Beheading was once -- in some cultures -- a much more common treatment. It is no more barbarous than execution by firing squad, or a single bullet in the back of a head, or any of the other wantonly cruel solutions people have resorted to over centuries.
I concur with Doug that the desperate murder of an innocent bystander as a dramatic political gesture, as this seems to be, is below the norm of human conduct and is barbaric. The torture of Iraqi prisioners is also barbaric -- the same insane rage to a lesser degree. To put things in perspective the entire assault against Iraq, which may have had more to do with Elf-Acquitaine oil contracts with Saddam Hussein than with freedom, has been barbaric and brought about the deaths of hundreds ands hundreds of non-combatant men, women and children. One beheading may be more dramatic, but in the overall scale it is a small gesture, if an insane one. The blood on Bush's hands outweighs it a thousand times.

A