PoliticalWarfare.org

Why it's important to show the evidence of bin Laden's death

[This is a copy of my essay that appeared in BigPeace.com on May 3, 2011.]

Some people will never believe the facts, no matter how effectively presented. But for those of us who are convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead, it’s still imperative that the U.S. government show the forensic evidence.

Evidence is important for several reasons. Survivors of al Qaeda attacks worldwide need and deserve closure. Americans and citizens of other coalition countries invested a fortune in hunting bin Laden down, and they deserve to see the result. Citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Arab countries – civilizations where conspiracy theories that sound bizarre to American ears are treated seriously – need to know that this particular report of bin Laden’s death is indeed true. Our friends need to be reassured. Our enemies must have no doubt that Americans will stop at nothing to hunt down those who attack us.

It would have been important to place the al Qaeda leader’s body on display for all the world to see – just as it was vital to show Iraqis that their chief tormentors, Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay, were indeed dead. But now that bin Laden’s body has been sent to the bottom of the Arabian Sea, the most convincing proof is gone.

The war against international terrorism is, above all else, a war for information and public opinion. The United States has waged the intelligence and military dimensions of the war as brilliantly as humanly possible. One cannot say the same about the information and public opinion side.

The U.S. government’s delay in providing physical proof of bin Laden’s death risks turning a brilliant American victory into a public relations setback. ABC News is reporting that, from America to Pakistan, everyday people are demanding proof. Already, conspiracy theorists are arguing that bin Laden isn’t really dead, while serious people who simply ask for proof of death are branded as “deathers,” a takeoff from “birthers” of presidential birth certificate skepticism.

Providing the world with proof is a diplomatic and national security question, not a partisan political one.

Some who have seen the proof say that it’s gory, but should be made public. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is one of them. “I met with the national security advisor today,” Graham told a local radio station on May 2.  “It was an impressive operation. Every American should be proud of the way this was conducted.  I want to make sure the case is closed on Osama bin Laden. And I think it would help to release information proving that this was in fact Osama bin Laden.”

Bad information policy can damage a perfect military success

As is the case with much of the US military, the intelligence collection and analysis and the precision execution of special operations forces carried out the bin Laden termination flawlessly. The operation was simply breathtaking in all its forms – a textbook case of how to do it right.

In another way, though, the operation suffered from the same flaw as the military and intelligence community in general: poor strategic thinking from the top in terms of the informational effect of actions on the ground.

President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, said he recognized the need to provide physical proof. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden,” Brennan told AP. But that was a statement after the fact. Nothing indicates that the administration planned an information policy on par with the brilliantly planned and executed mission itself.

Religious burial customs take precedence over providing proof

The decision to bury bin Laden at sea within 24 hours of death was planned in advance. Not so with the information side of the operation. As of the early hours of May 3, the White House still had not made a decision about how to portray the evidence to the public. Here is how the Washington Post described the situation:

"US personnel washed, wrapped and prayed over the body of Osama bin Laden before dumping it off an aircraft carrier and into the Arabian Sea. But even as the Obama administration worked to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities over the manner of bin Laden’s burial, it stopped short of releasing visual or forensic proof that he had, in fact, been killed.

"John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, said the government had not decided when or whether it would make public photographs taken of bin Laden after he was gunned down at his hideout in Pakistan. He suggested that officials were still balancing whether the images were more likely to inflame public sentiment around the world or to erase doubts that bin Laden was really dead."

Handing conspiracy theorists a ‘gift’

The legalistic American bureaucratic mindset, which is satisfied with photographic and laboratory DNA evidence, ignores political and cultural realities at home and around the world – to say nothing of the speed at which conspiracy theories spread across the Internet.

As international euphoria about the end of bin Laden recedes, the United States will find that its decision hastily to dispose of the body may have unintended and undesirable consequences.

“Conspiracy theorists are an ingenious bunch, but at the moment the White House is making this ridiculously easy for them,” wrote religion writer Damian Thompson in London’s Telegraph.

“Within hours of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, the CIA had used 21st century technology to get ‘a virtually 100% DNA match’ on the dead man. But something out of another century may come back to haunt Washington: the Al Qaeda leader’s burial at sea,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

In Thompson’s words, “It’s inconceivable that America would announce the death of its deadliest enemy without offering evidence that would convince any reasonable person; I’m surprised that it hasn’t been produced already. Moreover, why did it allow bin Laden’s body to be dropped into the sea? Is the US really so sensitive to Islamic burial practices that it is prepared to hand conspiracy theorists such a gift?”

Here’s how the Associated Press treated the matter: “the mystique that surrounded the terrorist chieftain in life is persisting in death. Was it really him? How do we know? Where are the pictures? Already, those questions are spreading in Pakistan and surely beyond. In the absence of photos and with his body given up to the sea, many people don’t want to believe that bin Laden — the Great Emir to some, the fabled escape artist of the Tora Bora mountains to foe and friend alike — is really dead.”

The administration’s lack of preparing the infospace for bin Laden’s death has invited unhealthy skepticism about the United States and its mission. A headline from the May 2 Washington Post reads, “Reports of bin Laden’s death spurs questions from conspiracy theorists.” The Los Angeles Times ran a similar headline: “Bin Laden’s sea burial fuels conspiracy theories.”

This problem was easy to foresee. Word of bin Laden’s death, debunked over and over, has circulated one way or another for years. The failure to provide immediate physical proof of the real thing has allowed fakers to fill the information vacuum. According to Sky News, “The release of a photograph purporting to show bin Laden’s corpse – which was later confirmed to be a fake – added to the confusion.”

The responsibility to show proof of death

Responsible voices are already questioning the hastiness of the disposal of bin Laden’s body, and are calling for the U.S. to show the public proof that the al Qaeda leader is indeed dead. After all, President Obama himself reportedly didn’t want to bomb bin Laden’s compound, for fear of not being able to prove that bin Laden had been killed.

The president himself wanted proof – not only for his personal knowledge and for the military necessity, but because he knew that the American public and the world needed to know the facts.

That’s what some of us are asking to see.

Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, said in London’s Telegraph, “I can’t conceive the US president would go out to make a statement to the world that Bin Laden is dead without being able to produce evidence that he is dead. I think we will see some evidence – DNA or photographic – to prove there is not still some phantom Osama bin Laden riding the Tora Bora mountains.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said in a thoughtful observation reported by the Los Angeles Times, “Unless there’s an acknowledgment by people in Al Qaeda that Bin Laden is dead, it may be necessary to release the pictures — as gruesome as they will undoubtedly be, because he’s been shot in the head — to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American government has carried out.”

Navy gives bin Laden a Shariah-compliant burial at sea

Scratch my earlier idea about displaying Osama bin Laden's body in New York so everyone could set eyes on the uberterrorist and to erase any doubts that he is indeed dead.

The US Navy (which doesn't do "war of ideas" stuff even on a good day) gave the bin Laden a shariah-compliant burial at sea.

CBS and the Associated Press report that the US buried bin Laden at sea, adding, "US officials told CBS News that bin Laden's body would be handled in accordance with Muslim traditions, which include strict rules on burial taking place within 24 hours after death."

Not even the Saudis would accept bin Laden's body for burial, according to the report.

Yet another piece of evidence that the US military leadership is becoming more shariah compliant in the way it handles the war of ideas.

Display bin Laden's body. Then make it disappear. Then destroy the al Qaeda legacy.

What fortuitous timing - no sooner do Arab protesters across the Middle East repudiate al Qaeda's revolutionary model, than a CIA hit team eliminates Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani mansion and snatches the body.

Now it's important to keep the momentum going, and to deny the enemy any propaganda victory.

That means finishing off bin Laden's ideological legacy and the popular appeal he enjoyed among Muslim extremists. In doing so, we can stomp out al Qaeda even in places where we can't see or find its operatives.

First, a repetition of the first point: Al Qaeda stood discredited in the eyes of Muslim Arabs from Tunisia and across North Africa, up the Levant to Syria. The mass protests against authoritarian regimes, several backed by the US, had stolen away much of al Qaeda's appeal, and proved that much of that appeal was fundamentally quite shallow.

Secondly, the US and its allies have to decide what to do to destroy bin Laden's legacy, both as an individual and as an ideological vanguard.

Here are some immediate thoughts of what should be done next:

1. Display the body. The free world, particularly the United States, has a right to make sure Osama bin Laden is really dead. Every American has a right to walk right up to bin Laden's corpse and view it. We are entitled to know for a fact that the witch is dead. No shroud for dignity's sake, please - bin Laden's naked, bullet-riddled corpse should be put on display in lower Manhattan for all the world to see. The entire body should be digitally scanned, inside and out - and made available for everyone to take his or her own picture.

This isn't as morbid a thought as it might seem. Bodies are routinely scanned and photographed during autopsies, their digital images preserved. And across most of the world's cultures they are placed on display prior to burial or cremation. For us Doubting Thomases out there - we need to see in order to believe.

No future Elvis sightings, please. Leave no room for conspiracy theories that the CIA faked bin Laden's death, that bin Laden is living in comfortable exile somewhere, or that 20 years from now he'll still be out there, calling the shots. All of us is entitled to see that the beast has indeed been killed.

