Al Qaeda muffs its media ops for 9-11

Counterterrorism Blog:

For those who follow the workings of Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation, it is no secret that As-Sahab has recently been suffering a series of embarrassing technical problems relating to the delayed publication of Al-Qaida's 9/11 seventh anniversary video, titled "Results of 7 Years of the Crusades." The video--which features speeches by (among others) Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and Abu Yahya al-Liby--appeared set for release on September 11, exactly in the same manner as last year and 2006. Excerpts were handed over to Al-Jazeera for airing over Arabic-language satellite news networks.

Yet, a crippling network outage for Al-Qaida appears to have played a role in thwarting As-Sahab's efforts at completing the distribution process. One of the primary Internet discussion forums used by Al-Qaida and its global network of affiliates to distribute their propaganda and recruit supporters--known as "Al-Ekhlaas"--was suddenly knocked offline on approximately September 10. Next on the chopping block were a series of domains used by another competing extremist forum "Al-Hesbah." The ultimate reason for the outage is unknown, however there have been some reports attributing the action to independent efforts aimed at combating Al-Qaida's online activities. For nearly a week, with the "Ekhlaas" website still offline, there has been no word from As-Sahab--resulting in avid speculation among Al-Qaida supporters on the remaining discussion forums.

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The post says they may get it off the ground today. What this demonstrates is that al Qaeda is suffering from a real geek shortage and the American traitor is not around to help them. Since they claim half their war effort is in the media battle space this has to cramp their strategy.

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