Why can't the U.S. counter ISIS' online propaganda?

ISIS broadcasts the world's most horrific war crimes.

The group is despised across the globe.

So why does the West's anti-ISIS messaging come off as kind of lame?

It's hard to understand why the U.S. government can't seem to come up with effective counters for ISIS propaganda — especially considering creating anti-ISIS PR should be really, really easy.

And yet, the whole U.S. effort online basically consists of bizarre low-budget videos, attempts to troll pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, inadvertently bringing even more attention to ISIS' posts and a collection of social media accounts with the not-very-catchy message: "Think Again, Turn Away."

Of course, the problem there isn't just with the message but also the messenger. And even U.S. officials acknowledge that.

"We all know the government is probably not the best platform to try to communicate with the set of actors who are potentially vulnerable to this type of propaganda and this kind of recruitment," Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said on C-SPAN.