Ledeen Loses Control of the Propaganda Apparatus

by emptywheel

Summary: Some peaceniks took over the propaganda function, and Ledeen is pissed! In this post, I review Ledeen's latest JJA column on the recent Zarqawi letter to show how far this old propaganda hack has fallen.

Longtime readers know that I have a real fondness for Michael Ledeen's wacky trope of channeling James Jesus Angleton (JJA). I've argued that Ledeen uses the trope to mockingly exonerate himself for the deceptions he and his allies carry out.

Many of Ledeen's most recent uses of JJA serve not to exonerate his allies, but to exonerate himself or others involved in plots they have propagated. He uses JJA to mock the AIPAC espionage investigation, the Chalabi leak case, the Plame and Niger forgery investigations--all intelligence breaches in which Ledeen is reputed to have a very close role.

Well, he's got a new JJA piece out that's a doozy (I've refrained from visiting NRO since the last time Byron York wrote a tribute to me, so I gotta thank Meteor Blades for doing the dirty work to find it).

In this installment, Ledeen takes on the letter recently "found" in a Zarqawi hideout in Iraq. The letter, recall, claims the insurgency in Iraq is weakening and that time (and presumably permanent bases) are on the US' side. The letter is basically one big endorsement of Bush's war effort, remarkably just in time for Bush's latest propaganda offensive.

The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants' financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks.

"Generally speaking and despite the gloomy present situation, we find that the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups," the document said, as quoted by al-Maliki's office.

According to the summary, insurgents were being weakened by operations against them and by their failure to attract recruits. To give new impetus to the insurgency, they would have to change tactics, it added.

"We mean specifically attempting to escalate the tension between America and Iran, and American and the Shiite in Iraq," it quoted the documents as saying, especially among moderate followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq.

"Creating disputes between America and them could hinder the U.S. cooperation with them, and subsequently weaken this kind of alliance between Shiites and the Americans," it said, adding that "the best solution is to get America involved in a war against another country and this would bring benefits."

They included "opening a new front" for the U.S. military and releasing some of the "pressure exerted on the resistance."

Given what we know about Zarqawi, including recent descriptions of the way the propaganda campaign surrounding Zarqawi inflated his importance ...

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

... I think reasonable people might assume this letter was a ploy to convince Americans that the war effort is going swimmingly. And sure enough, even Dick is willing to use the letter to brag about the success of his little adventure.

Vice President Dick Cheney said the document, if authenticated, shows the terrorists know they are losing the war.

The words "are fascinating because they do reveal — obviously whoever wrote them, assuming they are authentic — somebody who believes they are on the losing end of the engagement," Cheney said on the Sean Hannity radio show.

"I think the psychological business here is really enormously important as well, too. Somebody said the other day that ... the way we win is when ... the terrorists finally become convinced that we won't quit."

If Dick is willing to use it, we know it's propaganda.

But not Ledeen, as we'll see in a second. First, though, to show how tough things have gotten for Ledeen, I'd like to look at his last JJA column treating one of Zarqawi's discredited letters.This is the last most bogus letter between Zawahiri and Zarqawi, one that merited not one but two NYT cut-outs (Dexter Filkins, as the A1 Cut-Out, and William Safire to fluff it up some) to herald its importance. That time, Ledeen presented the letter as partly truthful, but weird. While he says it reads like Iranian propaganda,

JJA: I’ll say it’s odd. It reads like Iranian disinformation. Zawahiri takes great pains to blame Zarqawi for Iranian meddling in Iraq (reacting to attacks on Shiites), and reinforces the old story about Iran holding al Qaeda "prisoners." I’ve never believed that.

He then goes on to admit several items in the letter sound true to him ... I mean, to JJA.

ML: So you think the letter is just Iranian disinformation?

JJA: No, I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it’s like a CIA assessment. I think it’s groupthink. Letter-by-committee. Lots of it sounds right to me, especially that stuff about using the media, although even there, I have my doubts.

ML: The single best line of the whole document is when Zawahiri says "we are in a battle, and...more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media." When I read that, I wondered if one of our own spooks hadn’t written it.

JJA: Well, that could also be. It’s certainly true, God knows. But it’s odd that he should say it, if you see what I mean.[emphasis mine]

He basically uses JJA to "convince" himself that the letter makes sense, but that the weird bits in it signal something deeper, that Zarqawi is on the outs with Al Qaeda.

ML: So you think maybe Zarqawi is on the way out?

JJA: It wouldn’t surprise me. Zawahiri does raise a question about the leadership of the terrorists in Iraq by a non-Iraqi like Zarqawi, doesn’t he? "If there is sensitivity (to the leadership of a Jordanian like Zarqawi), what is its effect? And how can it be eliminated while preserving the commitment of the jihadist work and without exposing it to any shocks?"

ML: So it’s a black spot?

JJA: Maybe a mafia kiss.

Any guess what the new "CW" on Zarqawi had become?

Recently there have been unconfirmed reports of a possible rift between Zarqawi and the parent al-Qaeda organization that may have resulted in his being demoted or cut loose.

So in Ledeen's analysis last year of what was weird in the prior Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter, he anticipated where "opinion" surrounding the biggest subject of propaganda was going to go.

But this time, Ledeen portrays the same mixture of truth and falseness as unquestionably false. First, JJA points out all the details that are wrong in the letter.

JJA: So how come this terrorist leader makes so many mistakes? I mean, blatant factual errors. Let’s start with his statement — #5 in the first set of numbered paragraphs — that there has been “a decline of the resistance’s assaults.”

ML: Well, our casualties are certainly down, aren’t they?

JJA: Not really. May was one of the worst months since the fall of Saddam. Recently there’s been a dramatic increase in assaults and the number of dead innocents. Precisely the opposite of what the unnamed “leader” says.