2. Make the body disappear. The US made mistakes in the past by returning the bodies of dead terrorists to their families or hometowns for burial. This is a nice and sentimental gesture, but it had the net effect of spawning more extremism and terrorism. The graves that contained the physical bodies became shrines for extremist pilgrims, educational tools to propagandize young people, and models to inspire future terrorists.

Even though they were atheists, the Soviets understood the propagandistic importance of bodies. That's why they mummified Lenin, put the remains in a mausoleum, and turned the corpse into the core of a personality cult. That's why, too, the Soviets ordered the physical destruction of Adolf Hitler's corpse, burning it and burying it and re-burying it before ultimately dumping the ashes in a river. There would be no pilgrimage point for future Nazis.

And so, after a thorough public examination, bin Laden's body should be burned, its ashes flushed into the New York City sewer system.

3. Describe how bin Laden spent his last days and died. In what type of luxury did the al Qaeda leader live as his fanatical devotees crawled around their rabbit holes and scratched out a miserable existence? What did he surround himself with in that mansion outside Islamabad? Was he Spartan-like? Or did he live, perhaps, like the Tunisian and Egyptian strong men overthrown by their own people?

Was bin Laden, the puritanical Islamist, really just another religious phony? A total hypocrite whom it would prove shameful to follow? Did the CIA find the types of disgusting double lives that our military discovered among the many suicide bombers who murdered in his name - the liquor, the cyber porn, the pederasty? What about his body? Did the autopsy reveal symptoms of the anal gonorrhea so prevalent among his totally un-gay followers in rural Afghanistan?

Did he go down fighting, or did he cower and plead for his life?

No need to give bin Laden a clean bill of health here - we're looking at destroying his legacy, not being fair and balanced. If there's anything truthful that can be used to discredit him, let's use it.

If there isn't, then it isn't important to know. This is political warfare, not public relations.

Bin Laden may be dead (I'll believe it when I see it), but al Qaeda is still alive.

I'm going to raise a mug of beer and munch a Hebrew National pork sausage to celebrate the brave CIA men who took bin Laden down.

Then it's back to work to destroy what the al Qaeda leader left behind. That means piling dirt on bin Laden's legacy, destroying his appeal, and providing the world with all the necessary facts to heap humiliation on anyone who insists on continuing to follow his cause.

Citizen videos show widespread defiance across Iran

Videos shot by ordinary citizens celebrating the Persian New Year season show widespread defiance of the regime across Iran.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that there be no public observations of the pre-Islamic traditions, which include lighting and jumping over bonfires to mark the arrival of spring and the triumph of good over evil.

IranChannel.org has the story. (Photo: An anti-regime protester in Bushehr, home of Iran's nuclear program, rolls a barrel of gasoline on a bonfire March 15.)

Official censorship, the banning of foreign correspondents, and crackdowns on the Internet have choked off normal reporting about the nationwide protests, but ordinary citizens, armed with smartphones and flip cameras, have recorded the happenings on their own.

Freedom Messenger, IranStudentsCommittee, Sherlock72, Unity4Iran and others have collected some of those videos. We aggregate the links to them here to show how widespread the March 15-20 protests from Chahar Sanbeh Soori to Nowruz have been. This selection is just a sampling of what these and other bloggers have posted online to show that resistance is alive.

Note the cries of "Allahu akbar" (God is great) coupled with "Death to the Dictator" slogans. The secular opposition uses the jihadist "Allahu akbar" slogan ironically or sarcastically, as a sign of resistance to the Islamic Republic. It is not to be confused in these cases as signs of jihad.

Samples of the protest activity follows, with each link leading to the video:

Ardebil, March 15: Banned fire festival takes place in street.

Ahwaz, March 15: Young people revel in the street with a traditional bonfire, taunting regime authorities.

Babol, March 15: Ironic Allahu Akbar and “Death to Dictator” street chants.

Borujerd, March 15: Street chants for Khamenei to be overthrown in the style of Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak.

Bushehr, March 15: Youths control the streets in the city that houses the regime’s nuclear power plant (video grab of this appears in above photo).

Fooladshahr, March 15: Happy street celebration with music, singing, chanting, clapping and whistling.

Gorgan, March 15: Quiet “Death to Dictator” protest.

Hamedan, March 15: Loud “Death to Dictator” protest.

Isfahan (Esfahan), March 15: Celebration around a bonfire.

Karaj, March 21: Celebratory New Year’s street revelry.

Mashhad, March 15: Dancing in the streets and celebration despite official ban.

Kermanshah, March 15: Cheerful nighttime protests in defiance of Khamenei’s orders.

Qom, March 15: Forbidden fire festival in the ideological heart of the Islamic Republic.

Rasht, March 15: Motorists honk horns in celebration of the eve of the last Wednesday before the Persian New Year.

Rasht, March 15: Ironic chants of Allahu Akbar and death to the dictator.

Sanandaj, March 15: Protesters set Basij or police motorcycle on fire.

Shahin Shahr, March 15: “Death to the Entire Regime” protest.

Shiraz, March 15: Anti-regime protests, including slogans against regime support for Hezbollah.

Shiraz, March 21: “Death to Dictator” protest in the streets.

Tabriz, March 15: “Death to Dictator” street protests.

Tehran, March 15: Pedestrian and motorists celebrate the end of the old and beginning of the new, controlling a street.

Tehran, March 15: Young men and women dance in the street in defiance of official decrees.

Tehran, March 15: Basiji motorcycle paramilitaries put down youthful street celebrations.

Tehran, March 15: Authorities fire weapons in the streets during street festivities.

Tehran, March 15: Crowd chants for Supreme Leader Khamenei to be overthrown like the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.

Tehran (Jami Street), March 15: Young people hold forbidden bonfire in the neighborhood of Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Tehran (south), March 15: Protesters in South Tehran stand up to Basij paramilitaries.

Tehran, March 15: A lone woman in Tehran chants, “Death to dictator,” to be joined by others in the street.

Tehran (Navab Street) March 15: Big nighttime demonstration with ironic chants against regime.

Zahedan, March 15: Small but defiant “Death to Dictator” protest, includes burning an image of Khamenei while chants for the regime to be overthrown.

Serbian student leader draws parallels between Iran's protests and movement that ousted Milosevic

A leader of the opposition movement that overthrew the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic has been a friend of the Iranian freedom cause and sees many parallels between the two struggles for freedom. [From IranChannel.org]

Ivan Marovic (pictured) is a leader of the Otpor nonviolent resistance movement, and has been a champion of using nonviolence against dictatorships. He traveled to Washington in January to attend to the Iran Democratic Transition Conference, held in association with the Confederation of Iranian Students (CIS).

CIS interviewed Marovic about the organization and success of the Serbian movement and the lessons Iranians can learn from it. Among those lessons are that:

• student protests can become broad-based opposition movements relatively quickly and with very little funding;
• creating a united movement can be time-consuming, bitter and frustrating;
• youthful organizers should expect (and ignore) being defamed as foreign agents;
• older and more established opponents of the regime are likely to oppose the young people’s efforts, at least at first;
• some of the best progress is made by learning from one’s own mistakes;
• months of protests can end in futility but, with organization and effort, can become victorious over time;
• fear and apathy – the biggest obstacles to success – can be overcome;
• actions need not be large or dramatic to be successful, but they must be constant;
• the more the regime arrests opposition activists, the stronger the opposition becomes;
• nonviolent resistance to a dictatorship can take a long time;
• foreign financial support is often not forthcoming or not needed;
• military intervention against the regime can actually weaken the opposition movement as people rally in defense of their nation against foreign attack;
• humor is an important weapon against the regime.

CIS provided the text of this interview to IranChannel.org as an exclusive.

Confederation of Iranian Students (CIS): When you first organized your movement, both the Opposition and the Regime tagged and accused you of being foreign agents or even puppets. How did you manage to convince, unite, and organize different Opposition groups?

Ivan Marovic (IM): Yes, we were accused of being foreign agents, but we managed to overcome this, mainly because we publicly stated our goals and kept asking everybody to find one single thing in our goals that is against Serbian national interest. For instance we would ask: “Is having free elections against Serbian national interest?” We would make posters saying “Otpor (Resistance), because I love Serbia.” This was to show that resisting the dictatorship was an act of patriotism, not an act of treason.

And uniting different groups wasn’t easy at all. We spent a lot of time and energy talking to different groups, often at loggerheads among each other, and over time managed to bring them closer and convinced them to start cooperating. We tried to find people in those groups more open to cooperation, and then helped them boost their credibility both inside their organizations and in the society as a whole. These people were crucial for the success of uniting different factions of the opposition.

CIS: How did you come up with the idea of creating Otpor?

IM: The idea was born after an unsuccessful student protest which lasted for four months. That’s four months of daily demonstrations in late 1996 and early 1997. This protest failed to overthrow Milosevic, and his grip on power became even stronger. Repression became even more brutal after the failure. That’s why in 1998 we decided to create a movement, not just to organize another protest, because we knew that this struggle was going to be a long one and that movement is what was needed in order to be able to apply pressure and withstand attacks over a longer period of time.

