is quite effective even aside from the attack videos. ABC News reported that when one soldier lost a video diary he had filmed for personal use in Iraq, the images popped up months later on the Internet and on al Jazeera—but with the original audio track stripped out. It had been replaced with the voice of another English speaker, one who purported to be the voice of the soldier, explaining to his mother in a Christmas message, among other things:
The crimes by our soldiers during break-ins started to merge, such as burglary, harassment, raping, and random manslaughter," says the voice. "Why are we even here? The people hate us."[1]
The propagandists overstepped when they ended their piece by pointing out that it was a tragedy that this poor soldier had been killed in Iraq before he ever made it home for Christmas. Unfortunately for them, ABC was able to verify that multiple claims made by the speaker were false, starting with the fact that it was unlikely the soldier would have been making a "Christmas message" for his family when he had actually left Iraq 6 months before Christmas and ending with the fact that the soldier was alive and well.[2] ABC therefore posted it as a story about an audacious (but ineffective) attempt at propaganda. Thus while this may have worked as propaganda with the Arab audience, it didn't successfully make the jump to the American audience.
In truth, in an interview with the author, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Loomis, the Public Affairs Officer for the 101st Airborne Division, the soldier's home unit, made clear that in fact the propaganda was in this case quite effective: ABC was preparing to do a story about the tragedy of an anti-war soldier killed in Iraq, essentially picking
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- ↑ Rhonda Schwartz and Maddy Sauer, "Dead US Solder in Anti-War Video 'Alive and Well'," The Blotter, ABCNews.com, January 8, 2007, available from blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/dead_us_soldier.html.
- ↑ Lieutenant Colonel Edward Loomis, Division Public Affairs Officer, 101st Airborne Division, phone interview with the author, February 9, 2007.
