Khorasan Group: Anatomy of Propaganda

TND Guest Contributor:  Daniel McAdams |

Remember the Khorasan Group? It was only three weeks ago, when the Obama Administration was desperate for any kind of legal justification for its plan to begin bombing Syria, that we began hearing about a horrifically dangerous group that was worse than ISIS and was in the final stages of planning an attack on the United States.

Absent a threat from Syria, absent Congressional authorization, absent a UN resolution, any US missile strike on Syria would be illegal, an aggressive move characteristic of a rogue state. If a story line could be crafted that there was an imminent threat to the United States, however, the president would have Constitutional authority to thwart the attempted strike.

So that is precisely the line the US administration — through anonymous “senior administration officials” — proceeded to cast out. And the mainstream media fish were all biting.

“Al-Qaida-Affiliated Group Was in ‘Final Stages’ of Planning Attacks Against the West, wrote the National Journal, citing without question those unnamed administration officials.

The always CIA-friendly Time Magazine fell in line:  ”Worse Than ISIS? A Primer on the Khorasan Group.” The rest of the mainstream media followed suit.

Only independent outlets like the Ron Paul Institute were not buying the line the US regime was selling.

But terrifying Obama Administration tales about the Khorasan Group worked. Almost no one questioned his Constitutional authority to begin bombing a country that had not attacked us and that did not want to be bombed. A majority of Americans, it seemed, were just thrilled that the bombs finally started falling.

And then the Khorasan Group threat dematerialized. Vanished as quickly as it arrived. Once the bomb doors were opened there was no shutting them. As Bloomberg reported, “A Month of Bombs Dropped in Two Days of Syria Strikes.”

There was no stopping them now. So Khorasan was thrown down the memory hole. Vanished. Nowhere is this psychological operation better captured than in a recent chart tracing social media mentions of the Khorasan Group on Twitter:

h/t: Glenn Greenwald and Peter Hassett

Khorasan Group, we hardly knew ye: https://t.co/7sqCLg0FQy

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 14, 2014

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The above appeared at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website and is reprinted with permission.  To visit the website, click here. Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is a project of Dr. Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (F.R.E.E.), founded in the 1970s as an educational organization. The Institute continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home.  The Institute mobilizes colleagues and collaborators of Dr. Paul’s to participate in a broad coalition to educate and advocate for fundamental changes in our foreign and domestic policy.  To support the institute’s important work, click here.

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