Today, I watched the propaganda segment on Jordanian TV. It was an alleged "confession" by a "senior aide" to...who else, Abu Mus`ab Az-Zarqawi. He certainly did not come across as a leader of anything, not even of the gang that could not shoot straight, to use a cliche. He looked 16, if that. He kept talking about taking orders from a `Azzam, and yet the Jordanian mukhabarat propaganda department was billing it as a major coup for the torturing service of the Hashemites. I could not help notice how Jordanian TV has not changed: they still have the feel of Ba`thist propaganda from the 1970s; even the anchorman looked like he did a stint at the Mukhabarat before being hired to read the news. He looked like he shot 2 people before coming on the air. The man in question gave a "confession" but the camera only showed his face and shoulders. I just wanted the camera to move south just to see whether the henchmen of the mukhabarat had removed all of his nails, and whether they removed one or two of his testicles during torture sessions. It was so badly produced and directed, that it had the feel of Stalin's confessions. When you think about it: US propaganda wars in the Middle East are going as badly as US actual wars. And AlArabiyya TV, which has become an unofficial US propaganda network--to the point that US officials appear on AlArabiyya more frequently than they appear on Fox News (and I am not exaggerating, just today Condoleezza Rice was on again today)--was so festive and hyper promoting the "coup" of Jordanian mukhabarat. But in fairness to Al-Arabiyya: they invited a "neutral expert" to comment on the Jordan mukhabarat's TV film. They invited Mahmud Kharabshah; just because Mahmud Kharabshah headed the Mukhabarat in the past, does not mean that he was not a neutral observer (see my debate with Kharabshah on AlJazeera somewhere on this site).