That’s why we created a resistance movement and named it Otpor, which is Serbian for resistance. We also took a clenched fist as our symbol.

CIS: When did you choose the fist logo?

IM: At the very beginning of Otpor, in October 1998. We asked our friend Nenad Petrovic, called “Duda,” to draw a clenched fist as a symbol of unity in strength, because all fingers are stronger when together in a fist. He designed it inspired by the “White Hand of Saruman” from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

CIS: How many were there at the beginning, in the founding group?

IM: There was a dozen of us in the very beginning, and we grew slowly in the first few months. So, after several weeks we had an operating group of less than fifty people.

CIS: What difficulties did you face from the start?

IM: Our biggest obstacles were apathy and fear. People were afraid to participate because of the repression. Those who were brave enough were apathetic because of the previous failed attempts and because many opposition groups were fighting each other, so few people believed that change is possible.

CIS: Did you have any financial support at the beginning? Or later?

IM: No, we haven’t. We actually didn’t have an office for the first year. We did receive some help later on, first locally and then in the last few months before Milosevic was brought down, we finally got aid from western foundations.

CIS: What kind of support did you have at the beginning? Or later?

IM: We did have some support from a handful of local independent media, but they were soon banned and taken over by the regime. The editor in chief of one of those media, Slavko Curuvija was even killed.

CIS: How did you represent yourself and your group to the national and the international community?

IM: Through actions – we were an organization in action. We wanted to be present everywhere. But, because we were small, at least in the beginning, we used street theater to comment on political situation. Actions were small, short and widespread all over the country. They were humorous and satirical in nature and aimed at onlookers who would then spread our message to their friends. That’s how we became prominent.

CIS: When did you feel that you had become a movement?

IM: It was in the fall of 1999, a year after we were officially formed, when I was traveling to south Serbia and saw Otpor graffiti in a town where we thought we didn’t have a branch. It turned out that some local kids made a branch of Otpor on their own. We then admitted them to the organization, but this event proved to me that Otpor was spreading all over the country.

CIS: From which direction(s) did you get attacked? From the oppostion? From the regime? Or both?

IM: Both. Opposition didn’t like us because they felt we were occupying their space. But, there was hardly anything they could do because they were powerless. They finally had to work with us when we became strong. The regime underestimated us in the beginning, but later they launched a frontal attack on us naming us a terrorist organization (although we were strictly nonviolent) and arresting every activist of Otpor they could find.

CIS: What kind of media support did you receive, after the opposition boycotted your organization?

IM: We had our misunderstanding with the opposition, but that didn’t impact the coverage of Otpor by the independent media, since the opposition didn’t have much credibility and influence over them. They followed our activities because we were effective and therefore newsworthy, risking persecution. State run media portrayed us as terrorists, but people believed those accounts less and less as they started sounding more and more ridiculous.

CIS: What percentage of the opposition supported you?

IM: At the very beginning we had support of only a handful of opposition leaders, but this percentage grew over time. We never got full support, but towards the end it was significant.

CIS: Did the regime try to use violence to crush down your Freedom Movement? If yes, how far? Which methods did you adopt?

IM: Although members of Otpor were detained on a regular basis, repression became disturbing in May 2000 when Otpor was declared a terrorist organization and hundreds of our activists were arrested. However, this was too late for the regime, the movement was so strong that there wasn’t enough room in jails to put Otpor members and new people were joining as the number of arrested activists grew.

CIS: How important was the support of the international community in your victory?

IM: It was very important, but not essential. Serbia was under UN sanctions and in complete isolation, only a few embassies operated in Serbia. There was hardly any engagement with the regime and then there was the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 which created a lot of problems for democratic forces in Serbia.

CIS: How do you compare your Freedom Movement with the Freedom Movement of Iran?

IM: There are some similarities and some differences between Iran and Serbia and between our two movements. It is difficult to make an exact comparison, but I can say that Iran’s movement is making a transition from a protest to a movement, a transition which was very important in our case – when we learned that the struggle was going to be long, we were ready to wage it.

CIS: If you had lost hope on all your non-violent efforts, what would you have done? How would you have gone on with your Freedom Movement?

IM: We never lost hope. Nonviolence had no alternative for us.

CIS: How effective was the NATO military strike?

IM: It hindered our efforts and helped Milosevic raise the level of repression because country was under attack. Milosevic came out of the bombing stronger because he was seen by the people as someone defending the country from the foreign threat.

CIS: How can your experience help the Iranian Freedom Movement?

IM: I think that sharing experience from another country is helpful because it helps unravel some underlying universal forces at play that do not depend on local circumstances. These can tell us a lot about why and how certain political events unfold, how regimes loose their viability and how movements gain their momentum.

CIS: How effective was the participation of your student movement in unifying the Opposition which led to the final victory?

IM: One can say that the students led by Otpor united the opposition, and united opposition became victorious. I think that the fact that Otpor was led by young people, students, who have more contacts and act quickly and boldly made it so effective.

CIS: How dependent was your movement on the awareness of the masses?

IM: This awareness grew over time, we tried to increase it. That’s why in the beginning we used street theater I mentioned earlier. After awareness we tried to increase readiness to take action. We had one million people in Belgrade in the end. These people were not just aware of what was going on, they were ready to take actions, join the general strike and force Milosevic to step down.

CIS: What alternative did you propose to the people? How did you come with the idea of this alternative?

IM: It was at the same time difficult and easy to propose the alternative. It was easy because the situation was so bad that we just proposed return to normalcy. Normal country was our alternative. But it was difficult because people had lost faith that things were ever coming back to normal in Serbia. We succeeded when people started believing in the possibility of normalcy.

Why victory is so elusive for us

 
By all indications, the US and its Coalition partners have won the war in Iraq. Despite everything, and regardless of whether the US should have gone into Iraq in the first place, the US and its partners won the war.

Somehow we have trouble recognizing victory.

And what about Afghanistan? The last time Barack Obama called for victory in Afghanistan, as far as I can tell, was during the 2008 campaign. 

That prompted me to look at how the US military defines "victory." Going to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the definitive Joint Chiefs of Staff keeper of the American national security lexicon, we search for an official definition of victory. 

The screenshot above, taken today, March 17, 2011, shows how the Pentagon defines victory: It doesn't.

See for yourself: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/

Something to think about as we send more of our people to kill and die.

Zenga Zenga: Israeli-made mockery of Qaddafi speech is a big hit among Arabs

A YouTube video spoof of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has tickled the Arab funny bone, even though the creator is an Israeli.

The setting, the circumstances, and Qaddafi's wild exclamations, cadence and gesticulations provided the perfect combination to spoof the Libyan madman. 

Addressing the Libyan population on February 22 from the bombed-out remains of the place where President Reagan had attacked in the 1980s, Qaddafi set himself up to be mocked. He swore to hunt down his enemies "inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway." 

Qaddafi repeated the Arabic word for alleyway, zanqa, which 31 year-old Israeli satirist Noy Alooshe tweaked as "zenga" as he altered the Libyan former leader's speech with computerized pitch correcter technology and set to music by American rapper Pit Bull, as performed by T Pain. Alooshe edited the footage and added images of a gyrating young woman dancing to Qaddafi's rant set to music, and called the video "Zenga Zenga."

According to the New York Times, Alooshe uploaded the techno hip-hop spoof on YouTube and promoted it on Facebook and Twitter to Arab political activists.

The video was an instant hit, generating more than 500,000 views in a few days (and more than 800,000 as of this posting). But even though some Arab and Muslim viewers didn't like learning that the satirist was an Israeli Jew, most who commented seemed to appreciate the video, with some even asking Alooshe to create a new video without the scantily-dressed dancing woman, so they could show it to their parents, the Times reports.

Libyans were already laughing at Qaddafi as he made the speech, but Zenga Zenga has propelled the dictator's defiant rant into Arab pop culture.

One viewer, presumed to be with the Libyan opposition, wrote Alooshe that once Qaddafi falls, “We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square.”

Libyans finally get to laugh at Qaddafi

With Muammar Qaddafi on the run as his regime falls to the Libyan people, ordinary citizens who lived under more than 40 years of dictatorship can finally laugh at the man who tormented them.

Time magazine covers the story from the dusty town of Tobruk, where a group of Libyans crowd around a television in a roadside cafe to watch Qaddafi's rambling, babbling speech amid the fallout of popular revolt. 

"In 'Free Libya,'" Time reports, "people are laughing at Muammar Gaddafi as he goes on and on in a speech, dressed in a traditional outfit called a jard."

The viewers, though poor, "now have the luxury of poking fun at the man who once had the power of life or death over them. 'He has a hole in his shirt,' one says. 'Now he is a poor man!" another shouts. They all laugh.

"The men feel they can now call falsehoods for what they are."

"The crowd tonight was very angry from the Gaddafi speech," one local man tells Time. "He views us like his farm, his cows. And he told us, 'If you don't stop the revolution, I will fight you with the Community of Sahel-Saharan States [An economic union founded by Gaddafi in 1998], with Chad and Mali and Sudan.' And he said all of this is not the beginning of the fighting. But I think it's his last hours. For us, we are laughing at him."

