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| StrategyPage: Silencing Success |
| 2005-09-20 |
| There's a war going on in the U.S. Department of Defense, between the Information Warriors, and the OPSEC (Operational Security) traditionalists. It goes like this. Many American military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan are being kept secret because of traditional attitudes towards OPSEC (keeping the enemy from knowing what you are up to). But troops on the spot, especially the Special Forces, realize that the rules of OPSEC have changed in the age of cell phones and the Internet. You snatch an al Qaeda big shot in Iraq, and his buddies are going to know about it real quick. The OPSEC advocates (generally senior intel officers in the Pentagon, and the intel "establishment") will respond that it is still important to keep the bad guys in the dark about how their boy was taken down. That's because whatever tricks were used to pull that off, could be used again. But not so if the terrorists know details, and have time to come up with countermeasures. The Information Warriors, who want more of these successes publicized, point out that you don't have to describe every detail of these operations. All you have to do is release information that the terrorists are going to get anyway, and usually before the American public. Indeed, most Americans have little idea just how successful their troops have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, for all their operations are distorted by reporters who only want to do stories about failures or missed opportunities. The Information Warriors also point out that misleading details, of how U.S. troops pulled some operations off, could be released, in order to confuse the enemy. This suggestion gets Pentagon lawyers and political advisors a tad hysterical. We can't have the Pentagon feeding the enemy deceptive information via the mass media. This, despite the fact that the enemy does it all the time, and that the practice has been in use for thousands of years. It works. The downside exists in some mythical world that no one has ever lived in. But the political problems are real, so you have to deal with it and step very carefully when it comes to military deceptions involving the mass media. . The result of all this is something of a stalemate. The troops have tried to fight back via their blogs, but there the Pentagon OPSEC traditionalists have come out on top as well. Troops with blogs have been ordered to be careful, or else. The Information Warriors are trying to convince the senior brass, but this is a slow and time consuming process. Meanwhile, many victories go unreported, making the enemy look more formidable than they actually are. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #8 The danger here is that the "good guys" end up being so politicized and perverted they become a mirror image, alter-ego, or proxy of the very enemies or "bad guys" they're suppos to be protecting Govt, America, and the Masses from. Its like the FBI allowing its Narcs or Informants to go on committing crimes because they need the intel on other bad guys, yet they claim the FBI is NOT responsible for any harm done to any innocents but the FBI still has de facto "control" over its field operatives and agents. To CYA its ass, the FBI has to either claim its has to be sued before it can change anything, which is contrary to the CFR, the Agency's CHarter, and Federal Caselaws; or else get its corrupt Narcs or Informants to hire the Mafia to get rid of the victims, andor "blacklist" the innocent so as no one would believe him or her due to lack of "credentials", or other insidious method or methods. OVER TIME, THE "CRITICAL MASS" BECOMES SO LARGE THAT FORMERLY LEGIT LAW ENFORCEMENT, JUDICIARY, AND POLS, ETC. ARE NOW CONTRIBUTING TO WHAT HAS BECOME A CRIMINAL OR MAFIA STATE WHERE "CRIMINAL" = "CAPITALIST" = "GOD" = "GOVT." = "GOOD GUYS". 9-11 has occurred and America's NPE by the Clintons are now protecting and promoting its own Destroyers, where Clintonism > Mainstream America is by definition ANTI-AMERICAN AND PRO-SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST, because "Fascism = Communism" and Socialism = Capitalism" and America = Russia-China" and "Patriot = Traitor/Criminal", etc. super-PC Clintonisms. THE POLS ARE NOW "ORDERING" THE SHEEPLE, NOT INFORMING OR RESPECTING THE PEOPLE. * JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG, when German Judge Burt Lancaster laments on how could Hitler and Nazi-ism came upon the German people, to which old America friend SPENCER TRACY remarks, "IT HAPPENED THE FIRST TIME YOU [WILFULLY]SENT AN INNOCENT MAN TO JAIL[or DEATH]"!? CLINTONS > AMERICA IS A COMMUNIST NATION IN EVERYTHING EXCEPT NAME OR PUBLIC DESCRIPTION, ONLY THE SHEEPLE WON'T KNOW OR WON'T CARE TO KNOW, AND THE LEFTIES T'AINT GONNA TELL YOU UNTIL SUCH TIME AMERICA WON'T BE ABLE TO CHANGE ANYTHING EXCEPT VIA BLOODY CIVIL WAR AND WORLD WAR. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-09-20 22:58 |
