ThreatsWatch: The Fiction of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

An excellent piece by Steve Schippert and Nick Grace over at ThreatsWatch (Hat Tip ZenPundit) – The Fiction of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Fully engaged in the Information War, al-Qaeda in Iraq continues to put forth its message in Iraq under the umbrella of a notional Islamic State of Iraq and employing an Iraqi actor to fill the fictitious shoes of its purported Iraqi leader, “Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.” While al-Qaeda in Iraq is in dire straits in Iraq – as evidenced by the content of “al-Baghdadi’s” latest al-Qaeda-prepared speech – its information campaign has kicked back into gear in earnest, deriding the “apostates” of the Iraqi Awakening movement (Sahawah al-Iraq or SAI) and announcing a new campaign through the end of January. The United States needs to engage in more creative means of participation in this Information War, exploiting al-Qaeda’s faults and weaknesses beyond dry news releases and press conferences.

In a continuation of its PSYWAR campaign, al-Qaeda in Iraq’s (AQI) strategic and operational effort to maintain battlefield morale and to consolidate its leadership of the broader insurgency, AQI’s al-Furqan Media released a 46 minute long audio file (MP3) onto the Internet late Monday night. The recording features a speech by the notional emir of AQI’s umbrella organization, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). An Arabic-language transcript, in Word, Adobe PDF, and Flash, was posted shortly after the appearance of the audio…

Much more at ThreatsWatch.