Latest idea? Frighten Americans and embolden Jihadis by distributing snuff films like the one showing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl having his head cut off.

I don't know the extent to which this has been independently verified, but this site discusses the idea (and links to a rather sickening video):

The newest tactical plan in the Islamist propaganda campaign is to create and distribute videos to the media showing the actual rape/torture/murder of westerners specifically kidnapped for these productions.

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It will also interest you to know that these types of videos were made as fund-raisers for the Islamist cause and that it was possible to have placed a custom order for the type of person and style of execution.

For the majority of those Westerners who have had the gumption to view the video clips, they represent a shocking introduction into the twelfth century morality that seems to be irrevocably entwined in the Islamist mentality. It is also an indelible introduction to the use of video as a weapon in and of itself.

The unwilling primary actors for this deliberately cold-blooded exercise in psychological terror operations are to be western, but preferably American military personnel, business people, non-governmental organization (NGO) charity workers and lastly journalists themselves. The ranking of potential victims is purposeful as it is the journalists who must complete the distribution cycle and it would not do to unduly alarm them, unless of course they fail to cooperate as expected.

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[T]he bottom line for the consumers of mass media...[i]s the decision of whether to continue to become shocked and dismayed by the already-announced dissemination of barbarous images though our own media outlets that lack the mature and objective self-restraint required… or to finally become aware of who we are as a nation and a culture, the true nature of whom are at war with and begin to deal with it rationally and decisively.

Americans are generally decent, big-hearted people, and inclined to be charitable, even genuinely compassionate. But let those who might otherwise be seen as sympathetic underdogs resort to bloodthirsty tactics like torturing American civilians, and Americans are inclined to be in a very uncharitable mood.

Americans have an ugly, (even politically incorrect) history of saying things like, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian!"

And acting accordingly.

It's all very regrettable, of course.....

I would never condone it.

But just the same, I wouldn't advise snuff films as a way to defeat Americans.