I don’t have a link, but I have seen several articles regarding a recent White House advisery to the press telling them not to show Osama’s speeches without reviewing them and not to print transcripts of them in their entirety.
Apparently they believe that Osama might use code words in his speeches to give instructions to his legions for more attacks. Furthermore, the White House characterizes Osama’s statements not as speeches, but as “propaganda” which could be dangerous to Americans.
This seems really bogus to me. Why would Osama lead his operations in a way that is easy availible and analyzed rather than the rather simple and secure method of encrypted email or something like that is beyond me. And of course his speeches are propaganda. All political speeches are effectivly propaganda. I’d imagine most of us arn’t going to be converted by simply seeing Osama on TV.
I think that the public has a right to know. We should be able to find out, in the whole, exactly what this madman is saying about us to the rest of the world. I think that this request is not in the interest of public safety, but rather in the interest of keeping American opinions ignorant and ill formed. The less information we have, the less capable we are of evaluating a situation for ourselves.
Why do Americans need to know exactly what he’s saying? What will it change? We know he’s trying to get Muslims everywhere to rise up against America. We know he’s making vague threats, and is saying nothing of any value. You’d rather risk public safety to hear that crap and give the jerk airtime he doesn’t deserve?
There’s no reason why the news stations can’t provide summaries of what was said without speaking word for word. I don’t like the idea of showing ANY of OBL’s videos because there are lots of ways he could code messages. For example, a bit deal has been made of the fact that OBL wears a digital watch, and on his right arm. Someone commented on a video I haven’t seen, said that all the men in that video were wearing watches on their right arms. What if they use something subtle like that to signal “Start the attacks!”?
OBL doesn’t deserve to have his words relayed to the American public intact. That would indicate they have some value, which they don’t.
I agree with cazzle. Read the above news item called “Decoding bin Laden.” The issue is more of a public safety one rather than a propaganda one, it seems. even sven, there are national security concerns, and that includes keeping you safe, too, IMHO. Suppose bin Laden is sending this coded message to some sleepers: “Go to even sven’s house and cut out his throat with a box cutter.” Would you want that aired?
And maybe UBL can’t get to email because he’s crawling from cave to cave and there is no electricity or notebook computer battery. I’ll gladly give up any right to know that I may have to avoid more of what happened on Sept. 11th.
Sorry, I don’t buy the article. It asserts that his videos are full of “subtle linguistic and cultural cues obvious only to a Muslim and Arab audience”. Does every copy of the Koran come with a secret decoder or something?
The article then makes a big deal about how is is making such “subtle linguistic and cultural cues” as bringing up Palenstine, complaining about sanctions in Iraq and quoting the Koran. That wiley Osama, he must be hiding his secret messeges by talking about issues very relevent to the Muslim world.
Luckly for us, the article gives us some good hints on how to understand the secret world of Bin Laden’s speeches. For example, “Using scriptures to evoke emotions is an effective strategy” and that he delivers his messeges eloquently because “Within Arab culture, the ability to speak eloquently is highly regarded”. Imagine that! An Islamic extremist quoting the Koran! A man giving a public messege speaking eloquently! These are obviously secret messeges that only Muslims understand.
And the watch. I guess that is the secret Muslim equivelent of “The crow flies at midnight”. You see, it usese subtle clues to convery the messege, “I don’t wear my watch on the same hand that I use to wipe my butt.” Brilliant. Now every Muslim in America is going to get the signal intended and take to arms because they know that Osama is a rightous and good non-watch-butt-wiper.
Basically the article points out that Bin Laden is doing various things that we would expect an Islamic extremist to do. Talking about Jihad, quoting the Koran, posing with guns. There is nothing secret or unusual about it. We wouldn’t expect him to give slurred speeches about the joys of playing cribbage while surrounded by pink bunnys quoting Confucious, did we?
Now, I don’t have a cite, so you can all flame me for not providing one if you like. But I was watching some news the other day, I think it was ITN and it had some arab official laughing and saying that bin Laden can communicate directly with his people.
So, because you can’t imagine how Bin Laden might give signals to operatives via gestures or phrases, that means that it simply cannot be, huh? I’d rather be safe than sorry here. Maybe it’s nothing, but if it is something, then you don’t want to find out after the fact and then say, “oh, sorry, guess you were right!”
What news? Bin Laden stands up, says a lot of mean things about America, asked Muslims to kill Americans and then goes back to his hidey-hole. This is news?
