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Rumsfeld: Today’s weapons of war include e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, cameras & blogs

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 2 March 2006
4 comments

Internet Governments USA

By Daniel Trotta
Fri Feb 17, 3:57 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.

Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.

The
Pentagon chief said today’s weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today’s media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said.

"For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a ’five and dime’ store in an eBay world," Rumsfeld said, referring to old-fashioned U.S. retail stores and the online auction house, respectively.

Rumsfeld said U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions.

The military’s information offices still operate mostly eight hours a day, five or six days a week while the challenges they faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency."

Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy of the opposition Democratic Party immediately criticized Rumsfeld as missing the point.

"Clearly, we need to improve our public diplomacy and information age communication in the Muslim world," Kennedy said in a statement. "But nothing has done more to encourage increased Al Qaeda recruitment and made America less safe than the war in
Iraq and the incompetent way it’s been managed. Our greatest failure is our policy."

Rumsfeld lamented that vast media attention about U.S. abuses at
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "
Saddam Hussein’s mass graves."

On the emergence of satellite television and other media not under Arab state control, he said, "While al Qaeda and extremist movements have utilized this forum for many years ... we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060217/pl_nm/security_rumsfeld_dc

Forum posts

  • Osama’s got a blackberry in his cave?

    Is Rummy battling al Qaida terrorists or American Citizens trying to expose his war crimes?

    May the bloggers win and let justice be served- which would be taking Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi, Wolfowitz & Perle and dropping them off at that famous square in Baghdad- with tv crews everywhere and world watching.

    • If they’re very good, we might give them parachutes before they are dropped off.

  • If you stop us from using the internet to complain, then we’ll actually have to get off our lazy blogging asses and print handouts to put all over town, or worse for you, march on Washington.

    You might want to think about it.

    Could backfire.

  • First of all there was no ’vast media coverage’ here in the US about the Abu Ghraib abuses, and when there was coverage, it was extremely dishonest. FOX, NBC and CBS did very little coverage of these abuses, which have been continuing for over two years, and when these ’news’ organizations did somehow manage to put out a story or two about the ongoing abuses of prisoners, these ’enlightened professionals’ never showed any of the beaten bodies and mutilated corpses the rest of the world saw. Most of the American sheeple still believe that these abuses amounted to nothing but ’college hazings’. Yes: torture, electrocution, starvation and mutilation are considered forms of ’college hazing’ here in the new, ’morally’ superior America. This singularly immoral bit of misinformation on part of the American media was enough to completely trivialize & make unimportant all the misery and death caused by US authorities in Abu Ghraib. Yet another American atrocity in Iraq successfully white-washed and made palatable to the masses. I’d say the US administration won that easy battle over the hearts and minds of the sleeping American populace, yet this overwhelming demonstration on how well the US Federal Government dominates the dissemination of vital information to its own public, is not enough for this control freak. He would much rather have no alternative news whatsoever. He would rather have all the world’s information under the control of the US Federal Government, as it is controlled here in the land of the ’free’. The ’Exportation of Democracy’ must continue, until all the world’s news organizations learn to say ’Uncle’. Where does this soul-less creature get his ideas from, the Spanish Inquisition? Simply because this Pope-Emperor-wanna-be says so, ’thus Spake Rumsfeld’, we must now regard e-mails, blogs and other forms of electronic communication as ’weapons’ and ’terrorist tools’ that must be quelled and eliminated. Excuse me, Mr. World Controller, but since when does a US Secretary of Defense pay so much attention to news dissemination? Maybe, ahem, you should have paid far more attention to strategic planning before invading Iraq? Is not the conception & execution of military strategy in your job description, Mr. Secretary of Defense?
    Oh, that’s right. You’ve completely fucked that up, didn’t you? So now you are placing most of your attention on the ’America-haters’ in a frantic effort to save your ass, since you’ve proven yourself to be grossly incompetent when invading and occupying practically defenseless countries. Why aren’t you devising a sound exit policy, instead of wasting more money and time in trying to control the international news media, something, I’m sure is not in your job description?
    How many more people throughout the world, never mind how many more Americans, must you wiretap, Mr. Secretary, before you are happy? How many more billions of dollars must you get your greedy hands on in your continuing efforts to control all information throughout the planet?
    Since when does a US Secretary of Defense think it is his right to pass judgment on how the rest of the world receives news? This kind of thinking can come only come from a fascist mindset hell-bent on complete and utter world domination. This man is obviously the spiritual descendant of Goebbels and Himmler, two vile creatures who knew the importance of propaganda when waging war.

    Second point, after admitting to spending over $1.6 billion in the last 30 months on ’public relations’, i.e. bribing media outlets into only broadcasting stories that showed the Bush administration in a ’Captain America’ light, how can this deranged Secretary of Defense say
    that the US Federal Government is lagging behind Al Queda and other terrorists in disseminating information to the global public? Do these terrorists organizations have unlimited funds like the US black budget agencies? Is Al Jazeera outspending Mr. Rumsfeld’s precious Ministry of Propaganda? I doubt that there is any entity in the world that outspends the US Federal Government on any one thing, from paper clips to 20 megaton missiles.

    If Mr. Rumsfeld doesn’t like the kind of news that is out there beyond US borders, it wasn’t because he didn’t throw enough money at this perceived problem to make alternative global news disappear altogether. That’s his fault, like much of the Iraqi war is his fault. Don’t blame the messenger that you bought and paid for, sir, a messenger that continues to be faithful to your deceit, a groveling messenger ever mindful of every twisted word you drop, no sir, do not blame your puppet-whores for your incompetence, Mr. Secretary.
    The Bush administration will soon blame lack of ’public support’ for this disastrous adventure in Iraq, much like the Nixon administration blamed lack of public support for its Vietnam War debacle. But unlike Nixon, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed Americans into this war, this war was their baby, not ours. However badly it has gone, the blame must be squared fixed on the shoulders of these three power hungry men more than anyone else. They had far more control over a bribed mass media than any other administration in history, the entire coverage of this war has been skewed to favor their actions, & they had nearly the entire Congress in their pocket for over four years, something neither Johnson nor Nixon ever had. One more thing they continue to have that neither Johnson nor Nixon had: they have at their disposal a spineless, apathetic, brainless American population who couldn’t care less about their own future prospects, a generation of Americans so malleable, so unaware and complacent that even the greediest of cunning bastards would be able to get away with all the depravity, corruption and lawlessness that history will soon mark as their sole legacy.