeping citizens in said country.
Now, it does not take a genius to realize that these same militants are probably creating a checklist on paper (yes, I am positive paper exists in Iraq). This checklist will probably be used in future terrorism campaigns... or, more reasonably, terrorist negotiations with First-World countries.
I have no idea what is going on out there, but if you have been reading the headlines then you will notice that only one or two countries have not and will not remove their troops: the United States, and the United Kingdom.
If you piece the intelligence together (supposing that there truly is "chatter" within the al-Qaeda network), then it only makes sense that these militants are working in coordination in an attempt to create the next target -- be it for military purpose, or militant diplomacy/negotiations. I agree that these groups have no chance of winning the "War on Terror," but they are surely gonna put on one heck of a fight.
For those who know me, I wish for pretty much every other whining social group to stop whining; so no personal offense when I come up with this sort of "conspiracy theory." Just trust that modern-day academia just might end-up, hypothetically, be the source of this as-unseen post-millenia genre of terrorism. Just a hunch, I promise.
Footnote: If you have some desire to talk to me off-line regarding this topic, then please contact me at any email address you can find. I will reply!