VOA to kill broadcasts into rural China, Tibet

As the Chinese regime steps up the sophistication and tempo of its international propaganda operations, the United States government is curtailing a mainstay of providing unfiltered news and information to the most restive large areas under one-party control.

The Voice of America (VOA) has announced plans to terminate its shortwave broadcasts into rural China and Tibet, citing cost-cutting measures and its move toward more digital programming. 

Rural China and Tibet have been major sore points for the communist regime.

Farmers have led grassroots revolts against official corruption and taxation without representation. Because they do not have access to digital media, they depend on VOA shortwave broadcasts to stay informed.

“China has appropriated $7 billion on international propaganda in the past two years,” an Obama administration official close to VOA tells Bill Gertz at the Washington Times. “In 2011, CCTV [PRC state television] North America in Washington, D.C., plans to increase its reporters from 12 to 20 people. Meanwhile, VOA Chinese staff will be cut over 50 percent.”

Meanwhile, promised reforms at VOA's scandal-plagued Persian broadcasting unit are slow in coming, as this blogger has heard firsthand from dozens of Iranian democracy activists.

Is the Iranian regime set to tear itself apart?

The office of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the cleric-controlled judiciary and the security forces have agreed, until now, not to go after opposition protesters too aggressively for fear of creating martyrs as they did when they murdered Neda Agha-Soltan in 2009. 

But in Iran's "parliament," regime allies want the opposition leaders dead - and they want it now. Take a look at this video, shot today, February 15, 2011, inside the Iranian "parliament" and brought to us by the Confederation of Iranian Students. A large number of members begin chanting, "Mousavi, Karroubi, Khatami must be executed." More and more members join in, egged on from the leadership at the dais:

Those being targeted for death aren't even the ones calling for regime change - they're merely advocates of "reforming" but maintaining the Islamic Republic.

The three are: Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as the Islamic Republic's prime minister from 1981-89 and ran against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 election for president as leader of the Green Movement; Mehdi Karroubi, a follower of the late Ayatollah Khomeini who chaired "parliament" from 1989-92 and, by regime standards is considered a "reformer"; and Sayyid Mohammad Khatami, a cleric and former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is also a "reformer" in comparison with the present leadership. 

In short, those who brought the world the Islamic revolution and plunged Iran under shariah dictatorship are now bent on devouring one another. 

History shows that this can't exist for long - if the "reformers" cave in to preserve themselves, they will lose their own support base and will radicalize Iran's young people beyond all control; if they end up siding with the young people who want a secular democracy, they will have had a hand in destroying what they built. Either way, the system is unsustainable. 

By publicly and enthusiastically calling for the deaths of these three former regime officials who seek mere reform, the pro-regime members of "parliament" are hastening the death of the Islamic Republic.

History also shows that, in times like these, regime figures will start to defect to the intractable opposition. That's good news. The world should be encouraging those defections and be welcoming and merciful to regime figures who switch sides. 

Time to keep up the pressure in the streets, friends!

Iran's resistance movement is very much alive

After more a year of low visibility, Iran's internal resistance movement showed itself in cities across the country today. Iranians of all ages took inspiration from the people's revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt despite being attacked with paramilitaries on motorcycles, tear gas and electric prods.

The size of the demonstrations appeared to take Islamic Republic authorities off guard, in what the Washington Post called a "surprisingly large" show of opposition. Here's what CNN reported tonight:

The Islamic Republic announced it would hold rallies in support of the Tunisian and Egyptian movements, trying to put an Islamist face - or perhaps providing open political support for covert operations - on Facebook-based protests. However, it forbade opposition groups from taking to the streets to voice their solidarity with the Tunisians and Egyptians.

On February 8, internal reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who heads the Green Movement inside Iran, announced plans for nationwide solidarity protests on February 14 - the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

Mousavi's call came after an unprecedentedly broad group of Iranian expatriates and exiles met at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, to set aside their differences and unite for the first time against the regime. The three-day Iranian Democratic Transition Conference, led by former political prisoner Amir Abbas Fakhravar, was sponsored by the Center for Culture and Security at my school, the Institute of World Politics.

The IWP-sponsored event occurred on the birthday of the Iranian regime's murder of democracy protester Neda Agha-Soltan, an underground musician and singer who has become a martyr's face for the democratic resistance. Neda's parents and her fiance, Caspian Makan, supported the conference. Makan tried to attend but could not get a US visa in time.

The regime of mullahs has been in a quandary about what to do with pro-democracy leaders, fearing that arresting them would turn them into political martyrs or "saints."

The Islamic Republic's propaganda machine, especially the mouthpieces of the Revolutionary Guard, attacked the conference, singling out Fakhravar and other organizers by name. Regime agents intimidated some Iranians from attending, and IWP received death threats. One of the invitees who could not attend, political prisoner Arzhang Davoodi, secretly issued an audio message to the conference that the Confederation of Iranian Students brought out of prison. When news of that message got out, prison officials beat and tortured Davoodi and carried him to a solitary part of the prison. He has not been heard from since. See the video of his message, below:

The conference took place January 22-24, coinciding with the toppling of the regime in Tunisia and the beginning of protests in Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Jordan. Iranian student activists came from across Europe, Asia and North America, as did some inside Iran who participated on Skype.

As the Egyptian protesters demanded President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, Fakhravar, who heads the Confederation of Iranian Students and is a research fellow at IWP, issued a statement in Arabic warning the Egyptians about the mistake Iranians made in 1979 when they toppled the shah and welcomed in an Islamic Republic. Fakhravar urged Egyptians to learn Iran's lessons and to maintain a pro-western, secular republic.

As of the night of February 13, protests were planned in at least 41 Iranian cities. 

People showed up across the country on February 14, though the regime was able to clamp down on news coverage and cut Internet and mobile phone service in selected areas. Even so, Iranians posted videos on YouTube and Facebook, and circulated them by email and phone. 

Al Jazeera reported many thousands of people in Tehran, calmly walking peacefully, with a massive presence of police, undercover police and Basiji paramilitaries:

In some places, the crowd was more spirited, amid reports of sporadic beatings and arrests at the hands of the security forces. An amateur video shows Basijis on their trademark motorcycles corralling people down a street and sidewalk, and about 1:05 into the video the paramilitaries take out their truncheons and begin beating people before the videographer flees:

Thus provoked, people start resisting. The next video shows protesters climbing the side of a mosque to tear down a poster of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Basiji paramilitaries can be seen through the window, hiding inside the mosque:

A man identified as a Basiji paramilitary tries to rescue the poster, mistakenly believing that he has intimidated the crowd. But the people are unafraid. They throw the regime's solidarity-with-Hezbollah propaganda back in the paramilitary's face, saying they want regime change: "Na Ghaza! Na Lobnan! Tunis o Misr o Iran!" ("Not Gaza! Not Lebanon! Tunisia and Egypt and Iran!"). The protesters turn on him and beat him senseless:

Chanting that Khamenei should meet the same fate as Mubarak, the demonstrators then try to set the Khomeini/Khamenei poster afire:

It will be interesting to see how the news reports put together the pieces of today's February 14 protests across Iran. The good news is, the internal opposition movement is very much alive.

And thanks to Fakhravar's Iranian Democratic Transition Conference last month, the external opposition and lead student movement are united for the first time ever. Below is a promotional video released prior to the event:

 

Will Barclays Bank be the next target of patriot hackers?

Now that hackers and web activists have gone after online supporters of Wikifreak Julian Assange, one must ask, Will Barclays Bank and other British firms be next?

Barclays is a big British bank that is housing a legal defense fund for Assange. According to Assange's London defense team, Barclays is housing an account called "FSI - Julian Assange Defence Fund." 

The account is run by the accounting firm Hazlems Fenton. Assange's defense firm is Finers Stephens Innocent LLP. Account data is as follows: 

Name of Account: "FSI - Julian Assange Defence Fund"

Account number: 93842452

Sort code: 20-77-67 BIC/Swift code BARC GB22

IBAN: GB86 BARC 2077 6793 8424 52 

It will be interesting to see what happens to those who are helping Assange after his friends launched denial-of-service attacks on American and other financial houses and service providers who clamped down on Assange. Will there be reciprocity?

Unions join government propaganda campaign to compel citizens to submit to strip searches & groping

Unions are joining the Department of Homeland Security's domestic propaganda campaign to persuade citizens that electronic strip searches and physical groping of their private parts are good for them.

American citizens, they argue, must submit to being peeped at and felt up by uniformed personnel if they wish to exercise their right to travel.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is urging the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to protect TSA workers from the people. 

A November 17 AFGE news release calls for the TSA to wage a propaganda "public education" campaign to promote the state-sponsored sexual groping "pat-downs."

TSA has launched a video and other literature to propagandize the public to submit. The Orwellian title of the campaign is "Helpful Hints for Holiday Travelers."

MSNBC reports that the National Treasury Employees Union "has launched a campaign in support of the TSA to educate the public about the critical role played by TSA officers in helping secure the safety of air travel."

Of course, the public already knows this - the issue here is how the unions are working hand-in-glove with government agents to propagandize the public to submit to the electronic strip searches and physical groping of their genitalia by uniformed personnel. 

