The U.S. government and corporate media would like Americans to believe that the embassy attack that took place in Libya and the global protests that are taking place now are the result of an anti-Islam movie. There is much more to it than that.

::::::::

(Article changed on September 17, 2012 at 11:52)

This article was originally published at Madison Independent Examiner. The "inflammatory" video is available for viewing there.


Egyptian protesters tear down the flag at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
Credits: AFP/Getty Images

U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans tragically died on Tuesday, September 11th, in an attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Currently, protests have erupted in 49 locations around the world. The U.S. government and media claim that an anti-Islam movie spurred the attack and protests, but recent revelations from other sources suggest that may not be entirely true.

The "film" that sparked this global controversy is supposedly entitled "Innocence of Muslims." All that has been seen thus far, however, is a roughly 14-minute "trailer" that is posted on YouTube (see video here). There are versions of the video in both English and Arabic. The original English version entitled "Muhammad Movie Trailer" was posted by Sam Bacile on July 2nd. The New York Times reported that the video was dubbed into Arabic for the first time on September 4th. The version of the video, titled "The Innocence of Muslims" was posted on September 12th.

The timing of the posting of these videos and the time of the attack raises questions as to how this video is to blame. But there is more that suggests that a third-rate film is not to blame for the embassy attacks and the current global protests.

A full-length film may not even exist

According to the New York Times, the writer and producer of the film is Sam Bacile, allegedly an Israeli who spent about $5 million on the film with the help of over 100 Jewish donors.

The Christian Science Monitor reported , however, that there may be no anti-Islamic movie at all:

The online 14-minute clip of a purportedly anti-Islamic movie that sparked protests at the US embassy in Cairo and the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is now looking like it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.

That inference is based in part on an interview given to Gawker by Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress who appears in the video clip. She tells the website that she was hired last summer for a small part in a movie she was told would be called "Desert Warriors," about life in Egypt 2,000 years ago (Islam is about 1,400 years old):

It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything"In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George.' The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed.

CNN reported that the 80 cast and crew members hired for "Desert Warriors" are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer of "Innocence of Muslims." A reference was made to "rewrites of the script." As it turns out, however, parts of the script were simply dubbed over in the YouTube video.

Sarah Abdurrahman, a media analyst for On the Media, also noted the dubbing in the clip:

If you watch closely, you can see that when the actors are reading parts of the script that do not contain Islam-specific language, the audio from the sound stage is used (the audio that was recorded as the actors were simultaneously being filmed). But anytime the actors are referring to something specific to the religion (the Prophet Muhammed, the Quran, etc.) the audio recorded during filming is replaced with a poorly executed post-production dub. And if you look EVEN closer, you can see that the actors' mouths are saying something other than what the dub is saying.

For example, at 2:53, the voiceover says "His name is Muhammed. And we can call him The Father Unknown." In this case, the whole line is dubbed, and it appears the actor is actually saying, "His name is George (?). And we can call him The Father Unknown."

Abdurrahman continues to point out eight more instances of poor dubbing found on the video.

Rosie Grey, writing for Buzzfeed, also noticed the poor dubbing:

Nearly all of the names in the movie's "trailer" are overdubbed. The video is a compilation of the most clumsily overdubbed moments from what is in reality an incoherent, haphazardly-edited set of scenes. Among the overdubbed words is "Mohammed," suggesting that the footage was taken from a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video sources -- there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and locations.

In summary, the global controversy is not over a full-length film as reported by many media outlets. It is over a poorly-dubbed, less than 14-minute YouTube video.

Confusion over who actually directed and who produced the "film"

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for The Atlantic, says "Sam Bacile" is not Israeli and that it is not his real name. Goldberg managed to contact one of the few verifiable people involved in the production of the alleged film, Steve Klein, a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, California who worked as a consultant for Bacile. Klein told Goldberg that Bacile, the producer of the film, is not Israeli, and most likely not Jewish, as has been reported, and that the name is, in fact, a pseudonym. He said he did not know "Bacile"'s real name.

That correlates with the actress, Garcia, who said Bacile told her he was Egyptian on set. "Bacile had white hair and spoke Arabic to a number of dark-skinned men who hung around the set."

Gawker claims that it has confirmed that a softcore porn director named Alan Roberts was listed as director on the summer 2011 casting calls and call sheets of "Desert Warriors." "Castmembers and crew told us yesterday that Roberts was brought on by producer "Sam Bacile' aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula."

An FBI investigation led to the questioning of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who they suspect to be the director of the film. According to NBC, Nakoula told the Associated Press he was not the director on the film, but rather a logistics manager.

According to The Smoking Gun, Nakoula became a government informant after his 2009 arrest for bank fraud and is currently on federal probation. Under the terms of federal probation for anyone who commits a financial crime, Nakoula would have been required to report all records of his bank and business transactions, including the $5 million allegedly used for film production.