Bin Laden’s opinions are no different from those of your average crackpot, except OBL gets prime time airing. If he wants to rave, let him do it on his own time.
Oh, and sure he has other ways to communicate with his people. But why make it easier for him? I’m sure OBL would get quite a kick out of using the American media against America, and that would make it much more fun than just sending a fax.
The Bush people probably are more concerned with the National bottom line than any silly coded(?) message. It works like this: the Bush administration is telling America to get back to the business of spending lots of money (getting back to normal?), a don’t worry we have it all under control type of message. Go traveling, shopping, Disney etc. Well, along comes Club Taliban with one of their spooky, rambling, Death-to-all-Americans pre-recorded videos. Americans get nervous, stay home, cling to purses/wallets/credit cards. Bush people get more nervous, call up press, “hey, don’t play those Osama productions, could be coded double-naught-spy stuff”, “un-patriotic”, with a wink and a nod. Press goes “duh”, OK boss. Americans flock to malls. End of story.
Bush Administration: please, just give us the straight dope and don’t monkey with the press.
You are right, but, he knows numbers of people who call people, who call people, ad infinitum. We’re dealing with cells here; not discreet organizations.
Trail? Sure, but how long does it take to trace the trail. There are a lot of simpler ways to communicate than coded videos.
“Urging”, “requesting”, and “asking” is not censorship. Censorship is when jackbooted government employees come to your office and confiscate your printing press. Censorship is when you get put in jail for printing something the government didn’t like. Censorship is when the government insists on approving everything you’re going to broadcast or print before you broadcast or print it.
I think it is a request that is essentially devoid of justification unless someone could demonstrate that terrorists act on signals from higher ups. What I have read has given me the impression that terrorists essentially act on their own, even if they do get funding from a paent organization.
If there were a bunch of terrorists lying in wait to spring an attack, I think the most successful message would have been our national news saying “We’ve started! Bring on the Jyhad!”
Jyhad in the religious sense, fo course, not in the VTES sense
[enjoying the mental image of Osama working a PTA Telephone Tree]
"Okayyy…[peers at list taped to wall above phone]…I’m supposed to call Sayeed…Abdul…and… hmm… looks like Ahmed is crossed off, and it looks like it says … ‘Mahmoud’ …
‘Mahmoud’ who?.."
But see, Erislover, the whole point of this 9/11 thing is that the terrorists have suddenly raised the bar on “terrorism”. This isn’t like anything that’s happened before, where the Big Boss simply gives the grunts the bomb and the manila envelope of money, and they put the bomb on the plane for Lockerbie and that’s it.
Nobody really knows what they’re up to, so I think it’s CYA time at the White House. What if it did turn out that Osama was sending coded signals, telling his group exactly which suburban malls to hit on Halloween, and what if CNN had helpfully broadcast his schedule for him? The Feds wanna be able to say, “We told ya not to.”
Well, DDG, I can’t say that he wouldn’t or couldn’t use the media as a medium to broadcast a signal to strike, but we’re talking about a guy who was, presumably, already in contact with people (else how could we pin a thing on him?). I doubt the media is an effective, desirable, or predictable medium to transmit a specific signal. i’d try a telephone, or a go-fer on a telephone or fax line or the internet…
Asking the media to cut content is a bad move, propaganda-wise. I was really hoping to get a two-minutes hate going.
Okay, I’m going to post this in the interest of fighting ignorance, but if you insist in maintaining your position, then I’ll understand when you say, “Ignorance is bliss.”
What do you think Al Qaeda did, send telegrams that read, “It’s a Go! Crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon!”
The messages they received were coded. There have been several news articles that have demonstrated where innocuous pictures have been underlain with coded messages. Why in the hell would anyone want to allow Bin Laden any kind of communication at all?!
This isn’t rocket science.
And why is it so important that you receive OBL’s messages, anyway? Are you afraid that Dan Rather will twist Osama’s words? Can you understand Arabic, or Pushtu, or whatever the hell it is he’s speaking?
Nobody’s “keeping secrets” from you, erislover. Except those things that you have no business knowing.
How would you have someone “demonstrate that terrorists act on signals from higher ups?”
“Well, we could’ve prevented that truck from detonating at the Mall of America, but we figured it was more important to let erislover know what’s going on.”
Christ, I’m all for the First Amendment, but let’s not let it allow some extremeist nutjob to pass on suicide bombing assignments.