Taiwanese animators lampoon 'don't touch my junk'

It's bad enough that the Department of Homeland Security's clumsy "security" over-reach alienates the average citizen the way it has, but it's all the worse when the rest of the world starts laughing at us.

Fundamental to any sound security policy is careful consideration of domestic and international response to the measures being applied. Those measures will never please everybody. But when security officials are so tone-deaf and defiant, they undermine the intended results of their policies. That's just what's happening today with the new Transportation Security Administration electronic strip search/"pat down" policies.

No government propaganda campaign to justify the policies will serve a useful purpose. DHS and TSA are now a laughingstock. Too many people just don't take the clumsy and intrusive security policies seriously any more. The last scene of this video, with the terrorist laughing at us, is right on the mark.

Perhaps it has something to do with the government's refusal to profile those most likely to be motivated to commit terrorism, and to make all citizens pay the price for the government's timid political correctness. There's good reason to mock the TSA's ham-handed policies. But in truth, this is no laughing matter at all. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano is responsible for this mess. She has undermined public confidence. She should resign.

Big Sis: Trust us. We know what's best for you.

More truth-telling - maybe too much - from satirist Oleg Atbashian at the People's Cube. 

Government propaganda campaign to make public submit to strip searches

A US government propaganda campaign aimed at the domestic population is in the works.

The perceptions-and-behavior-modification campaign is designed to neutralize the American public's opposition to the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) move toward electronic strip-searches and invasive groping of airport passengers.

Caught off-guard by the widening public backlash to the excessively intrusive "security" procedures at the nation's airports, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to disarm the public of its opposition.

(Photo: A Muslim TSA guard, wearing sharia-compliant head covering, gropes a Catholic nun during a "security" search at a US airport.)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano isn't off to a very good start, saying that the electronic strip-searches and the invasive groping of passengers who refuse a strip search are necessary because of the Nigerian terrorist who arrived in the United States with explosives in his underwear in December 2009.

However, what Napolitano did not say was that the CIA had specific advance warning of a possible terrorist attack by that very individual - in the form of an urgent face-to-face meeting that the terrorist's father requested with the CIA station in Abuja - and that the CIA and TSA failed to ensure that the terrorist was placed on the TSA's no-fly list.

Because of that government failure, the TSA is now forcing the entire traveling public to submit to electronic strip searches, be groped in the breasts, genitals and buttocks by TSA personnel, or be arrested or fined.

Napolitano began the propaganda campaign against the American public with a November 15 op-ed in USA Today. Starting off with the example of the Christmas bomber and the need for a "layered approach" to screening terrorists (without mentioning the CIA's failure at the outermost layer), Napolitano says the strip-search machines are necessary, safe and preferred:

"As part of our layered approach, we have expedited the deployment of new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) units to help detect concealed metallic and non-metallic threats on passengers. These machines are now in use at airports nationwide, and the vast majority of travelers say they prefer this technology to alternative screening measures.

"AIT machines are safe, efficient, and protect passenger privacy. . . .

"All images generated by imaging technology are viewed in a walled-off location not visible to the public. The officer assisting the passenger never sees the image, and the officer viewing the image never interacts with the passenger. The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images." (Emphasis added)

Much of Napolitano's points are of debatable accuracy or truthfulness, and a lot of the public isn't buying her argument, or her euphemisms such as "pat downs." (I've been through the "pat downs" and think the term "heavy petting" is more accurate.)

It's propaganda time

So now, the government finds itself having to launch an aggressive propaganda "public education" campaign to manipulate public perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Here's what AP is reporting right now:

". . . airports have been urging the government to engage in an aggressive public education campaign regarding the new screening, said Debby McElroy, the [Airports Council International-North America] executive vice president.

"'TSA is trying to address a real, credible threat, both through the advanced imaging technology and through the pat-downs,' McElroy said. 'We think it's important that they continue to address it with passengers and the media because there continues to be a significant misunderstanding about both the safety and the privacy concerns.'"

The government's domestic propaganda campaign is just beginning. As far as Homeland Security is concerned, we must submit - or else.

Rapping to the death throes of Iran's Islamic Republic

When a regime is too inflexible to cope with the cultural rebellion of the young people under its domination, the system cannot be expected to survive for long.

In a youthful country like Iran, we are seeing signs that the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic is on its last legs. Especially because this youthful cultural rebellion, thanks to the Internet, cannot be contained.

The regime's latest crackdown has focused on repressing Tehran's underground rap culture.

Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia explains that his forces arrested "boys and girls" and seized "Western musical instruments" as well as alcohol, which is officially forbidden under Iran's sharia law.

But the police chief noted the real dangers: the organized efforts of the cultural underground and the rap fans' ability to share music and communicate with one another online, both at home and abroad.

Like other Iranian underground bands and their fans, the rappers work hard to camouflage their presence from authorities. "These boys and girls used deserted and crumbling buildings, and camouflaged the place by hanging dirty curtains in order not to arouse suspicion," Sajedi-nia said.

In addition to citing the standard rock/rap behavior that challenge and defy established morals, the police chief said the artists were spreading a subversive message, in his words, "portraying a bleak picture of society."

Internetted musical underground

This blog has long advocated strong international support for Iran's youthful rock, rap, hip-hop and punk underground.

The rappers are far from isolated - and herein lies the danger for the regime. "These bands recorded underground clips and released unauthorised songs on satellite and cyber networks," said Sajedi-nia, according to Agence France Presse.

Where is the Voice of America's Persian service?

Agence France-Presse notes that despire the official repression, Iran's "underground bands have still managed to get their music heard by using home computers to get it aired over the Internet or on Persian-language satellite channels broadcasting from abroad."

This is an extremely important point: Foreign Internet media companies, radio channels and satellite TV channels are vital to leveraging and magnifying the cultural rebels in Iran. Which brings us back to the question, Where is the Voice of America in all this? What is wrong with VOA's Persian-language service and why is it not providing accurate, timely, and full coverage of the repression of Iran's young people, whose expressions seem far more like a voice of America than VOA itself.

 

What is wrong at VOA? Iranian Revolutionary Guard defends VOA against critic

For those who continue to doubt that a long-overdue personnel shakeup is due at the Voice of America's Persian News Network (PNN), here's a new development from inside Iran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has come out and defended VOA/PNN against criticism from one of the regime's leading opponents, student opposition leader Amir Abbas Fakhravar.

Fakhravar escaped from Iran and has been the leading figure in Washington behind the need to bring new management to PNN and to get rid of personnel who have shown a consistent bias toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as an antipathy toward the secular opposition. He is one of my colleagues as a visiting lecturer at the Institute of World Politics.

Several days ago, Fakhravar gave a presentation at the Heritage Foundation, in which he poured more criticism upon VOA/PNN.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard commented on Fakhravar's Heritage talk in articles posted in Farsi the Revolutionary Guard's "Young Journalists Club" website; and reprinted on Ammariyon, a website belonging to Ansar-e-Hezbollah, the special forces of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guard comment also appeared on the US-based Sar-e-khat website.

The translation into English is awkward and downright weird, but, I am told, is faithful to the Revolutionary Guard's original. The translators use the odd word "devilry" as a literal translation of fetne, a term that Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard figures have used to label the student protesters.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard comments certainly do more to validate the extensive credentials of Fakhravar as a true enemy of the regime (some wags in Washington are spreading nasty untruths about him). They should also energize the actions afoot at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to clean out PNN immediately and thoroughly.

Here's the translated article:

The Voice of Devilry in Voice of America

In a commentary during a recent interview with the Heritage Foundation, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, one of the leaders of "the devilry" in the United States, who fled the country after the defeat of his student devilry, has called for an increase in Voice of America and BBC's interference and swaying power for creating disorder and chaos in Iran's affairs.

Citing the Heritage Foundation website, the Journalists' Club reports that Fakhravar, who has friendly relations with George Bush and American senators and who has met with Vaclav Havel, the architect of colored coup d'etats, several times, has named imposing sanctions on Iran and an increase in VOA/PNN's swaying power in Iran as the two most effective ways to create and lead civil disorder.  In his opinion, VOA is the only media that can, alongside BBC Farsi, become a liaison between the protesters in Iran and the leaders of the devilry inside and outside Iran. 

After VOA's failure to guide the leaders of the devilry during the post presidential elections protests, some experts including a few senators have proposed reforming this media in order to increase its influence and Fakhravar agrees with them.

It is noteworthy to mention that Amir Abbas Fakhravar also known as Siavash was one of the founders of the Independent Student Movement in Iran and his anti-regime activities peaked in 1994 and in 2006 he fled to the United States. During his stay in the U.S., he has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. He has also spoken against the regime in the U.S. Senate and in the course of the post-election devilry, he has made tireless efforts to lead the protesters."

Islamist militants in London make repeated threats against Pope Benedict

Mobs of radical Muslims protested Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to London this week, chanting threatening slogans and holding signs vilifying the Catholic church and Christian faith.

It is important to understand the importance of what is being said. Even though the protests were not physically violent, they are laden with language that, under sharia law, is to be construed as incitement to murder.

The protests took place as about six Muslim radicals from Algeria were arrested for apparently threatening the pope. The subjects were later released.

