Posted on 05/25/2005 5:54:16 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
PHILADELPHIA - One of the military's new wartime challenges is dealing with global media that can instantly spread around the word information that may be false or damaging to U.S. interests, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
The United States needs to respond to anti-American messages with greater agility and speed if it is to win the ideological struggle with Islamic extremists, Rumsfeld said in a speech to members of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.
"We'll need to develop considerably more sophisticated ways of using these new means of communication that are now available to reach the many and diverse audiences," he said.
Rumsfeld didn't delve deeply into specifics in his brief talk with members of the civic group. But in the recent past, news outlets have broadcast messages from terrorist groups, or reported stories that have fueled rage against Americans in the Muslim world.
"This is really the first war in history that is being conducted in an era of multiple global satellite television networks, 24-hour news outlets with live coverage of terrorist attacks, disasters and combat operations," Rumsfeld said.
He said U.S. officials must also deal with "a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone" and "a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country."
The defense secretary was among those who complained earlier this month following deadly riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek published a story that U.S. interrogators desecrated a copy of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay. The magazine later retracted the story amid questions about its truthfulness.
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That those who proclaim themselves the saviors of all us by leaking and dispersing information that acts to the detriment of our nation's and the world's security is going a step too far, even in this "enlightened" 24 by 7 world.
The use of propaganda by scurrilous media types has reached new levels of idiocy who apparently have no regard for even their own families, much less their nation's defenders.
One of the first things that needs doing is to stop choking our military down with Embedded reporters. Tell reporters they are welcome to go to the country but they are on their own.
Wartime censorship folks! It worked 60 years ago. It can work again!!
And the press didn't want to help our enemies kill us more efficiently back then.
Interestingly, in a discussion on a related matter tonight, I was labeled as a troll for suggesting the urgent need to impose wartime censorship.
Those of us who were alive in WWII seem to have a better handle on the need to balance First Ammendment rights and responsibilities. I'm not sure it's possible to convey this concept to Baby Boomers and those who are younger. It's one thing to have watched 9/11 on TV. It's quite another to have lived with the daily, imminent threat of an Axis invasion and the knowledge that Merchant Marine ships are being sunk in our coastal waters. Living in that environment makes one a little more sensitive to the wisdom of erring on the side of caution where dissemination of information is concerned.
- And whose attention span is short; sense of history limited; and gratification demands immediate.
The greatest daily loss in America is of people from the WWII generation.
Nicely appended!
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