If this news item below represented something new or unique, it would be noteworthy. But it is nothing new.
We already know that this administration plants faux news stories in both domestic and foreign media, stories composed by US intelligence or by PR firms (eg Lincoln Group) working for intelligence/Pentagon programs or by political operatives seeking to forward administration domestic policies.
We already know that there are blogs and letters pretending to be from Private Joe Shmoe serving dutifully in Iraq which have the same intel-created sources.
We already know about Fox...
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf
And, we already know how disciplined this administration is in operational secrecy (a discipline and policy which extends far past intel procedures) to internal political workings and the full range of domestic governance as well. Anything which might embarrass the administration is stonewalled. Any investigation by congress or the senate or independent investigators which might reveal questionable legality of operation or duplicitous statements is met with resistance, refusal, and ad hominem smear campaigns. The immediate and concerted attacks on any whistleblower (Able Danger people, Plame, NASA scientists, EPA scientists, etc etc) has, like all else above, the goal of information control.
Likewise, the concerted attacks on an independent press through attempts to portray that press as untrustworthy and biased and through marginalizing such independent (thus, possibly critical) media by utilizing a separate media system which can be depended upon to forward pretty much whatever this administration wishes it to forward. Media as propaganda arm. Note how frequently Fox, not to mention conservative radio, forwards the necessary propaganda pre-notion that "the mainstream media" is not to be trusted.
Per the PDF above, we know that Americans who attend to Fox and conservative radio are far more likely to hold fallacious ideas (which appear to support the administration's policies and statements) than are those who attend to other media (eg, connections between Osama and Sadaam, whether WOMD were found, whether the rest of the world supports Bush policies, etc). Per the PDF, we also know that on the other end of that scale, the people who attend to PBS and NPR are far more likely to hold ideas which comport with factually accurate ideas.
And we know what this administration has tried to do to PBS and NPR.
We know that Cheney attempted, while working under Ford, to get Ford to veto the Freedom of Information Act.
Now look at what Rumsfeld said yesterday and consider it in relation to all the above...the means/rationale for information control. And, try to square some of his claims with anything sensible.
Quote:Rumsfeld Urges Using Media to Fight Terror
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page A07
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday called for the military and other government agencies to mount a far more aggressive, swift and nontraditional information campaign to counter the messages of extremist and terrorist groups in the world media.
Rumsfeld criticized the absence of a "strategic communications framework" for fighting terrorism. He also lashed out at the U.S. media, which he blamed for effectively halting recent U.S. military initiatives in the information realm -- such as paying to place articles in Iraqi newspapers -- through an "explosion of critical press stories."
The speech follows a top-level review of Pentagon strategy and resources released earlier this month that concluded: "Victory in the long war ultimately depends on strategic communication." The Quadrennial Defense Review called for closing gaps in U.S. capabilities in what the Pentagon describes as "information operations," an area being reorganized in the Pentagon, according to current and former defense officials.
"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government, has not," Rumsfeld said in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He said that while the al Qaeda terrorist network and other "extremist" movements "have successfully . . . poisoned the Muslim public's view of the West, we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences."
U.S. public affairs operations tend to be "reactive rather than proactive," Rumsfeld said, operating slowly during standard working hours while "our enemies are operating 24/7 across every time zone. That is an unacceptably dangerous deficiency."
To remedy this, he called for increased communications training for military public affairs officials by drawing on private-sector expertise, noting that public affairs jobs in the military have not been "career enhancing." He also called for creating 24-hour media operations centers and "multifaceted media campaigns" using the Internet, blogs and satellite television that "will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press."
Rumsfeld criticized the U.S. media for hampering such initiatives, however. He said the press "seems to demand perfection from the government but does not apply the same standard to the enemy or even sometimes to themselves," contrasting the coverage of the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse with that of mass graves in Iraq.
Note particularly what I've put in red. How much sense does it make to posit that the US administration and military, with the billions they have to back them up and with all of the decades of PR and advertising expertise accumulated in this commercial culture and with all of the sophisticated and pervasive media operations at their disposal, are being whupped by al qaida in the media realm???
What Rumsfeld is up to here is just a further attack on information sources which are not under his control, particularly an independent American press corps, a Congress that actually investigates, and any whistleblower who might spill the beans on illegality and lies.
The end product of these strategies is an electorate who can be (and will be) misinformed and manipulated to serve the perceived desires of a small group in control and an electorate who will not cause any problems.
The prime components of state control mechanisms in Orwell's 1984 are:
- no independent press at all, just a state-controlled system
- no mechanisms to limit the power of whoever is at the top...no balance from the courts, no balance from any other govt body (congress)
- arrest and detention, perhaps forever, without court oversight
- continual and thorough monitoring of the people to ensure they do not function in opposition to who is in control
- deceitful manipulation of records (think 'scrubbing' of websites)
That's how you get to 1984.
You've made him out into some sort of boogeyman. Why is he a danger to American politics, exactly?
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