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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
Tempers flare amid 'black propaganda' debate by Andrew Buncombe 
15 December 2004 Tempers flare amid 'black propaganda' debate By Andrew Buncombe Washington - The Bush administration is quietly resurrecting the idea of a "black propaganda" unit in the Pentagon to spread false stories and information in the foreign media - even in countries the United States considers its allies. Senior Pentagon officials say a heated debate is taking place about how much power this unit should have. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and one of his senior officials, Douglas Feith, have been arguing in favour of "information warfare", while others say telling lies to the media is wrong and counterproductive. The move follows efforts by Rumsfeld to develop such a propaganda unit, the Office of Strategic Planning. It was shut down three years ago because of the controversy it caused, but Rumsfeld said its work would continue. 'You end up with an uneducated public that is despised by others' He told reporters: "Fine, you want to savage this thing, fine. I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." According to a report in the New York Times, the idea has been revived because of growing concern that the US is failing to sell itself, especially in Arab and Muslim countries. In November, a report by the Pentagon's Defence Science Board warned that the US was losing "the war of ideas" in the Islamic world. It said US talk of bringing democracy to Muslim nations was seen as "self-serving hypocrisy". Lawrence de Rita, a senior Pentagon spokesperson, said: "In the battle of perception management, where the enemy is clearly using the media to manage perceptions by the public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy's perception management." Officials involved in the debate say the propaganda unit could, for instance, plant false stories in the foreign press or create web documents in Arabic to try to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious leaders who preach principles opposed to the US. Kathy Kelley, spokesperson for the peace group Voices In The Wilderness, condemns any efforts to spread disinformation. "In addition, real, important stories that are crucial to our democracy are not being covered. You end up with an uneducated public that is despised by others because we don't know what our country is doing." The US military has long used so-called "Black Ops propaganda" and psychological warfare. For example, three weeks before the assault on Fallujah, CNN was fed false information that the operation had begun. The Knight Ridder news service has reported that in September, Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote to his commanders in Iraq warning them of the dangers of combining psychological operations with public affairs. This article was originally published on page 2 of The Cape Times on December 15, 2004 Published on the Web by IOL on 2004-12-15 05:47:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © Independent Online 2005. |