Demosophia

Another Thought or Two on Weddings and Media

Assuming that our generals aren't lying, and our troops don't have standing orders to send armed commando teams out to massacre wedding parties or baby showers (which seems a wasteful use of highly trained troops) it just seems to me that the enemy has a propaganda machine that's clicking on all eight cylinders. And in that event something bothers me about this statement from Gen. Kimmet:

"Now, having said that, there are still some inconsistencies. We still remain open-minded about this. We will continue to look into everything that is provided to us in the way of evidence."

He's acting as though all the news services are really in the game of attempting to get at the truth, rather than colluding with jihadis to manufacture the news. Isn't this a little, well... naive? If it turns out that the news services did, in fact, participate in what amounts to a hugely effective hoax don't you then have to at least consider the possibility that they're combatants?

At the very least shouldn't we have a propaganda machine of our own on the ground there, ready to kick into high gear to investigate stories like this, so that we can undo the damage by providing a counter-wave of intelligence and commentary? Isn't this really the sort of war we're in? Isn't this, in fact, one of our main reasons for being there? And since such a unit would have the assistance of the US military they could doubtless provide more compelling footage than either the western networks or the Arab jihadi networks. I mean, who could doubt that if we put our mind to it we could outperform them in this new kind of warfare?

In this instance a crack counter-propaganda outfit could contact people seen giving false testimony in the film and grill them 60-Minutes style to reveal inconsistencies and coaching. From a military intelligence standpoint we ought to find out who put them up to such lies. If it turns out that there's an active cell of propaganda-specializing Al Qaeda or something, we could target them. (Provided they're not throwing a birthday party or something, of course.)

Isn't this the way we really need to fight this sort of war? I'm getting tired of seeing the enemy clean our clocks because we insist on a kind of collegial "openness" with the media. Just a thought.

Posted by Demosophist at May 24, 2004 12:53 PM | TrackBack