Posted on 01/08/2007 10:00:14 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
. . . despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the United States has lost the battle for Iraqi public opinion: "Insurgents, sectarian elements, and others are taking control of the message at the public level." Videos of U.S. soldiers being shot and blown up, and of the bloody work of sectarian death squads, are now pervasive. The images inspire new recruits and intimidate those who might stand against them.
. . . Most large-scale attacks on U.S. forces are now filmed, often from multiple camera angles, and with high-resolution cameras. The footage is slickly edited into dramatic narratives: quick-cut images of Humvees exploding or U.S. soldiers being felled by snipers are set to inspiring religious soundtracks or chanting, which lends them a triumphal feel. In some cases, U.S. officials believe, insurgents attack American forces primarily to generate fresh footage.
. . . Production work that once required a studio can now be done on a laptop. Compilation videos of attacks on U.S. forces sell in Baghdad markets for as little as 50 cents on video CDs. Advancements in cell-phone technology have made such devices particularly useful. Their small video files—the filming of Saddam Hussein's hanging took up just over one megabyte—are especially easy to download and disseminate. "Literally, it's only hours after an attack and [the videos] are available,"
. . . What the insurgents understand better than the Americans is how Iraqis consume information. Tapes of beheadings are stored on cell phones along with baby pictures and wedding videos. Popular Arab satellite channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya air far more graphic images than are typically seen on U.S. TV—leaving the impression, say U.S. military officials, that America is on the run.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
ping
This begs the question of how ground troops can target video cameras. This is clearly a case of cameramen being equivalent to combatants.
Ex: Shoot at blinking red lights?
Curiously there were some serious infowar analytical mistakes made early on in Iraq. We tended to follow western doctrine about the information matrix and applied it to Iraq,eg, secured radio and televisions stations and official information organs of the Iraqi gov't. We then relied on those organs to disseminate information. The problem is Iraqis have long ago abandoned official news sources are mere propaganda organs. In Iraq the real information transfer occurs in coffeehouses and tea cafes and with cellphones. We ignored the real info war it at our peril.With power on randomly in Baghdad only 30% of the time mass media outlets are unreliable.
The Muzzies have learned media manip[ulation from their Nazi ancestors. They have learned it well.
Information Warfare is part of the modern battlefield and our side is doing a lousy job of it.
With the likes of Newsweek, Time, NYT, CNN, etc., on 'our side', no wonder...
We should have gone in to win and destroy support for Islamofacist terrorists, regardless of the damage to Iraq and Iraqis.
Iraqis can't be given freedom and democracy, they have to take it, and en mass, they failed miserably. Failures are the most ungrateful.
A goal of removing Iraqi resources from availability to Islamofacists would have made American PR inside Iraq unimportant.
um, forget aljazzera...our own cbsabcnbccnn is losing it for us without any help from outsiders
cbsabcnbccnn are not our own, they just happen to be headquartered in the U. S. and derive most of their revenue from advertising directed at the American market. My point being that the English-language news media throughout the world is imitating each other, hiring the same talking heads, and pushing the same anti-American, anti-Western ideology.
Agreed, but what is to be done about it? Our warrior's new political masters will not permit many of the changes that the official DoD PA/IO community would have to implement to be effective, leaving the task to whom?
Gee Whiz. And this is different from Newsweak...how?
What the hell do you expect ? Win An information war in Iraq !!!!!!!! We Cant even get fair coverage in our own country!!!!!!! What a joke
Looking forward to this new parody show on the left wing media with Rush playing the President of the United States and Ann Coulter as VP ! That will be a hoot
"Today, insurgent media outlets ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN declared..."
The only way to fight this "infowar" is to release videos showing the painful deaths of insurgents.
Information warfare requires the use of propaganda as part of the war effort. This was used to great effect in WWII by Churchill and Roosevelt.
Why is it wrong to broadcast information positive to change in Iraq?
Because there is opposition in our own liberal elite to the war effort, not because the technique is ineffective.
The way to change it is to overcome the liberal elite.
We gotta kill their infowarriors the same as we kill trigger pullers.
Then we'd start winning.
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