In this YouTube video, shot September 18, 2010, the protesters can be seen threatening the leader of the world's Catholics with their "Pope Benedict, you will pay" chant, and holding signs calling for the seat of the Catholic church to be controlled by shariah law. (See the Center for Security Policy's new report, Shariah - Threat to America, also released this week.)

The words are not overheated rhetoric - they are calls for the pope to be murdered, and a declaration of war on Christians and others.

At 2 minutes and 26 seconds into the video, a militant named Anjem Choudary changes the chant to "Pope Benedict, you will pay/Justice is on its way."

"Justice," under shariah law, requires Christians either to convert to Islam, be killed, or submit to Islamic rule as dhimmis.

Amid cries of "Allahu akhbar," another militant, Abu Rayah, implies that Pope Benedict is a military enemy of Muslims, as a leader of the "crusades." He exhorts listeners to recall that "this war against Islam and Muslims is military and ideological as well."

Abu Rayah denounces Pope Benedict for criticizing Islam, and expresses hope that, "inshallah," the pope will meet "the lions of Islam."

Islam, he says, will "dominate over all other ways," including democracy, secularism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and all other religions. Buddhists and Hindus, according to sharia law, must either convert to Islam or be killed.

The militant adds that anyone who insults the prophet Muhammad "deserves capital punishment." (4:44-4:50)

"Benedict, watch your back!" chants another militant, "Sallahudin [the Muslim warrior who fought the Christian crusaders] is coming back." (5:18-5:24)

Other cries, as well as signs, denounce Catholicism and Christianity as a "satanic" and "evil ideology."

The protesters then chant, "Muslims, rise up!" followed by a call for "martyrdom or victory" and chants of "Benedict, terrorist."

As the pope passed by in his armored vehicle, the Muslim protesters screamed insults in Arabic at him and chanted, "Burn, burn, burn in Hell" (8:36)

The protesters were exclusively male, of various ethnic backgrounds, and obviously trained and organized. Even though they were not criminally violent, the code language they were using as understood by adherents to shariah law show that they should be considered a terrorist threat.

For more, see RevolutionMuslim.com.

Great blog on public diplomacy in Afghanistan

Just discovered through Facebook a magnificent blog called Public Diplomacy in Afghanistan. It's run by Mahtab Farid, a US State Department public diplomacy officer in Kabul.

Mahtab is a hugely capable diplomat and communicator, and it's really gratifying to see how the State Department public diplomacy shop is allowing its officers to make more use of unofficial online media.

"Public Diplomacy in Afghanistan" contains compelling, upbeat human interest stories about individual Afghans as well as about US and Coalition troops and their relations with Afghans.

The blogger shows a particular interest in Afghan children, both in their own development as people and in their interactions with the Coalition.

I find the blog refreshing because it contains the personal observations of a US diplomat, free of the sterile processing of traditional State Department messages. It's also pleasant to read something different from the hard-hitting, often miserable stuff that I normally cover on PoliticalWarfare.org. I've bookmarked this blog and put it on my Google homepage. It's a great reminder of the many positive aspects of the Good Fight in Afghanistan.

Exclusive: New 'Strategic Influence' book is finally available

After years of anticipation, my anthology, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare is now available to the public.

The book won't be available in bookstores or on Amazon until October, but you can get it online through this blog.

Strategic Influence is the work of 13 scholars and practitioners in the fields of public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare. The book surveys the subjects from the American Revolution, through the Cold War, to present-day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We strove to make the book the best single volume on the subject. It's a combination of scholarly, personal narratives and the policy essays from some of the best minds in the business - some recognizable, some emerging. Here's the table of contents:

• The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers. J. Michael Waller, Institute of World Politics;
• What 'Strategic' Public Diplomacy Is. Carnes Lord, Naval War College;
• Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Carnes Lord;
• Cultural Diplomacy, Political Influence and Integrated Strategy. John Lenczowski, Institute of World Politics;
• Mediators of the Message: The Role of Religion and Civil Society in Public Diplomacy. Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation;
• Conducting a War of Ideas with Public Diplomacy. Robert Reilly, former director, Voice of America;
• Counterpropaganda: We Can't Win Without It. Herbert Romerstein, former director, Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, U.S. Information Agency;
• Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda. Andrew Garfield, Glevum Associates;
• The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful Template for Strategic Influence. Herbert Romerstein;
• Political Warfare: Means for Achieving Political Ends. Angelo Codevilla, Boston University;
• Political War vs Political Terror: Case Study of an American Success Story. John J. Tierney, Institute of World Politics;
• The Importance of Words. J. Michael Waller;
• Hearts and Minds Online: Internetting the Messages in the Infosphere. Hampton Stephens, World Politics Review;
• Toward a Theory of Low-Intensity Propaganda. Stephen C. Baker, Institute of World Politics;
• Red-Teaming Strategic Communications and Political Warfare. David Spencer, National Defense University;
• A Comprehensive Approach to Information Operations. Andrew Garfield;
• Synchronizing Rhetoric, Policy and Action. Juliana Geran Pilon, Institute of World Politics;
• An Immediate-Term Wartime Message Strategy. J. Michael Waller;
• Getting Serious About Strategic Influence. J. Michael Waller.

Strategic Influence is published by the Institute of World Politics Press. The original edition was published for restricted circulation in 2007. This edition was revised in 2009 but was not available until today, and will not be generally available to the public until October 2010.

The book is only available at present - as a paperback and as an e-book - by clicking here.

Videos about Iran's rock underground

From Persian Cats to Yellow Dogs from Jehangir Irani on Vimeo.

Yesterday's post led me to look around for some good videos about Iran's rock underground, and some research about the Yellow Dogs led to these excellent segments. The first one, above, is a look at Iran's young people and how they express themselves through music - with help from supportive parents and corrupt police - focusing on the Yellow Dogs band.

Below is a CNN report on rock in the Middle East. About 1:42 into the video is the section on the Iranian rock underground, with an inside look at Yellow Dogs and the rock scene in Tehran. Following the CNN report is a music video of the Iranian band Hypernova, that just released its debut album, in English, this spring. Hypernova began as an underground band in Iran but is now based in the West and has a more polished look and sound.

The musical threat to Iran's regime

How can we take down Iran's soon-to-be-nuclear-armed regime without firing a shot? There are a number of ways, but the Islamic Republic has been openly betraying its greatest fears: music.

Not just the rock, punk, rap and hip-hop cultures that the regime is trying to repress, but all music. 

Eric Felten writes about it in the Wall Street Journal. In an August 18 piece titled "Why Dictators Hate to See Us Moved by Music," he begins with a recent quote from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared that music is "not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

The problem with music is that "it affects people profoundly and can't be controlled," Felten observes.

And lack of control is what the regime fears - a legitimate response from the hated tyrants who rule a country in which 70 percent of the population is under age 35.

Felten continues in his column with recent psychological studies about the effects of music on individuals' moods, emotions, and overall states of mind. 

Some of Iran's best rock groups are making it to the West and performing abroad, even in the United States. The group Yellow Dogs (pictured) is one of them.

There's an amazing popular cultural revolution going on in Iran today - a youthful, widespread, pro-western rebellion against the sharia regime of the Islamic Republic. Time for the rest of the world to get on board.

(Hat tip to SD)

There's still time to sign up for my political warfare course

Here's good news for those of you in the Washington, DC area who want to spend edifying Thursday evenings: There's still time to sign up for my political warfare course at the Institute of World Politics.

The four-credit course, Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future, is an intensive 14-week survey of the history, philosophies and techniques of political warfare from antiquity to the present. We study the classics - ancient Greece, Rome, India and China and the Hebrews, among others - and move on through the Crusades and then to Machiavelli, the American Revolution (particularly Samuel Adams), 19th century Europe, World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, Antonio Gramsci, Saul Alinsky, and present-day Islamic political warfare.

Like most of IWP's graduate-level curriculum, the Naval War College accepts this unique course as an elective. I'm teaching the course at IWP in downtown Washington, DC, on Thursday nights from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. Class starts on September 2.

Apply online at www.iwp.edu (click on upper left corner). For a list of required readings and other course descriptions, see the unofficial course website at www.politicalwarfare.us.

My Foreign Propaganda, Perceptions and Policy course, offered on Monday evenings, is full this semester. In Spring 2011, I will be teaching Public Diplomacy and Political Warfare.

Special ops forces should snatch WikiLeaks founder, counterspy says

(My article reposted from BigPeace.com)  The United States government should issue an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Australian who published tens of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on his website, and try him on espionage charges. And if Assange doesn’t face the charges voluntarily, the U.S. should send in a commando team to snatch him anywhere in the world.

That’s what a senior former U.S. counterspy is urging.

In an exclusive interview with BigPeace.com, former Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive Kenneth E. deGraffenreid says that Assange should be arrested and charged as a spy for revealing more than 90,000 secret and top-secret U.S. military documents on his website.

But Assange has made it a point not to enter the United States since he posted a segment of a secret U.S. military combat video last May, in which U.S. troops are purported to be seen firing at civilians in Iraq. The military has detained an Army intelligence analyst, PFC Bradley Manning, whom it believes illegally copied the video and passed it to Assange.

