07 August 2013

The imminent attack leak and the media

The following text is a translation of an Hebrew article from a relatively yellow Internet site, which name could be loosely translated as "Central Affairs", founded by one Rami Izhar, who also penned the article in question. It is titled Intelligence officials doubt the Washington leak of intercepted phone call from al-Qaeda leader to the chief of underground in Yemen. The lede of the article is "It is viewed as a political spin designed to cover up the failures of the Obama administration." Here it goes*:

Deliberate leak coming from Washington regarding the interception of a telephone call supposedly between the leader of al Qaeda and the chief of underground in Yemen, was received  in Western intelligence agencies, including Israel, with a prominent disbelief. The common argument is that the spin has two purposes.

First, to justify the recklessness and stupidity of the public announcement regarding the closure of embassies in more than 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa to give the American people the message that the Benghazi failure will not be repeated. Another goal: to justify the continuing surveillance and the bugging that are destroying individual freedoms so sacred to Americans.

The leak should strengthen the argument that only eavesdropping and interception of messages both in the U.S. and abroad allows an effective fight against murderous Islamic terrorism. The message is also intended to the friendly and leading European countries such as Germany, France, Britain and other EU countries that have not yet calmed down after the leaks by Snowden of surveillance and American constant spying after conversations and emails of VIPs in friendly nations.

These factors say that it is inconceivable that bin Laden's successor Zawahiri will make any phone call, and certainly not one demanding some action in Yemen. Americans will now have to publish the audio recording of the alleged conversation and even then it's doubtful if anyone would believe that it is not fabricated. Intelligence is not as dumb as the masses, major affairs, says our source.

It seems to be pretty poor political spin, which purpose was to manipulate public opinion in America and abroad, in light of several serious blunders by the Obama administration during last year.

(*) This blog owners don't necessarily share the opinions of the above article's author and are not responsible for its contents.

But they like both the opinions and the contents.

9 comments:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

This sounds suspiciously like a conspiracy theory. I cannot imagine so many agencies being part of an attempt at mass deception. My own theory is that the damage done by Snowden's revelations is so great that anything that comes through hinting at the remotest possibility of an attack is taken seriously and addressed in this hysterical manner. It seems plausible that the intelligence community could be more efficient as long as it had access to minute information. Now that everyone knows the US is eavesdropping anyone that has anything to hide has gone deeply underground. Thus any signal, no matter how faint or obscure, emerging from this fog is taken as seriously as can be. Snowden has done the terrorist community a great service, greater than he imagined ... The very costs inflicted upon America and the rest of the enlightened world, in terms of money, anxiety, political fisticiffs and what have you are in and of themselves an offshoot of the agenda of terrorists and a neat gain for them. These are the wages of unintended consequences.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I don't think that the possible attack threat was invented, but then I don't think there is a day without one, so it was fairly easy to use that threat as a pretext for a bigger than usual show.

All the rest follows from the above premise. Not a conspiracy, just a poor PR attempt by the usual suspects.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

You just gotta holler "Hey Bo DIddely"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IMZjAOoX6nw

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Except that the Yemeni authorities claim today (7 Aug.) to have thwarted an Al-Qaeda attack in Yemen. Maybe not so stupid after all.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Exactly, but the current version is much less cool ;-)

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Stupid? No necessarily stupid, but not very successful. Let's not forget that al Qaeda attacks in Yemen today are a daily occurrence. So far not attacks on embassies or stuff like that.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. The agencies are afflicted by the same phenom that muzzles most of the news media: not wanting to be seen contradicting the first black president. The fact that the bureaucrats and the journolists count themselves as members of his political party is just icing on this particular cupcake.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

It's not cool because it's not authentic. It would be like Bieber doing it in black-face.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That article hits the spot. That was exactly what I thought when I heard the story first. Why the heck would CIA disclose the fact of listening in?