Are you an aspiring jihadi – or even just on side for the big win – and increasingly annoyed because Al Zawraa television has been kicked first out of Iraq, and then out of Egypt?
Can’t watch your favorite shows – repeated loops of infidel soldiers being blown up or sniped at (makes for great internet death porn) by Team Sunni combined with a heavy rotation of religiously-inspired exhortations to further violence?
That’s OK, because the House of Saud has your back:
Outraged by video footage of bloody attacks on American troops, U.S. officials have worked for about half a year to close down a satellite television station that promotes the cause of Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgents to millions of viewers in the region.
Yet Al Zawraa is still beaming calls for violent resistance ‚Äî thanks to one of America’s most important Mideast allies, Saudi Arabia.
U.S. and Iraqi troops chased Al Zawraa television’s staff out of Iraq last year, and this year Washington pressured the Egyptians and Europeans to stop bouncing the station’s signal from their satellites. But despite pleas from Washington, the Saudi government has declined to use its influence as a major stakeholder in the satellite company Arabsat to stop the transmissions, U.S. officials say.
With friends like these…
Somebody’s well directed EMP at somebody’s satellite might provide the squelch effect desired. And leave the “smoking gun” with N.Korea’s fingerprints all over it.
Heh,
GEO6 beat me to it.
I figure there has to be a relatively easy way to get some sort of large chunk of space debris steered towards a re-entry path that would result with a terminal point coinciding the station’s physical plant…
Darned old space junk…. always falling out of orbit like that… darn it all…
Sigh…
As any Rushmore fan could tell you, “With friends like these… who needs friends.”
Gentlemen, this is the time for direct action. How about we whack the guys who are running it too, just to send a message?
Why be covert about it? Wouldn’t you love to hear the following report from the Air Force Chief of Staff: “Mr. President, I have good news and bad news about our latest ASAT Missile test. The bad news is we shot down the wrong satellite. The good news is the satellite we shot down is Arabsat.?
Why be covert about it? Wouldn’t you love to hear the following report from the Air Force Chief of Staff: “Mr. President, I have good news and bad news about our latest ASAT Missile test. The bad news is we shot down the wrong satellite. The good news is the satellite we shot down is Arabsat.”
What makes anyone think the Saudis really are our allies? They won’t publicly condemn the homicide bombers, mass murdering terrorists or even the heinous treatment of women at the hands of the Taliban and others. Why would anyone think they’d be capable of doing something honorable like shutting down images that their silence gives tacit approval?
They are our allies when we defend them from their own homegrown terrorists, or when they want more oil money from us. Beyond that I wonder…whose side are they REALLY on, if we’re going to be all honest and open about things.
Besides, the Saudis are the ones exporting Wahabism (the extreme version) to mosques and schools all over the world. They are undermining nations and Western Civilization purposefully and intentionally. They have no desire to stop broadcasting, let alone proselytizing, to us unbelievers.
AS AW1 Tim alluded to, just whack the sat… What are they going to do? Send up a space shuttle to investigate?
Oh, yeah, that’s right, they don’t HAVE a manned space program…
Skip the on-orbit whack job, it’ll screw-up too many other satellites. Just jam the d*mn signal…
- SJS
You know, we could pull out of Iraq, occupy the 30 square km or so of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that actually have oil in them in just a few hours, and that would do more damage to the jihad than just about anything else I can think of–we ensure oil gets pumped, distributed and sold at open market prices (no more OPEC cartel), and our enemies get deprived of a trillion or so dollars a year, most of it coming from our pockets. Whatever the cost, it would be cheaper than trying to make Iraqis safe from themselves, and it would actually harm our enemies. Sounds like a plan to me.