Sordid Images on TV Repel the Kurds, but They Raise Some Skepticism, Too

[ECH1969]

A local shopkeeper and mechanical engineer, the sheik says he and his followers beheaded, dismembered, gunned down, blackmailed and raped fellow citizens here in Iraqi Kurdistan for as long as a decade, until he was found out and arrested.

But Sheik Zana's confessions, delivered in Kurdish, stand out because he and his followers had a habit of videotaping not only what appear to be horrific murders and rapes, but also sex among themselves and with the young men whom they were trying to recruit for their cause.

The programs, distributed to television stations by Kurdish intelligence and security services, are intended to expose terrorist recruiting tactics and punch holes in their religious sales pitch.

Even in a heavily edited format that has cut out the most explicit acts, the images of gay sex are vying with those of beheadings in attracting the attention, and revulsion, of viewers. Nadia Mohamad, 49, a government employee who was watching the program with her husband and children while having dinner at the Sky Cafe in downtown Erbil on Thursday night, said the beheading of a terrified youth on the first program - shown before the sex scenes began appearing - had literally sickened her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/international/middleeast/18erbil.html

[endarkenment]

1. Can we say disinformation?

This is a psyops program. Fits right in with the abu ghraib pictures. "distributed to television stations by Kurdish intelligence and security services" would be a red flag. CIA productions: your tax dollars at work producing gay S&M porn for the war on terror.

[wookie294]

2. That's exactly what I thought

I don't believe the story.

[UncleSepp]

3. Suppose it's a dual purpose propaganda show?

Produce the sucker, let it loose there, then let the story of it get back to the US. There, it will play to the Kurds as "terrorists are homosexuals". Here, it will play to the American public as "homosexuals are terrorists".

I think I just got chills and sick at the same time, just for typing that.