The relevance of the confusion over who wrote, produced and directed "Desert Warriors" is not about finding and placing the blame on any individual. It is the confusion itself that is relevant.

Anyone familiar with Hollywood knows that everyone working on a film with a $5 million budget wants their role in it documented and publicized. It is not illegal to make any film, even if it is anti-Islam. Regardless of his role in making the film, it would not have been a violation of Nakoula's probation as long as he reported any business transactions. That raises another red flag about the entire story.

The assault on the embassy in Libya was planned in advance

There is much evidence that the attack on the embassy in Libya was not the result of a protest over the video that turned violent, but rather was a planned, coordinated military-style assault. Even NBC news acknowledges that U.S. officials are "probing the possibility that Wednesday's attack was planned and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Several media outlets, including the Independent UK, reported that the U.S. had credible information of the attack 48 hours before it occurred:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.

Senior officials are increasingly convinced, however, that the ferocious nature of the Benghazi attack, in which rocket-propelled grenades were used, indicated it was not the result of spontaneous anger due to the video, called Innocence of Muslims. Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary at the State Department, said he was convinced the assault was planned due to its extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.

An eight-strong American rescue team was sent from Tripoli and taken by troops under Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade, to the secret safe house to extract around 40 U.S. staff. The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. "I don't know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries," said Captain Obeidi. "It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa."

Other media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, Russia Today and The Washington Post quoted U.S. officials saying that they believe the attack was planned in advance. CNN's source claimed "Tuesday's attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was planned in advance, and the attackers used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion." Intelligence officials also reportedly said the attack on the Benghazi consulate was too coordinated or professional to be spontaneous.

If the attack on the embassy in Libya was planned at least 48 hours in advance, then that means it was planned prior to the international publicity that the inflammatory video received. Furthermore, the U.S. government acknowledges that rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine guns were used in the attack. Who brings those to a spontaneous protest about a YouTube video?

So, now we have a film that may not even exist for which no one wants to have their name associated with and a planned, coordinated attack. The facts suggest that the video is a contrived piece of propaganda. Some suggest that it is a pretext for more "U.S. boots on the ground." The U.S. government and corporate media, after acknowledging the attacks may have been planned in advance, is back to the official story line that the current global situation is all over a YouTube video. Apparently, Americans are supposed to believe that Muslims are just overreacting.

Blowback from years of civilian deaths and meddling in other nations

Protests are occurring all over the world right now. The consistent theme, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, is that America must leave. The amount of U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan last month should have given our leaders the same message. The rage seen across the world has very little to do with the video. People in nations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, etc. do not hate Americans for our freedoms, or for our religion.

Both Libya and Egypt witnessed drastic political upheavals in the past year, in which the United States played a crucial role. The "war on terror" turned Iraq into bloody chaos, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and casualties, with millions of people displaced. Drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen kill civilians, then first responders are targeted. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been invaded on the basis of lies, their governments subverted to serve foreign interests, their women and children killed or maimed, their places of worship bombed, their cultural history buried under rubble. Some photos of that are available here.

The people in the nations invaded and subverted by the U.S. through a decade of overt and covert wars, as well as in neighboring nations, are rioting because they hate America. And that is because every time they see their friends and neighbors blown to bloody bits before their eyes, the shrapnel is stamped: "Made in the USA."

Do the citizens of those invaded nations have reasons to hate America, other than that silly little video?

Well, yes, they do.

The attacks and protests should serve as a reminder that it is time for the U.S. government to rethink its policies toward the Middle East or it will face a dead end there. It is time to bring our troops home and stop meddling in the internal affairs of other nations.

Update: Sunday, September 16th. NATO has admitted that eight Afghan women were killed and seven more wounded in an airstrike. Great way to soothe tensions around the world!

Sources:

New York Times -- Libya Attack Brings Challenges for U.S.

New York Times - Filmmaker Goes Into Hiding After Protests

The Christian Science Monitor

Gawker

CNN - Pentagon to review video of Libya attack

On the Media

Buzzfeed

The Atlantic

Gawker

NBC

The Smoking Gun

Independent UK

Russia Today

CNN - U.S. vows to hunt down perpetrators of Benghazi attack

Press TV

Madison Independent Examiner - U.S. casualties in Afghanistan: A closer look

Guardian UK

WhatReallyHappened

CNN - NATO admits killing civilians in Afghan strike

Authors Website: http://www.examiner.com/independent-in-madison/gregory-patin

Authors Bio:
Gregory Patin is a free-lance writer residing in Madison, WI. He earned a BA in political science from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a MS in IT management from Colorado Tech. He is politically independent and not affiliated with either the Democrat or Republican party.