Fighting fire with contempt
06may06
BAGHDAD -- After years of losing the propaganda war against terror, America is fighting back with a new strategy -- ridicule and contempt.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is shown wearing American tennis shoes and unable to operate his automatic rifle in video released yesterday by the US military as part of a propaganda war aimed at undercutting the image of the Iraq terror leader.
The clips were part of a longer video US troops seized in a raid last month.
They show the al-Qaida leader smiling as he fires single shots from a US-made M-249 machine gun. But then the gun jams and he has to ask a henchman how to make it work.
Another clip showed Zarqawi dressed in a black uniform but wearing New Balance tennis shoes, US Command spokesman Maj-Gen Rick Lynch said.
"And his close associates around him . . . do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves," Lynch said. "Makes you wonder" about their military skills.
In Virginia, would-be September 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was silenced with withering contempt from the court.
Fed up with his bragging, the trial judge promised him that he would "die with a whimper" in solitary confinement.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema drowned out one of Moussaoui's final outbursts by telling him: "You will never again get a chance to speak, and that is an appropriate and fair ending.
"You came here to be a martyr and to die in a great big bang of glory. But to paraphrase the poet TS Eliot, instead, you will die with a whimper," Judge Brinkema said.
06may06
BAGHDAD -- After years of losing the propaganda war against terror, America is fighting back with a new strategy -- ridicule and contempt.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is shown wearing American tennis shoes and unable to operate his automatic rifle in video released yesterday by the US military as part of a propaganda war aimed at undercutting the image of the Iraq terror leader.
The clips were part of a longer video US troops seized in a raid last month.
They show the al-Qaida leader smiling as he fires single shots from a US-made M-249 machine gun. But then the gun jams and he has to ask a henchman how to make it work.
Another clip showed Zarqawi dressed in a black uniform but wearing New Balance tennis shoes, US Command spokesman Maj-Gen Rick Lynch said.
"And his close associates around him . . . do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves," Lynch said. "Makes you wonder" about their military skills.
In Virginia, would-be September 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was silenced with withering contempt from the court.
Fed up with his bragging, the trial judge promised him that he would "die with a whimper" in solitary confinement.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema drowned out one of Moussaoui's final outbursts by telling him: "You will never again get a chance to speak, and that is an appropriate and fair ending.
"You came here to be a martyr and to die in a great big bang of glory. But to paraphrase the poet TS Eliot, instead, you will die with a whimper," Judge Brinkema said.
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