| #7 Clearly, better heads need to do basic knowledge management here. Emergent differs non-emergent intelligence must be identified, classified and handled accordingly. There is a finite self-life on emergent intelligence, losing its value very quickly. The value of non-emergent intelligence doesn't dissipate quickly and, in many cases, increases in value when collected and combined with other non-emergent intelligence (i.e., Able Danger). |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-09-20 18:49 |
| #6 I have to take the side of the OPSEC people on this one. Let me start out with a simple axiom to show how there are times when "no news is good news." * The US military has concluded that there is NO circumstance in which pictures of dead bodies is of any benefit to the war effort. It doesn't matter whose bodies are shown. To follow this up. The military operates on a scale of successes and failures. Neither of these are ever perfect, and are subject to change. A success can easily be squandered, and failure after failure can be utterly negated, or even turned into success by careful planning. "The enemy already knows that information" is a fatally flawed argument, and for several reasons. First of all, you *don't know* what the enemy knows. Second, you don't know what *an* enemy knows. Just because one of them knows it, it doesn't mean that the others do. Our dissemination of information is often far superior to our enemies'. Third, even if your *current* enemy knows it, that does not mean that your *next* enemy knows it. I doubt this will be the last war we fight. Fourth, by giving away what *you* think is unimportant information, the enemy might be able to piece together important information. Fifth, unimportant information might impeach bad information the enemy has been led to believe. Sixth, what you think you know may be enemy disinformation. Seventh, you may even defeat your own purpose, because no matter how erudite you are, or how telling your photographs, no one but those who are there will ever really know the context. Eighth, even if you are as clear as a bell, what you write and photograph may be manipulated, spun, distored, corrupted, photoshopped and used for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Now, whether or not you agree with all of the above, it should cast doubt on the morale value to the folks back home, compared to the tactical and strategic value to the folks at the front. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-09-20 12:24 |
| #5 I sincerely hope the General "Busted" his #2 back to Leutenant for "Withholding" the intel. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2005-09-20 12:21 |
| #4 Oh, yeah, good policy. Keep everyone in the dark. Pardon me, do you notice that since the MSM refuses to report on successes in the war, that leaves only your own people to do it. Since you've now come down on policy to prohibit that, now the news of our success is buried. So the general public buys the lies of MSM. You lose the war, just like Vietnam, because you lose the homefront. The God Damn intel people are as much a threat as any enemy. In the down-sizing of the Army in the post Gulf War I period, a conference of general officers was held at Fort Leavenworth. One very serious consideration was to end MI as a branch and restructure the skills as additional specialities, because during the war the intel people could not and in some cases would not support the tactical commander. One commander was livid because his '2' would not release intel to him during the operation because he didn't have the 'clearance'. The intel people will over classify, will withhold, will choke the information flow. Great the enemy won't know, but neither will we. |
| Posted by: Glereper Angolutle3263 2005-09-20 09:09 |
| #3 We can't have the Pentagon feeding the enemy deceptive information via the mass media. Why not? The MSM lie to us every day. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-20 08:03 |
| #2 Doesn't it? If DOD put it out, FOX at least would carry it. Jack Kelly would write about it ... so would others. |
| Posted by: lotp 2005-09-20 07:52 |
| #1 Doesn't much matter - the MSM wouldn't report success in the GWOT anyway. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-09-20 07:33 |