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.

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.

COMOPS Journal picks up on ridicule as counterterrorism weapon

COMOPS Journal has picked up on the theme of using ridicule as a weapon against our terrorist and extremist enemies. The idea has been slow to take root, but it is gradually doing so in certain parts of the US government.

Kristin Fleischer writes in her COMOPS Journal article, titled "Ridicule as Strategic Communication":

"Although the suggestion that ridicule and satire are legitimate tools of strategic communication might receive some – dare I say it – ridicule, Waller’s argument is a good one. Ridicule and satire have a long history in warfare, and they have been deployed both offensively and defensively. In the U.S., ridicule was used in the Revolutionary War, both to mock the British troops and to raise the morale of the American fighters. In WWII, domestic use of ridicule targeted Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito."

Fleischer quotes from my 2007 monograph, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and from this PoliticalWarfare.org blog, and also highlights the creative work of blogger Jarret Brachman who coined the term "jihobbyists" as a way of ridiculing armchair terrorists who do naughty things online.

COMOPS Journal is an online publication of the Consortium for Strategic Communication, an initiative of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

100 million people laugh at Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Circulating on YouTube since 2007, the 10-minute ventriloquist routine of Jeff Dunham and his "Achmed the Dead Terrorist" has now surpassed 100,000,000 views. The skit cleverly mocks Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers, and pokes fun at others as well. Dunham lampoons the enemy in a light-hearted, naughty way - a good model for taking down the enemy by laughing at him and his cause. Dunham's skit also adds a fun twist on the supposed terrorist reward of 72 virgins in the afterlife. Take a look. Also, visit Dunham's website at www.jeffdunham.com for more Achmed the Dead Terrorist videos and other funny stuff.

The Taliban's Abu Ghraib

WARNING - GRAPHIC, DISTURBING VIDEO

There's no better way to take down an ultra-pious enemy than to prove that its leaders and members are depraved sociopaths. Here is one of the greatest vulnerabilities of the Islamist extremists who preach rigid morality but often act quite differently. Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exploiting that vulnerability to help the Taliban tear itself apart.

The target: The notorious Haqqani Network, based in northern Waziristan, Pakistan, and active in eastern Afghanistan.

The US has yet to exploit its full capabilities in this area, with terrabytes of damning captured videos under lock and key.

Fortunately, conservative clergy in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been so reticent. Key Taliban leaders - Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Siraj Haqqani - had their own personal pornography ring. The Haqqani Network offered free "medical care" to rural Afghan women and girls, and then Haqqani's people raped them on video. Other Taliban figures, including a physician, were involved.

Once discovered, the Haqqanis tried to cover up their crimes. They had all the women and girls murdered, as well as their physician. However, they couldn't destroy all the video evidence, which enemies recovered. A Pakistani mullah produced a DVD, currently being distributed in Afghan and Pakistani bazaars, to discredit the Haqqanis. Click here for a downloadable link to the video. Even though the worst scenes have been blacked out for modesty reasons, the videos are graphic and disturbing. All the women and girls pictured in the video are now dead. An English translation of the transcript is available here.

The video is of low production quality by Western standards, but is entirely appropriate for local standards. Making media products to discredit the enemy in rural South Asia is not an expensive undertaking.

Here's the payoff from a political warfare point of view: Under local interpretations of Islamic law, the Haqqanis and all others involved must be killed as punishment, with worse torments to follow in the afterlife.

The mullah called for a jihad against the "House of Haqqani" - the leadership of the Haqqani clan.

This is exactly the type of product the US and its allies should be producing as part of their information operations and psychological operations in the AfPak theater and around the world. The Taliban is mainly Pashtun, and many rural Pashtuns have peculiar depravities that, if more widely known, could turn many devout Muslims against the movement and compel conservative mullahs to issue edicts ordering the imposition of traditional Islamic punishments.

A properly run psychological warfare campaign along these lines would also stigmatize Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda due to their decade-old "adoption" by the Taliban - with the terrorists' new fascination with butt bombs as a case in point. The campaign should be designed to morally compel some of those sheltering the terrorists to betray them or hand them over to the mullahs for old-fashioned sharia justice.

Airport 'security' procedures we all know and love

Reason.tv has put out this parody advertisement about how the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) keeps us safe against terrorists in our airports. I have a lot of appreciation for the TSA's tough job and for the care with which TSA officials operate, but this ad gets to the heart of the problem.

Fault rests not with the individual officers who are doing what they were hired, instructed and trained to do, but with the TSA and Homeland Security leadership. In our politically correct world, it's preferable for our government to hassle every citizen, just as long agents don't single out those likeliest to be terrorists. Terrorist front groups whine about discrimination, and TSA leaders cave in to their demands and cringe at the thought of lawsuits and bad press. Government leaders pretend that ideology and behavior is not the problem. Like sheep, the innocent citizens meekly comply.

A show of hands, please: Who wants to prosecute the Navy SEALs on Pearl Harbor Day?

It's Pearl Harbor Day. How is the Navy marking the anniversary of the sneak attack? By putting three of its most elite sailors on trial on spurious, absurd charges.

An al Qaeda training manual advises terrorists to allege that their captors have tortured them so they can use their detention for political warfare purposes.

Osama bin Laden, no doubt, views overzealous US military prosecutors and other legal quacks as assets in their terrorist arsenal.

Apparently the legal weenies in the military haven't caught on to this terrorist propaganda technique.

Today, Monday, December 7, military prosecutors had two Navy SEALs arraigned before a military court for allegedly committing the heinous crime of punching a notorious terrorist in the belly and giving him a fat lip, and for supposedly misleading military investigators who took the terrorist's claim seriously. A third will be processed later.

