This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply.
1codyed
From Danger Room:
Yet we smack our heads trying to figure out why conspiracy theories run amok in the Muslim world.
I remember when Tim and I got into it when I claimed that Holocaust denialism was entirely rational on the part of Muslims because their reality is constantly tampered with by foreign and domestic agents. If your reality is constantly tampered with, then you have little reason to believe the claims made your government or the governments of other nations.
Psychological operations sound great on paper. Why wouldn't it be a good idea to shape the perceptions of your adversaries?
On the eve of the Iraq war, the CIA kicked around a rather odd idea: make a gay sex tape featuring a teenage boy and an ersatz Saddam Hussein.
“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” one former intelligence official tells SpyTalk. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”
The notion was eventually nixed. But “the agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys,” a CIA officer recalled. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees.”
Yet we smack our heads trying to figure out why conspiracy theories run amok in the Muslim world.
I remember when Tim and I got into it when I claimed that Holocaust denialism was entirely rational on the part of Muslims because their reality is constantly tampered with by foreign and domestic agents. If your reality is constantly tampered with, then you have little reason to believe the claims made your government or the governments of other nations.
Psychological operations sound great on paper. Why wouldn't it be a good idea to shape the perceptions of your adversaries?
2oregonobsessionz
Just when you think it can't get any worse...
3Jesse_wiedinmyer
Why, of all things, am I reminded of Adrienne Rich's On Lies, Secrets and Silence...
4Amtep
I'm reminded of this page: Sex and Psychological Operations
It's about the use of sexual themes in propaganda in WWII.
It's about the use of sexual themes in propaganda in WWII.
5timspalding
This strikes me as a prudential issue. Should the US engage in propaganda and disinformation against our enemies? All things being equal, of course we should. But, obviously, the CIA or whoever needs to think about the downside.
In this case, some low-level CIA people came up with an idea about undermining Saddam—which is what they're paid to do—and wiser heads didn't approve it. They got farther along with the Bin Laden video, before it was cancelled by wiser heads.
If the problem is now not what the CIA does to people but what someone in the CIA proposed in some meeting and didn't get approved—I mean, what the heck!
In this case, some low-level CIA people came up with an idea about undermining Saddam—which is what they're paid to do—and wiser heads didn't approve it. They got farther along with the Bin Laden video, before it was cancelled by wiser heads.
If the problem is now not what the CIA does to people but what someone in the CIA proposed in some meeting and didn't get approved—I mean, what the heck!
6StormRaven
There's also a credibility issue here. We have unnamed sources claiming that something was considered for which there is no independent evidence either way (and even the purported Osama tape which was supposedly made is seemingly vapor). Was this considered? Who knows. Is there any reason to believe one way or the other? Not really.
7lriley
An interesting premise.
Behind it all the idea of justifying a pre-emptive strike by further demonizing an enemy. Even not used the end result is no more Saddam but no more thousands of others (including our own as well)--countless maimed and uprooted and our own economy tanked of which the expenditures for the war played no small part.
The CIA has been involved in a lot of really goofy shit over the years. Spiriting Nazi fugitives all over Latin America and into Africa after WWII. MK Ultra--the memory erasure programs run by Ewen Cameron on unsuspecting victims and all the experiments with hallucinogenics as well on the unsuspecting. They've been behind right wing coups all over South America. They've trained police and military of foreign dictatorships in torture techniques and assassination. They've been drugrunners. Misinformation and disinformation has just been a part of it--which is not to say I don't think there are good people in the CIA--just to say there are a lot of bad apples too who think they can get away with anything.
Behind it all the idea of justifying a pre-emptive strike by further demonizing an enemy. Even not used the end result is no more Saddam but no more thousands of others (including our own as well)--countless maimed and uprooted and our own economy tanked of which the expenditures for the war played no small part.
The CIA has been involved in a lot of really goofy shit over the years. Spiriting Nazi fugitives all over Latin America and into Africa after WWII. MK Ultra--the memory erasure programs run by Ewen Cameron on unsuspecting victims and all the experiments with hallucinogenics as well on the unsuspecting. They've been behind right wing coups all over South America. They've trained police and military of foreign dictatorships in torture techniques and assassination. They've been drugrunners. Misinformation and disinformation has just been a part of it--which is not to say I don't think there are good people in the CIA--just to say there are a lot of bad apples too who think they can get away with anything.
