Evil terrorists are using computer games for propaganda!

Yep its true - at least according to CIA/Pentagon and the US congress

Was an elite congressional intelligence committee shown video footage from an off-the-shelf retail game and told by the Pentagon and a highly-paid defense contractor that it was a jihadist creation designed to recruit and indoctrinate terrorists?

It's looking more and more like that is the case.

The bizarre story began to unfold last week when Reuters reported that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was shown video footage of combat action which was represented as a user-modified version (or "mod") of Electronic Art's best-selling Battlefield 2, a modern-day military simulation which features combat between U.S. forces and those of the fictitious Middle East Coalition (MEC) as well as the People's Republic of China.

Reuters quoted a Pentagon official, Dan Devlin, as saying, "What we have seen is that any video game that comes out... (al Qaeda will) modify it and change the game for their needs."

The influential committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), watched footage of animated combat in which characters depicted as Islamic insurgents killed U.S. troops in battle. The video began with the voice of a male narrator saying, "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters..."

Several GP readers immediately noticed that the voice-over was actually lifted from Team America: World Police, an outrageous 2004 satirical film produced by the creators of the popular South Park comedy series. At about the same time, gamers involved in the online Battlefield 2 community were pointing out the video footage shown to Congress was not a mod of BF2 at all, but standard game footage from EA's Special Forces BF2 add-on module, a retail product widely available in the United States and elsewhere.

GamePolitics has been seeking comment on the video from the Pentagon and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a defense contractor based in San Diego. Committee chair Hoekstra's office referred GP back to the committee for comment. A call there had not been returned by press time.

According to Reuters, the U.S. government is paying SAIC $7 million to monitor Islamist web sites, which is where they apparently discovered a copy of the footage. However, the video can also readily be accessed via links found in the user forums of the popular Planet Battlefield site, operated by IGN Entertainment of Brisbane, California.

Source (also contains an interview with the guy that made the video)

Its old news but ABC News recently made a story (7 min. video) about it, so I thought I would mention it anyway.

With this level of incompetence at such high levels, I wonder whether the terrorists or the officials are the biggest threat to society? ;-) Besides this is almost certain proof that "the government" in absolutely no way can cover up any UFO/NWO/bases on the moon/whatever cases what so ever They didn't even manage to do a google search for the video to found out about its origins...its a bit tragic when you think about it...

Just move this thread if it doesn't fit in this category - thanks!

This just further proves the ineptness of our representatives in government. It also further proves that they have no clue in what they are doing as far as security measures go. That "fan film" was just a screen capture from Battlefield Vietnam that was modified. The words that they were so worried about were words taken from the movie by Trey Parker & Matt Stone (The guys who make South Park) called "Team America"


Pie

This is just too funny.

The report lists a number of games which either by design or by 'accident' train pre-soldiers to kill brown/asian people and then complains when someone tweaks a game (or did they?) so you can play the jihadi side.

Have these people no sense of irony?

It now seems PC (sorry!) to allow gamers to play the VC side in 'Nam war games - why not play the 'resistance' side in modern ones?

current on going discussion found here
Jihad in video games

Please add your thoughts there. Thread closed.