Military prosecutors are using the terrorist's allegations to go after the SEALs and throw them in the brig.

The terrorist, Ahmed Hashim Abed, masterminded the notorious 2004 ambush, murder and mutilation of four Blackwater security men in Fallujah, Iraq. The terrorists video-recorded the killings and then hanged the broken bodies of two of the men from a bridge (pictured).

Here are the three SEALs and the allegations the terrorist and prosecutors made against them:

• Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe of Perrysburg, Ohio, was arraigned today on charges of assaulting the terrorist. After capturing the terrorist in September, McCabe allegedly punched him in the stomach and in the lip - or so the terrorist alleges. McCabe is also charged with "dereliction of duty." He deferred entering a plea.
• Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas of Blue Island, Illinois, was arraigned today for alleged dereliction of duty, lying to investigators, and impeding an investigation. He pled not guilty.
• Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Virginia, is slated to face a separate arraignment before a court martial, on charges of dereliction of duty and lying.

McCabe's trial is January 19, 2010. Huertas is to go on trial on January 11.

People are pushing back at the military's legal insanity. Over the weekend, thousands turned out in frigid New York weather to protest the civilian trial of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with many voicing support for the three SEALs.

Today, on Pearl Harbor Day, former Navy SEAL Scott Taylor, who is running for Congress, led a protest outside the Naval base at Norfolk, in support of his persecuted brothers. Taylor echoes my own observations from special operations professionals who are disgusted with how political correctness has crippled the military. "I know that within our community we are really upset with the political correctness on the operational level that is infused there," Taylor tells a local TV station. (Click here for Taylor's Facebook page.)

As of this posting, more than 83,824 people have joined the Facebook group, "Protest the Prosecution of 3 Navy SEALs." I joined it early on, and urge my readers to do the same. Be sure to read the great comments. An electronic petition on behalf of the SEALs has generated more than 13,000 signatures in five days.

A similar movement has started in support of US intelligence officers and others whom bureaucrats and twisted prosecutors have harassed and put on trial. That group, StandWithIntelligence.com, was founded by a Marine who himself was unjustly prosecuted for killing two Iraqi insurgents. The Marine was found innocent.

Military prosecutors - anonymously, of course - say that there's a lot more to the punch-the-terrorist-in-the-lip-and-belly story, but I don't believe them. Interestingly, the Navy's news website is silent about the issue this Pearl Harbor Day. Indeed, the name of Matthew McCabe appears nowhere on Navy.mil.

This prosecution is insanity. As the Washington Times recently editorialized, if the SEALs had simply killed Abed - as they probably should have - they never would have been put on trial.

It's time for major pushback from the public against out-of-control military bureaucrats, prosecutors, and trial lawyers. It's time to expose THEM and hold THEM accountable for being such unwittingly reliable assets of the enemy that the enemy writes a training manual on how to exploit them.

US military enabled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's propaganda photos. Why?

Some in the US military still don't seem to care about how terrorist propaganda can be used to incite attacks on our country and our allies.

They have a policy of allowing the detainees at Guantanamo to pose for pictures in "holy warrior" costumes and pass them on to terrorist websites to inspire new attacks.

A Navy spokesman at Gitmo says he has no problem with that.

I'm sure a lot of us would like to know the names and ranks of the uniformed knuckleheads who helped terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed polish his propaganda image in time for his civilian trial.

Since 2003, the world's only real look at the 9/11 mass murder mastermind was the imagery that US soldiers took when they captured him. No real charismatic presence there - just a chunky, disheveled, filthy-looking slob.

Others have said that the US military planned out the ugly imagery of KSM in order to tear apart his mystique. I know we have plenty of PSYOP and information ops people who could do that if they were allowed to, but I also know that it wasn't planned. It was simply a bureaucratic process of public affairs officers releasing photos of the terrorist after his capture.

And it could have stayed that way. But some bureaucrats in the US military allowed KSM - in the supposedly tough confines of Guantanamo - to grow a long militant beard, have access to a traditional "holy warrior" costume, and pose for photos last July. The pictures were openly out of Guantanamo to the terrorist's family members and posted on pro-al Qaeda websites. The pictures are supposed to appeal to Islamist militants and show KSM as some sort of great sheik and holy warrior.

KSM's new, made-in-Guantanamo image shows him swathed in pure white, spotlessly clean, wearing a red-and-white headdress. In one pose he stares, doe-eyed, directly into the camera, a slight smirk on his face. In another he's kneeling, with prayer beads in his right hand.

The pictures restore the terrorist's propaganda image among his followers and potential followers. Which is why the pro-al Qaeda websites posted them. But it doesn't explain why the US military allows them to be created under the noses of the guards and probably at US taxpayer expense.

Clearly not everybody in the US military is on board with this "war of ideas" thing, and that some are so narrow-minded and criminally bureaucratic that they're fine with allowing one of the world's worst terrorists to un-do the ugly image of him bestowed on him by our warfighters.

MSNBC and others reported in September that terrorists were using the made-in-Gitmo photos to "inspire" attacks on the United States.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says that, based on a US military policy from last February, the Guantanamo detainees are allowed to have pictures taken of themselves and may choose which poses they would like to send their families. The ICRC says that there are no restrictions on distribution of the photos; the policy thus allows the detainees to pass the photos to terrorist supporters for propaganda purposes.

MSNBC cited a US officer at Guantanamo as saying that the US military doesn't care whether or not the policy aids enemy propaganda:

"Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the prison where the US holds about 225 men, said the military is not concerned with distribution of the images and takes no position on how families of prisoners handle their photos," according to MSNBC.

No wonder we're not winning the war!

Our troops live and die by how the terrorists are perceived. We don't need bureaucrats within the military to do the enemy's work.