The publishing of tens of thousands of classified military documents so that the enemy can see them is a far more serious crime than the video case currently under investigation, says deGraffenreid. “This is espionage by internet. If we can get Assange on U.S. soil, he should be arrested,” he tells BigPeace. Earlier, deGraffenreid told BigPeace that Manning should be tried on espionage charges instead of the lesser crime of mishandling classified information. Assange says he has another 15,000 documents yet to post online.

And if Assange won’t come to the U.S. voluntarily? “We have a Special Operations Command that can capture Assange anywhere in the world, and bring him to the U.S. where he can be arrested and charged with espionage,” deGraffenreid says.

That’s what the U.S. did to apprehend terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [pictured], the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. “Receiving U.S. classified documents, as part of a conspiracy to steal classified information and put them in the public domain where our enemies can see them, is a crime,” according to deGraffenreid, now a professor of intelligence studies at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security in Washington, DC.

Assange and his source or sources acted conspiratorially, deGraffenreid notes, citing a report in the Guardian, a leading British newspaper. “Assange was doing intelligence tradecraft. He appeared in different cities, using secret ‘paroles’ or recognition signals so that he and his sources can identify one another, and went to a variety of news outlets to make sure that, once started, the dissemination of the classified information could not be stopped. The conspirators went to different editions so that if publication got stopped in one place it wouldn’t be stopped in another,” says deGraffenreid.

“Illegally giving or receiving 100,000 secret files about our counterterrorism efforts, and making them available to the terrorists to read, is clearly aiding and abetting terrorism,” the former counterspy asserts.

Under the post-9/11 counterterrorism statutes, it would be easy to prosecute Assange as well as his source or sources within the U.S. military. “Our counterterrorism laws are breathtaking in their worldwide applicability,” according to deGraffenreid, who served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy after the 9/11 attacks. “The United States has asserted that it has the right to go to other countries, capture suspects, bring them back here and arraign them.”

Spy hunter says WikiLeaks should be treated as espionage case

(My article reposted from BigPeace.com)  One of the nation’s highest-ranking former spy hunters says that the individuals responsible for the theft and publication of tens of thousands of secret military documents should be prosecuted under federal espionage laws.

The Obama Administration is pursuing the disclosure of more than 90,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks.org as merely the mishandling of classified information – a far less serious offense than espionage.

Administration supporters say that the leak was not espionage. But one of the country’s most successful counterintelligence officials argues the contrary – and says that legal precedent proves it.

“We have an excellent precedent in the case of Samuel Loring Morison,” the naval intelligence analyst who compromised top secret U.S. imagery intelligence capabilities, says Kenneth E. deGraffenreid [pictured], who as Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive from 2004-2006 was the nation’s second-ranking counterintelligence official. Morison served a two-year sentence on conviction of espionage for having compromised U.S. secrets – not to a foreign intelligence service, but to a British publishing company.

“The Morison case was an espionage case. Morison was charged with espionage because he provided classified information to a foreign power,” deGraffenreid tells BigPeace.com. It doesn’t matter that the foreign power was a private media company housed in one of the most solid and reliable American allies: “Morison stole U.S. secrets and provided them to Jane’s, the British military publisher. It was like taking U.S. defense secrets and laying them out in the street in front of the Russians.”

Morison was convicted in1985 of taking only three classified images and providing them to Jane’s, where he was a contributor to the annual reference work, Jane’s Fighting Ships, about the world’s navies. Manning, and perhaps others, provided at least 90,000, and perhaps more than 100,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Morison said he had a policy motive, to leak the satellite imagery of the construction of a Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in order to convince the public to increase defense spending. By contrast, Manning, as an active-duty soldier, is reported to have stolen the classified files and provided them to WikiLeaks in order to undermine the war effort.

“If you’re trying to hurt the United States, that’s part of the crime. That’s why it’s espionage,” deGraffenreid says. “If you put this stuff out on the Internet or in the New York Times or the Guardian, any sentient being knows that the bad guys – the Taliban, the Russians, the Chinese or al Qaeda – can read the secrets. It doesn’t matter if he says he didn’t mean for them to get the information because he was just trying to influence U.S. policy.”

DeGraffenreid was White House Senior Director of Intelligence Programs and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan on the National Security Council from 1981 to 1987, and an architect of the successful decapitation of the Soviet KGB stations in the U.S. after the “Year of the Spy” in 1985. During the administration of President George W. Bush, he served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and later as Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive.

WikiLeaks is an international website operated by Julian Assange, an Australian citizen. As such, those who provided the documents to WikiLeaks should be charged under the Morison precedent, according to deGraffenreid. Under that precedent, it does not matter that Assange does not work for the Australian government or that Australia is a staunch U.S. ally.

The prime suspect in the leak is reported to be Private First Class Bradley Manning, age 22, of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. Manning is an intelligence analyst with a top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) security clearance who served in Iraq, but used military computers to download classified information concerning Iraq and Afghanistan. He is presently under military detention at an Army facility in Kuwait, where he is suspected of leaking military combat video to WikiLeaks.

Army investigators are treating Manning as their main suspect in the much larger document leak, but have not officially named him or made the formal allegation. An investigation is underway. Manning’s military-appointed lawyer routinely refers media inquiries to Army public affairs in Baghdad, which is not commenting on the documents case.

News organizations howled at the Reagan Administration’s prosecution of Morison and decried the conviction as a blow to free speech, but the conviction was not overturned and now serves as a precedent to prosecute the WikiLeaks case, deGraffenreid says.

According to deGraffenreid, the national secrets that Manning and perhaps others provided to WikiLeaks is almost beyond comprehension. “If you’re providing 100,000 files, at some point quantity has its own quality about it. One is compromising so much material that it’s devastating. This is what happened when John Walker provided the crypto key for 20 years to the Soviets. He simply allowed the KGB to read so much that it’s not even possible to do a serious damage assessment.”

“Morison was probably more confused than malicious, in terms of motivation,” says deGraffenreid. The spy’s defense was that he was trying to impress editors at Jane’s, where he was angling for a job after retiring from the U.S. government.

“Morison was doing the wrong thing, and it was appropriate that he was tried and punished. But Manning is actually mal-motivated. In terms of scope, what he is alleged to have done is far worse than the Morison case, because he was trying to undermine the war effort. If we are at war and a soldier is helping the other side, if that isn’t espionage, then what is it?”

Adding to the confusion of the case is the fact that espionage laws – and the public’s perception of spying – haven’t kept up with technology. “If he had stolen a single document and gave it to someone with the intention that it spread to our enemies or potential enemies, it would be seen as espionage. But because it’s on the internet, somehow there’s a failure to identify this for what it is,” says deGraffenreid, who is now a professor of intelligence studies at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC.

Like our counterterrorism laws were in 2001, U.S. espionage laws are obsolete and need to be modernized, deGraffenreid says. “Most U.S. espionage laws were written during World War I, and they sound archaic if you read the legislative history. They still sound a little archaic. Not a few people in government fear that if they use the espionage laws on the books, some left-wing judge would strike them down. When I was in government we had to back off putting the blocks to people because Justice Department lawyers didn’t believe in what they were doing or that the espionage laws could be sustained.”

Morison was convicted in 1985 under a World War I-era statute. With the support of mainstream media organizations, he appealed his conviction. In 1988, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case later that year, thus upholding the statute and the use of the espionage statute in unauthorized disclosure. President Bill Clinton pardoned Morison on January 20, 2001.

“One has to be childishly naïve to think when you put this out for the whole world to read, that terrorists and hostile foreign intelligence services would not read it, and that that doesn’t matter. The fact is that the bad guys got these U.S. military secrets. It’s the same as if the perpetrator went into a safe and took secret and top secret documents and physically handed them to a foreign national. Had Manning done that, it would have looked exactly like the espionage cases for which others are serving life sentences. But the fact that he allegedly transmitted electronic files, it looks different.”

There is also the idea that the theft and publication of classified documents is somehow legitimate under whistleblowing principles to expose alleged wrongdoing. “Most of the people who commit espionage use weak defenses, like whistleblowing. Those defenses don’t work. If some of the documents contain top-secret codeword material applicable under what is called the comment statute – United States Code 18, Section 798 – it doesn’t matter who you give the information to. If you give it to someone who’s unauthorized, it’s an espionage crime.”

The federal investigation of the WikiLeaks case is being handled by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, not by military counterintelligence or the FBI, which handles civilian spy cases. “You need the Criminal Investigation people, but it’s far easier in the bureaucratic culture to go after someone for mishandling classified information than espionage,” he adds, reflecting on his tenure as the nation’s Deputy Counterintelligence Executive. “The moment prosecutors start an espionage case, a lot of the military lawyers and generals turn to jelly. It’s very hard to push these things in such bureaucratic cultures.”

DeGraffenreid says there is a big difference between mishandling classified information, which is what the U.S. appears to be pursuing against Manning, and espionage. “The punishments are much lighter for mishandling classified information. If you and I were obligated to protect information and we lost it, or were negligent and allowed the janitor to pick it up, that’s ‘mishandling’ classified information. Espionage is different: you are illegally distributing the classified information on purpose to aid a foreign entity or government.”

