that this was a psych-op program they would have stopped feeding"we captured his #2 man" to the press after maybe oh the third time or so....

U.S. Spokesman Blames Al-Zarqawi Group
By Associated Press
8:29 AM PDT, April 10, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- More than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by terrorists and foreign fighters recruited, trained and equipped by al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.

Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq "are real threats to the citizens, security and stability of Iraq and we continue to conduct aggressive operations to eliminate the threat they pose not only to Iraq, but also to the rest of the region," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in a statement.

ADVERTISEMENT
The Washington Post reported Monday that U.S. military was conducting a propaganda campaign to "magnify the role" of al-Zarqawi to turn Iraqis against him and to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

According to the newspaper, some U.S. military intelligence officials believe the campaign has overstated al-Zarqawi's importance within the Iraqi insurgency.

Lynch's statement did not refer directly to the Post story but said "a recent article" had called into question the threat posed by al-Zarqawi.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Lynch said. "The terrorists and foreign fighters that he recruits, trains and equips carry out more than 90 percent of the insidious suicide attacks against the men, women and children of Iraq attacks that have killed or injured thousands of Iraqis in the last year alone."

more

There are those who think of OBL in the same light. For example.

...impact and capabilities - one was early on around '03 into late '04 where the intel net pretty much sucked. There was little to no insight into the nature of the Iraqi resistance - the faith based policy echelons specifically refused to acknowledge its inherently nationalist chracter, though lots of us observers sure thought that that was the case. (Some good coverage to that effect from the CSM and AFP 'round about then.)

The second aspect started about 18 months or so ago when it really started to dawn on folks higher up the food chain that the insurgency was in fact in large part a nationalistic resistance, quite a nebulous loosely networked on in fact. In an effort to gradually strip off the less committed from the die hards and up their chances of coming to some sort of negotiated settlement they started playing up the "slaughtering Iraqis" element to Zarqawi's ops.

The first element was pretty damned dumb, the second element was actually a pretty good idea. It's important not to confuse the two. But hey, given that you think the Nick Berg decapitation was faked, I'm sure that you'll not let that slow your propagandizing down in the least.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/world/main965243.shtml

Its a pity they spent so much money on a bogeyman that they completely missed the civil war. /sarcasm

Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

Two slides from a briefing prepared for Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describe a U.S. military propaganda campaign that was intended to highlight the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, in the Iraqi insurgency. By emphasizing his foreign origin, the "psychological operations" effort sought to play on a perceived Iraqi dislike of foreigners and so split the insurgency.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."

"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," said Harvey, who did not return phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.

There has been a running argument among specialists in Iraq about how much significance to assign to Zarqawi, who spent seven years in prison in Jordan for attempting to overthrow the government there. After his release he spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan before moving his base of operations to Iraq. He has been sentenced to death in absentia for planning the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. U.S. authorities have said he is responsible for dozens of deaths in Iraq and have placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

Recently there have been unconfirmed reports of a possible rift between Zarqawi and the parent al-Qaeda organization that may have resulted in his being demoted or cut loose. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that it was unclear what was happening between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. "It may be that he's not being fired at all, but that he is being focused on the military side of the al-Qaeda effort and he's being asked to leave more of a political side possibly to others, because of some disagreements within al-Qaeda," he said.

The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort, but other sections of the briefings indicate that there were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.

Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare.

Filkins, reached by e-mail, said that he was not told at the time that there was a psychological operations campaign aimed at Zarqawi, but said he assumed that the military was releasing the letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." No special conditions were placed upon him in being briefed on its contents, he said. He said he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now, and so at the time tried to confirm its authenticity with officials outside the U.S. military.

more

-----

Iran did accuse the US of psychological warfare (mind games).

Good and evil, black and white, on and off, true and false; Americans, for the most part, are creatures with a binary intellect. It is as simple as that. Americans need a bogeyman, someone for a hate and fear focus to create support for the war. No problem, the Pentagon will find one for us. This is propaganda for American consumption not psyops.

We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. - General Education Board Letter #1, 1906, Rockefeller Foundation.

Well isn't this interesting, the US is ushering Zarqawi out of the Iraq and the news. Of course this lets them finally come out and say the violence is not Zarqawi or Al qaida but now ouuu a civil war. lol

Zarqawi, al Qaeda are heading out of Iraq, U.S. general says

By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 14, 2006

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday.

The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps.

"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Gen. Vines' statement came as news broke that coalition and Iraqi forces had killed an associate of Osama bin Laden's during an early morning raid near Abu Ghraib about two weeks ago.

Rafid Ibrahim Fattah aka Abu Umar al Kurdi served as a liaison between terrorist networks and was linked to Taliban members in Afghanistan, Pakistani-based extremists and other senior al Qaeda leaders, the military said yesterday.

In the past six months, al Kurdi had worked as a terrorist cell leader in Baqouba. Prior to that, he had traveled extensively Pakistan, Iran and Iraq and formed a relationship with al Qaeda senior leaders in 1999 while in Afghanistan.

He also had ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, formed while he was in Iran and Pakistan, and joined the jihad in Afghanistan in 1989, the military said. He was killed March 27.

Gen. Vines said the foreign terrorists had made a strategic mistake when they tried to intimidate and deny Iraqis a way to vote.

"I believe Zarqawi discredited himself with the Iraqi people because of his willingness to slaughter Iraqi people," he said.

Huthayafa Azzam, whose father was seen as a political mentor of bin Laden, told reporters in Jordan in early April that Zarqawi had been replaced as head of the terrorist fight in Iraq in an effort to put an Iraqi at the head of the organization.

Azzam said Zarqawi had "made many political mistakes," including excessive violence and the bombing last November of a Jordanian hotel, and as a result was being "confined to military action."

Gen. Vines, who from January 2005 to January 2006 led all coalition forces in Iraq, did not comment on those reports. But he did caution that although the foreign extremists were leaving Iraq "looking for more fertile ground," they could come back.

"The question now is what kind of government is going to be formed and is it going to be credible," he said, acknowledging that Iran had significant influence over Iraq's religious Shi'ite population.

"Iran wants us out, but not too soon -- after a Shi'ite government friendly to Iran is established," Gen. Vines said. "Iran's view is that the current government is not strong enough, and if we pulled out now, there would be a low-level civil war."