The Disinfomation Campaign....

The useful idiots of the press and now the left, are giving Hezbollah and many other bloodthirsty Islamic killers just what they want, media frontpage headlines, sometimes untruthful as I discuss later, in order to win the media war as inspired by al Qaida number two, Zawahiri...

We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. . . . [W]e are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma.

--Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 2005

So therefore, what is a useful idiot?

In political jargon, the term "useful idiot" was used during the Cold War by anti-communists to describe Soviet sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States) and the alleged attitude of the Soviet government towards them. The implication was that the person in question was naive, foolish, or in willful denial, and that he or she was being cynically used by the Soviet Union, or another Communist state.

So it was originally a term for the communist sympathizers in the West that were doing their bidding, unwittingly promoting an ideology very different from the utopian image that these people held for it. This ideology was twisted as to its true nature in these people's minds so that even Lenin himself recognized this misperception and acknowledged that it was not in these people's best interest, by coining the phrase "useful idiots."

So who are today's useful idiots. The press is one, willfully reporting bullshit about what is going on in the Middle-East. I don't know if it is just plain laziness, a vestige of their agenda laden editorial policies or the drive to scoop in short news life cycles that create this sloppiness in reporting. Maybe sloppy reporting was the norm pre-blog days when a monolithic press had little competition and rarely got caught making errors or identified as complicit in pushing a political point of view.

The problem with such journalism is that stories get promoted quickly that may not be true or are generated to create appearances or impressions that are clearly false. What drives the Reuters photojournalist Hajj to create fake pictures? Competition or complicity with Muslim killers? Why didn't Reuters catch these problems before? They were in the best position to opine on the pictures prior to publication. Were the editorial policies such that the fake photos met the storyline and expectations of the Reuters employees so therefore generating no questions? Some of Hajj's pictures were clearly photo-shopped so how did they get through the scrutiny that the big media touts as its advantage over the non-policed blogosphere?

Evidence of such poor reporting or taking the word of biased players in the Middle-east creates problems for the press and those that are truly interested in making the world a better place. For example, Reuters reports this...

"An hour ago, a horrific massacre took place in Houla village as a result of the intentional Israeli bombardment that resulted in more than 40 martyrs," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut.

However, the problem with this statement by the Prime Minister is that there weren't 40 people killed, just one in that strike. And as Dinocrat asks, if there was really only one killed, how did they get the local villagers that they interviewed to say this?

Residents of Houla said they feared up to 60 people, including many children, had been killed. They said most of the people were shepherds who had refused to flee the fighting.

So were these 59 resurrected people out tending their sheep and there was confusion among the locals as to how many were killed? Did someone miscount the one body pulled from the rubble?

And how about Qana, where there are still lots of unanswered questions on the Israeli bombing of a building there where early reports of 50 dead were reduced to 28. I haven't seen the meida firestorm seeking truth there. As the media reports, there were 13 children killed in that attack as well as many women. But one of the questions that I have never heard asked by the media and never dealt with there, if it was truly middle of the night, where were the men?

Is Hezbollah using the tactics and "useful idiots" in the press as Ayman al-Zawahiri promotes in the first quote at the top of this piece? The goal of Hezbollah is to make it appear that Israel is the one that is indiscriminate and not their own firing of hundreds of rockets wildly into northern Israel with the express intention of killing civilians? "Useful idiots" like the reporters and editors at Reuters make this fiction a reality through their actions.

Reuters and other media organizations have become the useful idiots for the frothing at the mouth Islamic militant. They are ready and willing to report anything suitable that meets their anti-Israel or anti-American criteria and creates negative headlines for both countries. Either that or they are just plain incompetent and shouldn't be in the news business at all.

But The American Thinker delves into the why the useful idiot is so dangerous in this conflict with Islam...

The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.

The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as "Political Islam," or "Radical Islam," for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter --the Quran-- is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the "real Islam" constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.

By legitimizing Islam's prejudices and only characterizing them as radical when manifested in deadly and barbaric behavior, creates the illusion that these are deviations from the body teaching. Unfortunately it is not. Islam never went through the Reformation and Renaissance

The 'humanism' of the Renaissance period stimulated unprecedented academic ferment, and a concern for academic freedom. Ongoing, earnest theoretical debates occurred in the universities about the nature of the church, and the source and extent of the authority of the papacy, of councils, and of princes.

and continues to teach and preach hate, violence and a way of life better suited to the 7th Century than today's world. Violence is taught to Muslims as a solution to their ills. Until we realize that these people as a whole are dangerous and that it is difficult to distinguish the "good" or "moderate" Muslim from the crazy ones that gun down women in a synagogue in Seattle our world will continue to deteriorate.

AS one Iranian writer says...

The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.