This reporter for the Independent thinks the beheadings of Nicholas Berg and Paul Johnson may be the final straw for Americans when it comes to President Bush and his war on terror. [link via Buzzflash]

Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency? First Nicholas Berg, now Paul Johnson: in two months and in two different countries, two US civilians have been kidnapped and beheaded by their al-Qa'ida-affiliated captors, becoming not only pawns in a deadly geopolitical game but also symbols of the complicated feelings of revulsion unleashed by the Bush administration's "war on terror".

...the overall mood is slipping away from the President. Two recent polls show that a majority believe the war against Saddam Hussein was not worth it. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal remains incendiary. And the recent traumatic events in Saudi Arabia - the siege of a residential compound in the oil town of al-Khobar last month, the shootings of Americans and other Westerners, and now the grisly fate of Mr Johnson - have raised anxious questions about the direction of US foreign policy and its ostensible goal of diminishing the terrorist threat.

One can only hope.