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Tom MacMaster, a US student at the University of Edinburgh, said the blog had been a fiction - but that the facts it contained were true.

The 40-year-old married man's blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, described life in the Syrian city amid the current political unrest.

It gained a worldwide readership and was closely followed by news reporters.

The blog, dating back to February this year, claimed to document the life of 25-year-old Amina Abdallah Arraf al-Omari, a half-Syrian, half-American lesbian living in Damascus.

Entries covered her social life and relationships, but "Amina" also criticised President Bashar al-Assad and spoke about her role in the growing anti-government protests.

'Real facts and opinions'

Last Monday a post which was said to be written by Amina's cousin said she had been seized by armed men believed to be members of President Assad's Baath party.

The news was widely reported, including by the BBC, and bloggers and activists launched an online campaign to secure her release.

On Sunday, an "apology to readers" appeared on the blog signed by Tom MacMaster - a 40-year-old American Middle East activist studying at Edinburgh University - who said he was "the sole author of all posts on this blog".

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"Mindwar is the deliberate, aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win that war. In its strategic context, mindwar must reach out to friends, enemies and neutrals alike across the globe. through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth. These media are, of course, the electronic media—television and radio. State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world."
-U.S. Army, "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory", by accused pedophile Lt Col Michael Aquino founder of the Temple of Set and member of the Church of Satan, authr of "The Church of Satan"
http://www.xeper.org/maquino/nm/MindWar.pdf
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread329345/pg1
http://www.xeper.org/maquino/index.html

"Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience."
US Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — An American military propaganda campaign that planted favorable news articles in the Iraqi news media did not violate laws or Pentagon regulations, but it was not properly supervised by military officials in Baghdad, an audit by the Pentagon Inspector General has concluded.

The report said that the secret program, run by the military in conjunction with the Lincoln Group, a Washington contractor, was lawful and that it did not constitute a “covert action” designed to influence the internal political conditions of another country.

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