Judges and juries tend to be harsher on spies than federal prosecutors are, says deGraffenreid. “Most juries convict on espionage and most judges throw the book at spies who get convicted. Often the judges hand down stronger sentences than the government asks for.”

Under Iran's Mullahs (WARNING - GRAPHIC, DISTURBING CONTENT)

Life in Iran is difficult for most people, but it can hardly get worse for unlucky boys studying sharia law at the Hozeh Elmieh seminary in the holy city of Qom.

A courageous person with a conscience at the seminary shot a 60-second video clandestinely from behind a wooden screen to document what appears to be a repeat crime.

More than two weeks ago, PoliticalWarfare.org received a copy of this video from the Iranian internal opposition, and in making a still for this page, we covered a strategic section of the image as shown. I hesitated since that time to post news of the video, but decided that it would be an injustice to remain silent about it.

Several Iranian dissident sites posted the video, but the hosting companies ordered the video removed because of its upsetting content. The unobscured video appeared June 7 on HolyCrime.com, an Iranian human rights website that documents the crimes of the mullahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran. As of today, that video was still online.

We know that the video was shot at the Hozeh Elmieh Seminary in Qom, Iran. We do not know the name of the mullah, but he is identifiable as a Shi'ite clergyman by his white turban, known as an amameh. The mullah is not wearing the amameh on his head. He is using it as kneepads while raping the boy. Judging by the boy's demeanor, this incident does not appear to be the first time he was sexually assaulted.

The mullah is also wearing a long robe called a ghaba, which Shi'ite clergy wear to symbolize the righteousness of the prophet Mohammed.

The person who shot the video, apparently via cell phone, held the lens at a 90 degree angle through the slats in the screen.

We are not implying that the crime is in any way typical of mullahs, but we do believe it is evidence of the impunity with which corrupt mullahs can operate in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sodomy, homosexual sex, rape, and child molestation are capital crimes. The punishment for such crimes is death by hanging.

The Islamic Republic of Iran today has special Islamic courts, called Dadgahe Vizheh Rohaniyat, to try mullahs who are accused of crimes. We know of no instance where a mullah has been accused of a crime of sodomy, homosexual sex, rape or child molestation, or where a mullah was executed under a verdict from the court.

PoliticalWarfare.org is posting a link to the HolyCrime.com video as proof of crimes committed under the Islamic Republic of Iran's unchecked powers, to demonstrate the impunity of corrupt mullahs, and to help seek justice for the boy and other victims of the regime. We're also posting it because we have urged the US military to publicize similar crimes evidenced among the videos captured from insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. We noted previously how a mullah in Pakistan publicized videos of the Haqqani Network faction of the Taliban raping women and girls, and how the mullah issued a fatwa against the Haqqani faction for the crimes. We also noted the article in the current issue of The Atlantic which urged similar revelations against our holier-than-thou adversaries.

The video appears rotated clockwise at a 90 degree angle, due to the way in which the camera was held.

WARNING: THE VIDEO IS A WITNESS TO A HORRIBLE CRIME AGAINST A CHILD. THE UNCENSORED IMAGE IS EXTREMELY DISTURBING.

We could post a direct link to the video or embed it in this page, but don't want to sensationalize the issue or make the video too easy to see. For those who feel they should view it, here's how to find it: Go to HolyCrime.com, and click on the gray "I Agree" box under the warning on the homepage. Then, in the left-hand navigation column, click on the gray box called "Crime Documents." Scroll down to the bottom of the "Crime Documents" menu and click on the item titled "Crime of Ayatollah!" A black video box will appear in the center of the page. Click on that box and the 60-second video will play. The yellow graphic figure at the beginning of the video is the logo of the hosting company on whose server the video resides; it has no political or religious significance.
 

The Case for Calling Them Nitwits (The Atlantic)

Hats off to Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, who write in The Atlantic about what nincompoops many of our terrorist enemies are. In a piece titled, "The Case for Calling them Nitwits," Byman and Fair note, "They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?"

Some highlights from the article:

• "Even in the aftermath of the botched Times Square bombing earlier this spring, the perception persists that our enemies are savvy and sophisticated killers."
• "But this view of the jihadist community is wildly off the mark. To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta . . . but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable. Acknowledging this fact could help us tailor our counterterrorism priorities—and publicizing it could help us erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding."
• "Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks."
• "If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea—sometimes rather graphically."
• "One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow."
• "Tawdry though this predilection for porn may be, it is not necessarily trivial. There is, after all, potential propaganda value in this kind of jihadist behavior. Current US public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers."

It's great to see this view hitting the mainstream. Arguing that we should be tearing apart the terrorist enemy by mocking him, ridiculing him and pointing out his hypocrisies, has been a bit lonely. Or as Kim Jong-il says in  Team America, "so ronery and sadry arone."

(OK, someone has dared me to refer to the infamous infrared US military gun camera of an Iraqi local - civilian or insurgent is unclear - having inappropriate relations with a farm animal. Our military people have captured a lot of video of insurgents and terrorists engaging in such behavior. I won't embed the actual video on this site, though I did post a still on the top left. For the morbidly curious - and you know who you are - click here for a tasteless, crass, narrated version of the video. A less tasteless, more humorous version, set to music, is available here, to Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch," popularly known by the song's catchy refrain, "Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.")

Images, top to bottom: (1) innocent donkey being victimized by Iraqi targets, as seen through US military infrared gun camera; (2) Christmas underwear bomber Abdulmutallab, with his malfunctioning explosive underwear; (3) Taliban with mismatched shoes, being ridiculed on Pakistani military website; (4) Islamic radical who mistakenly sets himself afire after torching the American flag; (5) Kim Jong-il, as seen in Team America; (6) the Saudi butt bomber who failed to kill Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief but blew himself up with a pound of plastic explosives and a cell phone detonator jammed up his bottom.

How to stop terrorist TV from trumping military information ops

While the Israel Defense Forces released its video quickly about the armed jihadist mobs who attacked Israeli commandos aboard the blockade-breaking Hamas ship, its speed was good in bureaucratic terms but still too slow for the infosphere.

Allied militaries still must act faster, with the speed of commercial news organizations, and, like journalists, in anticipation of dramatic events as tense situations develop.

We can learn a good lesson from this tragedy. First, the flotilla was designed as a Hamas propaganda operation specifically to provoke an Israeli response and generate media coverage to turn the Hamas operatives and activists into martyrs. Al Jazeera assigned a three-person crew to cover the story since the vessels loaded up in Turkey. 

The Israelis monitor Al Jazeera of course, but doesn't seem to have a strategy for how to deal with it and other pro-terrorist propaganda outlets. One of my colleagues in an information operations discussion group suggests, "The office that monitors Al Jazeera for the IDF should have alerted the EW [electronic warfare] folks on the scene to jam" the pro-Hamas TV transmissions before Israeli commandos boarded the Turkish ship. This did not occur, and the last live dispatch shows a bloody stretcher, talk about a white flag not being honored, etc., and became 'must use' footage to any news channel looking for b-roll in order to tell the story."

News outlets around the world used the dramatic footage, including American television. The illustration at top is from an Agence France Presse report circulated globally via Yahoo, falsely reporting that "scores" of people were killed as a result of the Israeli action. (The actual number was 9, after the militants attacked the Israelis.)

The IDF video (shown in the post below), being black-and-white infrared with no sound, was useful in showing how the Israelis boarded without full combat gear and did not use force until attacked by pipe-wielding assailants, was not released for several hours.

In bureaucratic terms, several hours is hypersonic speed. However, in media terms, several hours allows the enemy to gain the propaganda initiative.

This experience shows how the IDF, like the US military, must configure itself with an information operations capability every bit as anticipatory, dramatic, and immediate as any news organization. No need to fabricate or twist facts - just present the military's side of the story straight, but immediately.

Israelis make quick use of imagery to explain Hamas flotilla incident

The Israel Defense Forces made quick use of imagery to state their case concerning their enforcement of a blockade against Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the incident involving flotilla of civilian vessels reinforcing the terrorist group. In boarding one of the ships by helicopter, IDF troops can be seen using amazing restraint as they are set upon by mobs wielding clubs and metal bars. Obviously the Israelis did not board the ship shooting, or with intent to wound or kill. They seemed unprepared for resistance. This clearly was not a counterterrorism operation. One of the IDF soldiers is shown being thrown overboard.

The video of the predawn operation appears to be shot from an infrared camera. The vessel, the Mavi Marmara, is Turkish-flagged.

IDF also released overhead video of riots on land, showing that the provocations came from the Hamas side and not Israeli forces.

These videos and other images, including still photography and well-prepared legal analysis and eyewitness reports released by the foreign ministry, show how the Israelis have become much more nimble in the information sphere and can get its side of the story to the public almost in real-time.

Now, if the US military could only do the same with such a fast turnaround, we'd be much better off. 

Having said that, the raid on the flotilla has backfired immensely against Israel, and appears to have handed a propaganda victory to Hamas and its international supporters. The lesson to be learned here is that while Israel has become effective tactically with the distribution of military information and images, Israel still suffers profoundly from an inability to use information and images strategically.