By the time you read this, 62-year-old Liverpool-born engineer, Kenneth Bigley, may well be dead.
If so, he will have been beheaded by terrorist kidnappers who post gruesome pictures of their butchery on the internet and beam them around the world. Or, instead, the kidnappers might well have decided to keep him alive a little while longer, calculating that some mileage is still to be had from continuing to play their heartless game of cat-and-mouse.
Welcome to terrorism, 21st-century-style.
Yet, in all of the media discussion and comment generated by the kidnappings and Internet-transmitted beheadings in Iraq, clear and unequivocal condemnation of the perpetrators has been noticeably muted.
Even leaving aside the ludicrous and, frankly, disgracefully opportunistic attempts to compare Tony Blair's readiness to negotiate in Northern Ireland with his refusal to give in to the demands of Mr Bigley's kidnappers, unqualified denunciation of the murderers has still been almost non-existent.
Sure, there have been expressions of distaste, but they always come heavily laden with "mitigating" argument. Unbelievably, in some quarters there has even been a whiff of barely concealed regard for how Third World kidnappers have so readily adapted to modern forms of communication.
Instead, our deep anger and sense of helplessness at the plight of Mr Bigley and fellow unfortunates seem always to be directed almost exclusively at George Bush and Tony Blair. Welcome to morality, 21st-century-style.
The current vogue for determinedly adopting an even-handed approach to every situation has led us to seek rational explanation for even the most barbaric acts of terrorist brutality and understanding of (often bordering on empathy with) the motivation of perpetrators.
We avoid like the plague any notion that some actions might defy rationalisation; that many perpetrators commit crimes far beyond the realms of any motivational explanation or excuse; and that there aren't always two sides to every story, each worthy of equal consideration.
We have forgotten that sometimes there really is no grey area - only black and white. This is one of those situations.
Irrespective of our views on the invasion of Iraq, the inhumane treatment of some Iraqi prisoners or any other perversity arising from the "war on terror", blame for the plight and ultimate fate of hostages lies with none but those who kidnap and murder them. For no cause, however righteous, and no injustice, however stark, can lend a scintilla of justification to what these people are doing, or detract in the slightest from the sole responsibility they bear for their actions.
I agreed with the invasion of Iraq but not, I might add, for any of the reasons that were advanced by Blair and Bush at the time.
Saddam's human rights violations, his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and his support for world-threatening terrorist organisations such as al- Qaeda hardly distinguished him from other tin-pot dictators around the globe.
Instead, in my naivety, I believed that Bush and Blair wanted to remove Saddam because he posed a major threat to their plans for peace in the Middle East.
He was, after all, sponsoring the most extreme Palestinian terrorist groups, offering financial reward to the families of suicide bombers and generally doing everything he could to ensure that the Israelis and Palestinians continued at one another's throats.
Remember the much-heralded "road map" peace plan for the Middle East? Well, that's what I thought it was all about, with Saddam the primary and most obvious obstacle on the highway. I thought Blair had convinced Bush that there needed to be a genuine, sustained and neutral effort by both governments if there was to be any hope of a resolution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
In my fantasy, I even believed that, finally, an American president had been brought to realise that his nation's lopsided approach to the Middle Eastern conflict was a major exacerbating factor. I clung tenaciously to that notion for some time, though it niggled that the two leaders never trumpeted their "real" reason for toppling Saddam. Until, after a time, what started as firm belief gradually became a dawning realisation that I had been hopelessly wrong all along.
It never was about Palestine-Israel, nor oil either (much easier to have come to a deal with Saddam about that): it was, I am now convinced, about little more than Bush and his closest advisers dealing with "unfinished business" and a son taking revenge for his father.
Tony Blair was sucked in by a combination of dubious moral argument, an overeagerness to believe dodgy intelligence , a desire to give support to the post-9/11 US in its "war on terror" and his own belief that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was seriously on Bush's agenda.
So I, too, am angry with Bush and Blair - and more than a little angry with myself. But I will not allow that anger to contort logic and rationality to such an extent that I lay blame for every atrocity in the Middle East at their feet.