The Pentagon is now conducting a propaganda campaign against the Islamic State group in which the U.S. military is dropping thousands of leaflets with hopes of creating tension among fighters and dissuading others from supporting the group.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the military dropped 60,000 flyers last week on Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic State group's capital city stronghold, according to USA Today.
On Thursday, the Pentagon published the gruesome cartoon image that was printed on those flyers. It shows Islamic State "recruits" lined up in a bloody room with a sign reading, "Daish [Islamic State] recruiting office," as a fighter throws the recruits one by one into a meat grinder. The images were created by the Military Information Support Operations, previously called psychological operations.
Col. Tadd Sholtis, an Air Force spokesman, told USA Today that an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle dropped the leaflets via a specialized "leaflet-dispenser bomb."
The move is part of an effort to counter the sophisticated media campaign being waged by the Islamic State group. The group often releases violent videos of hostages being executed, "news" reports narrated by a British journalist who was captured and conducted social media campaigns. Hackers have also targeted the U.S. military, according to The Wall Street Journal.
There have also been reported problems within the ranks of foreign fighters who have come to Syria to fight with the group, and the Pentagon hopes to exploit those problems with propaganda, according to Jennifer Cafarella, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, USA Today reported.
said Nicholas Heras, an expert on the Islamic State group at the Center for a New American Security, said the goal is to "set the stage for an internal uprising against ISIS."
The Pentagon has spent more than $1 billion on its propaganda efforts in the Middle East.
