Zarqawi's profile was a deliberate, multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign aimed at the American people to foment the lie....
Father's Day: The Dangerous Notions of Michael Berg
Part I: A Serviceable Villian and an Idealist Son
By Chris Floyd
06/15/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- After last week's killing of terrorist chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (or someone just like him) in Iraq, remembrances of his most celebrated alleged victim surfaced briefly in the press: Nicholas Berg, the American businessman whose horrific beheading was publicized in a video fortuitously released less than two weeks after the first revelations of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib.
It was this video – which featured five surprisingly chubby terrorists, masked, one wearing a gold ring forbidden by extremist Islam, another reading in halting Arabic – that made Zarqawi the Pentagon poster boy for the insurgency. Pentagon documents unearthed by the Washington Post this April revealed that the elevation of Zarqawi's profile was a deliberate, multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign aimed at the American people to foment the lie that the insurgency was largely an al Qaeda terrorist operation, not a native rebellion against the occupation. As one Pentagon general told a group of deception commandos: "The Zarqawi Psy-Op program is the most successful information campaign to date."
more from Chris Floyd
Part I: A Serviceable Villian and an Idealist Son
By Chris Floyd
06/15/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- After last week's killing of terrorist chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (or someone just like him) in Iraq, remembrances of his most celebrated alleged victim surfaced briefly in the press: Nicholas Berg, the American businessman whose horrific beheading was publicized in a video fortuitously released less than two weeks after the first revelations of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib.
It was this video – which featured five surprisingly chubby terrorists, masked, one wearing a gold ring forbidden by extremist Islam, another reading in halting Arabic – that made Zarqawi the Pentagon poster boy for the insurgency. Pentagon documents unearthed by the Washington Post this April revealed that the elevation of Zarqawi's profile was a deliberate, multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign aimed at the American people to foment the lie that the insurgency was largely an al Qaeda terrorist operation, not a native rebellion against the occupation. As one Pentagon general told a group of deception commandos: "The Zarqawi Psy-Op program is the most successful information campaign to date."
more from Chris Floyd
