Osama's porn stash: Plugging into the disinformation age

We'll get to the video above -- it depicts Osama Bin Laden watching himself on television -- very soon. And when we get to that, I'll explain why I want you to study the photo to your right.

First, however, let's examine a story from Reuters:

A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Oh, grow up. This is obvious disinformation.

Just a few days ago, we were told that the house in Abbottabad didn't have internet service or satellite TV. Do you really think that Osama Bin Laden would tell his couriers to pick up copies of Gangbanging Sluts?

Some of you will remember those stories about Khadafis' affection for wearing dresses, which were spread far and near throughout the Reagan era. The cross-dressing story was exposed as disinfo long ago:

President Reagan authorized a campaign of disinformation and destabilization which included CIA operations to aid and abet Libyan dissidents and exiles. The CIA and NSC leaked false information about Gaddafi, implying that he was impotent, insane, and a cross-dresser. The campaign came under fire when the Washington Post revealed the details of the scheme on October 2, 1986.

Now that Khadafi is back in the news, the old disinfo is back.

The Reaganite propgandists of that era traditionally labeled perceived enemies as transvestites; the same ludicrous charge was also leveled against Noriega and Marcos. More recent disinfo focuses on the theme of pedophilia:

During planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CIA's Iraq Operations Group kicked around a number of ideas for discrediting Saddam Hussein in the eyes of his people.

One was to create a video purporting to show the Iraqi dictator having sex with a teenage boy, according to two former CIA officials familiar with the project.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

There have been previous real-life examples of such videos, including one depicting "Ronald Reagan" getting reamed by a Vicky Morgan lookalike wearing a strap-on. Larry Flynt can tell you about that one.

You know how the spooks make such productions? They don't use CGI. Creating a realistic-looking human being is the toughest job in the world of computer graphics. To accomplish that goal, the Agency would have to bring in a whole troop of highly-paid Hollywood artists, who probably won't be right-wing loyalists and who are, by nature, blabby.

No, the spooks use lookalike actors. Which means that, playing the part of the underaged boy, they would have used an actual underaged boy.

Savor that thought as we continue with the previously-cited Washington Post story:

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, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.

The ideas were patently ridiculous, said the other former agency officer.

“They came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia” and didn’t understand the cultural nuances of the region.

“Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East -- nobody cares,” agreed a third former CIA official with extensive experience in the region. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

Then there's the classic tale of Saddam's dead babies:

Its origins go back to the first world war when British propaganda accused the Germans of tossing Belgian babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets. Dusted off and updated for the Gulf war, this version had Iraqi soldiers bursting into a modern Kuwaiti hospital, finding the premature babies ward and then tossing the babies out of incubators so that the incubators could be sent back to Iraq.

The story, improbable from the start, was first reported by the Daily Telegraph in London on September 5 1990. But the story lacked the human element; it was an unverified report, there were no pictures for television and no interviews with mothers grieving over dead babies.

That was soon rectified. An organisation calling itself Citizens for a Free Kuwait (financed by the Kuwaiti government in exile) had signed a $10m contract with the giant American public relations company, Hill & Knowlton, to campaign for American military intervention to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

The Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress was meeting in October and Hill & Knowlton arranged for a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl to tell the babies' story before the congressmen. She did it brilliantly, choking with tears at the right moment, her voice breaking as she struggled to continue. The congressional committee knew her only as "Nayirah" and the television segment of her testimony showed anger and resolution on the faces of the congressmen listening to her. President Bush referred to the story six times in the next five weeks as an example of the evil of Saddam's regime.

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and the final margin in favour of war was just five votes.

Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and she was lying about the whole thing. Nevertheless, there was a brief attempt to resurrect the incubator story in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Remember Jessica Lynch?

Remember Pat Tillman?

Remember the "spontaneous" pull-down of Saddam's statue -- actually carried out by Ahmed Chelabi's goons, playing the role of enraged citizens of Baghdad?

Remember Niger-gate?

Let's bring it closer to home. Do you recall all of the disinformation directed against Hillary Clinton throughout 2008 -- the "darkened video" hoax that Markos Moulitsas propagated (and for which he never apologized), the NAFTA smear, the "Vince Foster" smear, the incessant Clintons-as-racists smears?

Do you recall the daily disinformation lobbed against Bill Clinton throughout his time in office? Whitewater, Mena, cocaine smuggling and the rest of it? Remember the faked document in which Bill Clinton allegedly apologized for assaulting a woman?

Now let's get back to the video at the top of this post. Watch it again. Pay close attention.

In which hand does Osama Bin Laden hold that remote control? His right. Problem: All authoritative sources (including the FBI) agree that Osama was left-handed.

Why on earth would Osama bin Laden have someone make a video tape of Osama watching himself on TV? Why is the camera on a tripod? If Osama were speaking to the camera, a tripod would be necessary -- but most amateur "at home" footage is hand-held.

Why doesn't this interior look anything like interior shots of the house in Abbottabad?

And what about those power strips? They look American to me. In the Middle East, people use "europlugs," which go into distinctive round outlets. The prongs are also round. In the Osama video, the holes that the prongs go into are flat -- as tends to be the case with American-style power strips. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

It's pretty obvious to me that this video was test footage of a CIA actor -- probably the same one who starred in the "sex with boys" opus referenced above. I guess someone at the Agency wanted to get some squeeze some usage out of the image, before Bin Laden faded from public awareness.

As for the "porn stash" story: Obviously, that whopper was not concocted for the American audience, which already hates Bin Laden plenty (and for good reason). That tale was concocted to discredit Bin Laden in the Middle East. But no-one in the Middle East will believe it. Why should they, given the numerous lies American officials have told in recent times -- given the fact that we went to war on a lie?

In an age when nothing can be believed, paranoia will rule. And a paranoid time is a dangerous time.