Insurgents and the art of public denial

The Counterterrorism Blog has an interesting little piece on how the Al-Fajr "media center", which is the "official" outlet for Al Qaeda videos and other forms of communiqués, has denied that it should be behind statements that "the newly designated commander of Al-Qaida in Iraq Abu Hamza al-Muhajir personally beheaded two U.S. soldiers taken captive in Al-Yousifiyah".

They reject it on the internet and states that it is a sign of the "defeat of the crusader forces and their allies".

This is an interesting little thing. It shows that the AQ media strategy is somewhat consistent. And that the concerns over strategic persona(s) are indeed real, as I have written on here.

In this sense the Al-Fajr looks very much like a PR outfit that tries to publicly deny a political scandal - and that makes them a little bit more understandable than the otherwise anarchic doings and sayings attributed to AQ in the global "war on terror".