'Terrorist' shoot-em-ups aren't propaganda

Nick Farrell / The Inquirer | May 9 2006

LAST WEEK, we reported how the US government officials were a little concerned that terrorists were building mods for shoot-em-ups to recruit young terrorists.

See Shoot em ups hijacked by Islamic militants .

One title sending ripples of outrage through the defense establishment was a video based on Battlefield 2 and was cited as proof that the mods came from Islamic militants.

Alas, the video was made by a Battlefield 2 fan who goes by the name SonicJihad, who turned out to be easily found by a simple web search.

While Mr Jihad apparently took his handle from a popular beat combo artist who released a little ditty called 'Bush Killa' about the current president's dad he is not in the least bit terrorist-like.

So it looks like the US government's fear that games could be used as propaganda might be a bit of projection.

The US Army does use games like Team America as recruiting tools, and naturally assumed the bad guys would be doing the same thing.