Terrorists Use Web Against 'idiot' Americans

[cmotherofpirl]

GLOBAL JIHAD
Terrorists use Web against 'idiot' Americans
Fostering anti-war sentiment by posing online as citizens

Posted: March 27, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Islamic terrorists are engaged in a "media jihad" in which they encourage jihadists to pose online as Americans to foster anti-war sentiment in the U.S.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a posting on the Al-Mohajroon Islamist website with the username Al-Wathig Billah provides instructions on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums and use them to distribute jihad films and spread anti-war sentiments.

"Our experience shows that such instructions often yield compliance," Eli Alshech, director of the Jihad and Terrorism Project at MEMRI, told WND.

The instructions direct jihadists to "raid non-political forums and trivia forums which American people favor."

(Story continues below)

Contributors are encouraged to register as Americans and to use a purely American-sounding username: "Choose an icon that indicates that you are an American, and place it next to your nickname."

As reported by MEMRI, the Al-Mohajroon website instructs media jihad as follows:


"There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war … and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not [even] know where Iraq is … [It is therefore] mandatory for every electronic mujad [to engage in this raiding]."
And again:


"Obviously, you should post your contribution … as an American … You should correspond with visitors to this forum, [bringing to their attention] the frustrating situation of their troops in Iraq … You should invent stories about American soldiers you have [allegedly] personally known (as classmates … or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves."
WND asked Alshech how a viewer could identify if particular postings on popular sites such as YouTube, LiveLeak and Google Video were examples of media jihad.

"It is very difficult to identify a specific posting as media jihad," Alshech said. "One should know a forum very well and pay attention to writing and posting patterns.

Alshech referred WND to an Islamic website that posted anti-war images of U.S. troops in Iraq as well as at least one example of a media jihad clip produced for Google Video.

Alshech said one of the most effective ways to counter media jihad is to press the government to urge forum administrators to follow closely suspect postings "to make sure jihadists do not exploit the freedom of speech so valued in democratic countries."

Alshech advised WND that fighting media jihad requires playing an activist role.

"It is also important to urge forum members to follow up some of the more suspicious postings in order to expose lies," Alshech said. "This will make other members skeptical about the postings."

A few months ago, for example, jihadists posted a video message showing a military ID of one soldier they claimed was killed in Iraq, he said.

U.S. bloggers, however, followed up the story and discovered the soldier was alive – he suffered identity theft in Iraq, but he had not lost his life.

YouTube, LiveLeak, and Google Video did not respond to WND requests to comment on this story.

[Phoenix Reborn]

[quote]Alshech referred WND to an Islamic website that posted anti-war images of U.S. troops in Iraq as well as at least one example of a media jihad clip produced for [b]Google Video[/b].[/quote]

Terror Storm now all of a sudden has terrorists written all over it.

[jeffpugh]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1220523' date='Mar 27 2007, 02:36 PM']"It is also important to urge forum members to follow up some of the more suspicious postings in order to expose lies," Alshech said. "This will make other members skeptical about the postings."[/quote]

You think they could be fighting the media jihad on a religious level too? I think we should also keep our eyes open... watch for recurring themes... oy vey... again with the meme wars...

[Lounge Daddy]

This truly is a war for hearts and minds

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Phoenix Reborn' post='1220530' date='Mar 27 2007, 02:41 PM']Terror Storm now all of a sudden has terrorists written all over it. [/quote]
why are you surprised???

[Phoenix Reborn]

Actually no, I kinda saw it when they started posting it...even though I didn't watch any of them...

[FullTruth]

I guess you guys think I am a terrorist now.

Well good bye guys. I think I will take my leave.

(Shakes the dust off his shoes)

[Maggyie]

[quote name='FullTruth' post='1220862' date='Mar 27 2007, 11:09 PM']I guess you guys think I am a terrorist now.

Well good bye guys. I think I will take my leave.

(Shakes the dust off his shoes)[/quote]

I don't think anybody thinks you're a terrorist... I don't get that impression from this thread

[Phoenix Reborn]

[quote name='FullTruth' post='1220862' date='Mar 27 2007, 07:09 PM']I guess you guys think I am a terrorist now.

