Reply #30: Dear Gov. Dean -- OBL; are you sure? (No ‘tin foil hat’ required) … [View All]

[understandinglife]

20 January 2006 (# 46)

In 1999, William M. Arkin wrote a Washington Post article entitled “When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing.” As you know, Mr. Arkin has pursued the intersection of various technologies with National Security strategy and implementation. Mr. Arkin included the following in that article:

Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy. For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.

"Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare.

Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.

To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

Why is this article relevant to the most recent “bin Laden” tape? And, why is a “tin foil hat” not required to pursue that question?

Two experts on Osama bin Laden quickly responded to the new tape: Duke Professor, Bruce Lawrence; and, Maumon Fandy, who among other things is a Fellow in Jim Baker’s Institute at Rice University.

Dr. Fandy had the following to say on PBS Online NewsHour:

MAMOUN FANDY: Right, but this particular tape is not terribly inspiring, just looking at the language of it. This is the first tape of bin Laden that has no single verse from the Koran. It does not have the flowery language of Arabic.

It seems to me that it is written in English first, and then translated into Arabic. It is very western style of tape. It is not very characteristic of bin Laden, at least it tells me that the non-Arabic speaking within the al-Qaida network are taking over the organization –

Link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/jan-june06/osama_1-19.html

Amber Rupinta reports for ABC News that Professor Lawrence has considerable reservations about the tape and about the status of bin Laden and his knowledge of bin Laden messages is documented in his recently published “Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden.” As Ms. Rupinta notes, Professor Lawrence:

... thinks bin Laden is dead and has doubts about the tape. Lawrence recently analyzed more than 20 complete speeches and interviews of the al Qaida leader for his book. He says the new message is missing several key elements.

“There’s nothing in this from the Koran. He’s, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim,” Lawrence said. “He quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There’s no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities.”

While the CIA confirms the voice on the tape is bin Laden’s, Lawrence questions when it was recorded. He says the timing of its release could be to divert attention from last week’s U.S. air strike in Pakistan. The strike targeted bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and killed four leading al Qaeda figures along with civilians.

Lawrence believes faulty Pakistani intelligence led to the strike and the civilian deaths, and the tape was leaked by Pakistani authorities to divert attention from their mistake. “It led to a failed military operation where America got blamed, but the people who are really to blame are the ones who provided the intelligence,” Lawrence said. “I think this is an effort to say were not going look at this terrible incident that happened.”

Link: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=local&id=3828678

The reason you don’t need a “tin foil hat” is because what follows is not speculation about whether bin Laden is alive, it is not speculation about who created the tape, it is not speculation as to motives for whoever created the tape, and for why it was released yesterday.

I’ve juxtaposed the above because the most important person who should be being provided the tools to know whether they are victims of a psyops campaign or merely recipients of a valid communication from Osama bin Laden is the American citizen. That is not the way the American citizen, today, is being served by their government.

I am increasingly convinced that a crucial, strategic way to differentiate a Democratic Party candidate in the 2006 and 2008 National Election is to have them focus on the power of technology to validate what the citizen is being told, and to direct and regulate the use of technology to protect and expand the citizen’s access to information, and their privacy in doing so.

The contrary currently is the norm as Bush and his neoconster minions have used technology to deceive (Iraqi WMD "intelligence" being just one instance), and violate Federal statutes (FISA, National Security Act), as well as, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Otherwise just declare that the US government is now nothing more than a tax-payer subsidized “Hollywood” and, Fox, CNN, The Washington Post, New York Times …., are the distribution channels, and at least serve decent popcorn.

Thank you for your continued leadership,