An earth-shattering report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found proof that the Pentagon paid a half a billion dollars to fake Al-Qaeda videos.
The BIJ found that the Pentagon paid a business in a foreign country to do the work.
U.K. based public relations firm, Bell Pottinger worked with the military to create fake news segments that looked and sounded like insurgents filmed them.
One employee of the company said that General David Petraeus signed off on a lot of the work, but occasionally approval came from the White House as well.
The operation to make the fake videos employed nearly 300 Iraqi and British workers all paid by the US government.
$540 million is a lot of money that could have been spent in America.
The PR firm claims that it only kept $15 million annually and the rest went to expenses and distribution.
One disturbing piece of information that came out in the report is that the PR firm helped to make propaganda videos and put them on discs that would be handed out in cities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those discs were coded in a way that Google Analytics could help figure out who is watching the video, where and the users IP address.
Not only is the government paying a foreign company to make fake propaganda video to be distributed in the Middle East, but they are tracking each person that views it.
The fact that Google is involved is another example how the tech giant has morphed into an important military asset.
What is still unclear is the president’s involvement. Was this his idea or did he just sign off on it and not really know what was going on?
If things were going really well in the Middle East nobody would question these kind of tactics, but things are not going well.
The money could have been spent better, obviously, but it wasn’t and now the Middle East is a bigger mess now than it was when Obama took office. Clearly he and the Pentagon need to come up with a new plan.
What do you think about Obama paying to make fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos?
