[iwar] [fc:News.of.the.Weird:."Psychological.Warfare".-.an.article.from.Arabnews.com]

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Subject: [iwar] [fc:News.of.the.Weird:."Psychological.Warfare".-.an.article.from.Arabnews.com]
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News of the Weird: "Psychological Warfare" - an article from Arabnews.com

By John R. Bradley Arab News

JEDDAH, 25 June - A number of Western cells are presently operating in Saudi Arabia, 
both overtly and covertly, and have launched periodic assaults on the youth of the 
Kingdom in the months since the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. 

It is time that this matter was addressed with the sense of urgency and outrage 
it warrants.

The Westerners who make up these cells are experts in psychological terrorism.

Although there is reportedly intense rivalry among them, they are nevertheless bound 
together by their lack of ethics and blind loyalty to the lost cause of breathing 
life into a profession dying a quiet death in their home countries: serious, objective 
journalism.

These Western journalists are apparently motivated by their collective misconception 
that because 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudis, normal life does not 
exist in what they so love to refer to as the "oil-rich" Kingdom.

The Western journalists typically enter the Kingdom under cover of pretending that 
they want to learn more about what goes on here, for the benefit of international 
relations and intercultural harmony. 

However, once they arrive they immediately shed their flimsy masks.

High on having got in, they set about doing what they really came here to do: launch 
psychological assaults on the local Saudi population. 

Their weapons are crude, but intellectually devastating: questions of the utmost 
stupidity.

They invariably leave their Saudi victims with a feeling of having been insidiously 
violated, and doubly distressed at their later realization that they were such willing 
victims.

After the initial assault, the victims are betrayed again.

Their polite but persistently objective and sensible answers are wildly distorted 
- indeed, not unusually completely reversed - in subsequent reports filed by the 
Western journalists for subtle propaganda purposes abroad.

This trend was brought to light last week when a Saudi teenage girl was found in 
tears after falling victim to a psychological terror attack by a foreign reporter, 
who had been walking around under cover of looking like a total and utter idiot completely 
unaware of why he had been sent by his newspaper to the Kingdom.

His operation, it must be admitted, was beautifully carried out: a polite handshake 
that was followed, after he was sure the female victim's trust had been earned, by 
a dramatic series of penetrating questions regarding her assumed oppression as a 
woman, her assumed Al-Qaeda sympathies, and her assumed personal adoration of someone 
called Osama Bin Laden the poor girl had in fact never given much thought to before.

She later recalled through her sobs that he did not so much listen to her answers 
as command her in a most dictatorial fashion to make stereotypical statements about 
Islam and other subjects he knew nothing about so he could later force feed them 
to his largely ignorant readers back in Britain.

His strategy was to make his victim seem as though she were crazy whenever she objected 
to his extraordinary and bizarre suppositions.

But that was just the first phase of his operation.

After requesting the help of an Arab News journalist, he headed straight for the 
Jeddah Corniche. 

There he proceeded to cause pandemonium (not witnessed since last Eid) by asking 
locals settling down for a peaceful picnic about their presumed fondness for a man 
called Osama Bin Laden.

They tried in vain to explain that in fact they do not give much thought these days 
to that individual whose ideas and ideals have never been central to their culture 
and beliefs. They asked to be excused, because their little ones were not used to 
encountering people like this mad Westerner whose behavior was so outrageous and 
improper, and who seemed to have no morals whatsoever. 

Sadly, by then their evening had been ruined.

Many other Saudi victims contacted by Arab News have reported similar assaults by 
this and other Western journalists.

Is it not time for the Saudi authorities to issue guidelines to young Saudis to 
be extra vigilant and exercise extreme caution in light of the reported psychological 
assaults on their brothers and sisters?

After all, the perpetrators are easy to single out from the crowd: they do not speak 
the local language, know nothing about the local culture or religion, and are not 
the slightest bit interested in the opinions of the locals.

It would, of course, be wrong to be alarmist.

In fact, the best advice for Saudi youths is that they should ignore anyone they 
think may be a member of a terror cell. Do not even look them in the eye!

After all, without the complicity of the victim, a psychological assault can never 
succeed. 

[Your Editor had so many reactions to this article that its impossible to list them 
all. Here's a few.

  a.. Complacent chuckles at being proved right yet again. Your editor told his 
unbelieving South Asian friends that President Bush would make those who host terrorists 
pay a very high price for 9/11 - and President Bush has! Working through Mr. Tony 
Blair, his running dog, the mighty CIA infiltrated a British journalist into Jedda. 
The journalist was working "under cover of looking like a total and utter idiot" 
but he carried out Mr. Bush's punishment swiftly and without mercy: he actually made 
a Saudi teenage girl cry! This is a serious message to Osama Bin Laden and the House 
of Fahd: Don't mess with Texas or we'll make your girls cry.
  b.. An immediate desire to learn in which universe this alternate Jedda was located, 
where a western foreigner can actually meet a Saudi teenage girl on the street, talk 
to her, shake her hand, win her trust, etc etc.
  c.. Admiration at the Arab News staffer's cost effective way of coping with Western 
Terror. In the United States, people are looking a hole of $40 billion in their pockets 
for starters in the war against terror. In Saudi Arabia they have everything figured 
out, and it costs nothing: Just don't look a western journalist in the eye! After 
all, it worked for Perseus with Medusa. 
  d.. The casually paranoid thought that Arab News staffer John R. Bradley is actually 
one of those secret agents that Arab News staffer John R. Bradley is warning against. 
After all, the article makes Saudis look exceedingly stupid, not least because they 
are paying this John R. Bradley good money for making them look absurd. And whoever 
heard of a Saudi journalist named John R. Bradley? Sounds like a made-up name to 
us. Something definitely wrong here, but your Editor cant put his finger on it.
  e.. The alarming thought that maybe Mr. Bradley has it all wrong: maybe the journo's 
cover of looking like a total and utter idiot was actually no cover! 
Editor.] 

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