I could be wrong, but I think this is Ledeen channeling JJA parsing words, since "our casualties" appear to be down, while the number of dead Iraqi Security Forces and civilians--JJA's innocents--were definitely up in May. Also note, Ledeen is clearly working from a full copy of the letter, though he doesn't link it (he did link the previous one, though that link is now dead). Have you seen a copy of the full letter? Or did one of Ledeen's buddies get it to him?

But then JJA goes on to talk about how much is right in this document ... but he argues that's reason to suspect it all the more.

This is very important, because one of the best ways to identify a deception is when its “revelations” are things you are known to know. There are no secrets in this document, only lies, things we already knew, or things so vague that they’re meaningless, such as “unify the ranks of the resistance” without even stipulating a single method to achieve it, or “reorganize for recruiting new elements” without any concrete recommendation.

ML: So what’s the point of it all?

JJA: Aha! It emerges bit by bit, but the whole thrust of the document is that Iran is a sweet innocent, actually an ally of the United States in Iraq, and that the terrorists should do everything possible to foster conflict between Iran and the Americans.

Ledeen and his doppelganger go on to review the details of the letter, reading inaccurate statements as inaccurate...

ML: So we’re supposed to believe that Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, didn’t really threaten us. It was all a trick.  Maybe rhetoric-put-out-for-domestic-purposes?

JJA: That’s their plan.

Then going on to suggest that accurate statements are also a lie--just disinformation to make us distrust the truth.

And this guy goes on and on and on, saying they have to trick us into believing that Iran has chemical and nuclear weapons and is threatening the West with them, that Iran is organizing suicide operations in the West, and that there is a relationship between Iran and terrorist groups.

ML: But that’s all true! I mean, even the State Department says Iran is the world’s biggest supporter of international terrorism.

JJA: Sure, but they’re trying to plant doubt in our minds. Maybe we’ll wonder, if only a little bit, if it isn’t a giant deception organized by clever Sunni terrorists.

ML: How about the final point? He says the terrorist should disseminate “bogus messages about confessions showing that Iran is in possession of weapons of mass destruction or that there are attempts by the Iranian intelligence to undertake terrorist operations in America and the west and against western interests.”

JJA: Yeah, how about that one? Again, these are things they can reasonably expect us to know.

The problem, of course, is that this letter portrays Zarqawi as attempting to foment discord between Iran and the US. Reading it literally in the same way Dick reads the doom and despair for Al Qaeda literally, would suggest fighting Iran is not in our best interest. If we fought Iran, the backassward logic of the letter suggests, we'd be playing right into Al Qaeda's hands.

Which is why, with this letter, Ledeen has to dismiss the same kind of things he formerly found meaningful as absolute nonsense.

Which is exactly what I think, in case you’re wondering. I think the Iranians put out this sort of nonsense so that we’ll have trouble figuring out what’s real. And by the way, it wasn’t found in Zarqawi’s house, contrary to the triumphant announcement from the office of the Iraqi prime minister. So it’s certainly not a Last Testament. It’s just nonsense.

No wonder the PNACkers are packing their bags. If an old propaganda hack like Ledeen can't even manage the narrative--if the US propaganda machine allows such peace-loving tripe as this to escape their hands, things are looking bad for the old warmongers. In this case, Ledeen drags out his pathetic old trope of JJA in an attempt to re-spin the US' own spin, to little effect.

Update: Thanks to joejoejoe, here is the full copy of the "letter." Go read it. I think you'll agree with joejoejoe, "the whole document reads like a bad Power Point presentation from a mediocre bureaucrat." Of particular note, you'll see it relies on the Military's favorite crutch tool, endless lists of bullet points. Geez they're getting sloppy.

Comments

[Ardant]

ew - You're on one. OT I was wondering if you ever dreamed that it would come to be that you would be able to reach the number of people you do with your writings; initiate, stimulate and engage in conversation with a wide range of readers. Make people think. People who make you think (more). I believe this must be stimulating for you and satisfying.

[J. Thomason]

Yes. But what does this have to do with Verlaine's wife and Rimbaud?

[prostratedragon]

Interesting reading along side the two inches of lace showing below the M&M Show's skirts.

[joejoejoe]

The Jerusalem Post has a translation of the complete 'captured' document. I won't go into how the AP headline ('Beginning of the end' for insurgency) conflates the Jordanian Al-Qaeda Zarqawi with the homegrown Iraqi insurgency but the whole document reads like a bad Power Point presentation from a mediocre bureaucrat. In other words it sounds like it was written inside the US government. Sometimes the cynic in me thinks this Zarqawi story has played out a little too pat over the past days - almost like there was a news story for each day planned in advance of his killing. I understand propaganda is part of warfare but it's supposed to be used only on the terrorists, not the American people. My favorite story was from Day 2 when we heard that Zarqawi tried to roll off his stretcher and they called it a foiled escape attempt.

Follow the link to the captured docs. I've read more exiting vacuum manuals.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150355501081&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[emptywheel]

Ardant

I used to be a college professor, so I have done my share of (intellectual) stimulating and engaging. But I do love this medium more than the classroom, at least as classrooms are currently constituted.

prostratedragon

Ah, yes, OSP II. They're trying, very hard, to replicate their Iraq magic. It'll be a lot harder this time, given how many people are watching.

Ledeen's gotta hate the fact, though, that Larisa or Laura Rozen are going to follow them around to Italy to try to pre-empt his next stunt.

[Meteor Blades]

I have always had an affection for Ledeen's writings for the same reason I love Patrick Buchanan's - not the opinions or "logic," which I loathe, but the style and chutzpah. These I can aspire to.

Thanks for your usual high-quality dissection, ew.