Well good bye guys. I think I will take my leave.

(Shakes the dust off his shoes)[/quote]

Hey, I ain't callin' you a terrorist, I'm just saying you [i]might[/i] be using terrorist information without knowing it. I'm not saying you [i]are[/i] a terrorist. I don't accuse my bretheren of stuff like this.

Well...unless he had a bomb strapped to his chest, running towards me...

Edited March 28, 2007 by Phoenix Reborn

[Urib2007]

Yeah the guy who made Terror Storm, Alex Jones, is working for Bin Laden. ha ha !
You guys are hilarious!

[Urib2007]

The government is getting nervous since people are out there exposing their lies, so what do they do? They begin to warn people of "Terrorists posing as Americans" online. That's a bunch of nonsense! There is so much proof out there that the government has lied to the American people. Whether you choose to acknowledge it is another story.

Terror Storm is a documentary everyone should watch because it totally debunks Jerome Corsi's article.

[Phoenix Reborn]

Well you know what? You believe the junk you believe and, we believe the 'junk' we believe. We're forever sliced apart, Urib.

Edited March 28, 2007 by Phoenix Reborn

[Urib2007]

[size=3][color="#000000"]Terrorized by 'War on Terror'
How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America
[/color][/size]
Washington Post | March 25, 2007
Zbigniew Brzezinski

[b][/b][u][i]The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America.[/i][/u] The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

[color="#000000"]The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.

Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.

That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.

Just last week, here in Washington, on my way to visit a journalistic office, I had to pass through one of the absurd "security checks" that have proliferated in almost all the privately owned office buildings in this capital -- and in New York City. A uniformed guard required me to fill out a form, show an I.D. and in this case explain in writing the purpose of my visit. Would a visiting terrorist indicate in writing that the purpose is "to blow up the building"? Would the guard be able to arrest such a self-confessing, would-be suicide bomber? To make matters more absurd, large department stores, with their crowds of shoppers, do not have any comparable procedures. Nor do concert halls or movie theaters. Yet such "security" procedures have become routine, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and further contributing to a siege mentality.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them. A case in point is the reported harassment of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its attempts to emulate, not very successfully, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Some House Republicans recently described CAIR members as "terrorist apologists" who should not be allowed to use a Capitol meeting room for a panel discussion.

Social discrimination, for example toward Muslim air travelers, has also been its unintended byproduct. Not surprisingly, animus toward the United States even among Muslims otherwise not particularly concerned with the Middle East has intensified, while America's reputation as a leader in fostering constructive interracial and interreligious relations has suffered egregiously.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

In the meantime, the "war on terror" has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general. It's not the "war on terror" that angers Muslims watching the news on television, it's the victimization of Arab civilians. And the resentment is not limited to Muslims. A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is the author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" (Basic Books).[/color]

[cmotherofpirl]

Let me know when you find "moderate" muslims stepping in to stop their homegrown terrorists....

[Urib2007]

[b][size=3][color="#FF0000"]Exclusive: CIA Commander: U.S. Let bin Laden Slip Away[/color][/size][/b]

[i][b]Newsweek[/b][/i]

[i][b]Aug. 15, 2005 issue[/b][/i] - During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged, "didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda. The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan border.

[b][color="#000000"]But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."[/color][/b]

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."

Berntsen's book gives, by contrast, a heroic portrayal of CIA activities at Tora Bora and in the war on terror. Ironically, he has sued the agency over what he calls unacceptable delays in approving his book—a standard process for ex-agency employees describing classified matters. "They're just holding the book," which is scheduled for October release, he says. "CIA officers, Special Forces and U.S. air power drove the Taliban out in 70 days. The CIA has taken roughly 80 days to clear my book." Jennifer Millerwise, a CIA spokeswoman, says Berntsen's "timeline is not accurate," adding that he submitted his book as an ex-employee only in mid-June. "We take seriously our goal of responding quickly."

—Michael Hirsh

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

[url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/"]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/[/url]