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US constrained in propaganda war
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon had not done a good job in the information war against enemies like al Qaeda, saying US personnel felt constrained partly due to fear of criticism in the media.''This is an area that we don't do well -- we know we don't do well,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing yesterday, referring to information operations and psychological warfare aimed at foreign peoples and enemies. ''How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, (and) the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them.'' A debate is under way in America over what is permissible for the US government to do to spread its message to foreign audiences as it engages in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in what it calls a global war against terrorism. The US military command in Iraq is investigating a military program that funneled money to some Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles. The Pentagon in 2002 closed its Office of Strategic Influence after reports that it planned to plant false news stories with foreign media outlets. ''We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will. And the determinant of that is what is played in the media,'' Rumsfeld said. ''And, therefore, the terrorists have media committees, and they plan it. And they manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it.'' But Rumsfeld said the risk of being criticized by the US news media had a chilling effect on the US military. ''And they (defense personnel) say, oh my goodness, if you do anything in that area, you get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media and the media likes to write about the media,'' Rumsfeld said. ''And our people are chilled and reticent and uncomfortable,'' Rumsfeld added. A document signed by Rumsfeld that was made public last week acknowledged that information spread by the Pentagon to influence foreign audiences increasingly seeps back home and is ''consumed by our domestic audience.'' The Pentagon is prohibited from targeting American audiences with these ''psychological operations.'' The Pentagon said the ''psychological operations'' information was truthful. But the research organization that obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act described it as propaganda planted overseas that inevitably made its way back to the United States. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-03 |
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