The inherent liberal bias of the legacy media covering the war in Iraq has been well—documented on the pages of AT and elsewhere.  Even more frustrating has been the lack of major press coverage of the fights against Baathist loyalists and terrorists by first tier reporters, rather than by the local second stringers who tend to move freely amongst the terrorists themselves.

A very real lack of trust between service members and the press developed at the end of the Summer of 2003, due mostly to the actions of the press. But it always takes two to tango.  In a must read article entitled Who's Responsible for Losing the Media War in Iraq?, defense and international affairs writer James Lacey pulls no punches in calling the military to task for ignoring a critical piece of the information war (IW).

Lacey is an Army reservist who stands with the commanders in the field in their view that the media are blind to positive developments in Iraq and Afghanistan and are predisposed to finding fault with everything the military accomplishes.  However, Lacey also points out that the military and CENTCOM have apparently developed a robust Public Affairs (PA) infrastructure, but have not put it to use. According to Lacey,

The reason the military is losing the war in the media is because it has almost totally failed to engage, and where it has engaged, it has been with a mind—boggling degree of ineptitude.  It is a strange circumstance indeed when virtually every senior officer agrees that the media can make or break national policy, but no more than a handful can name the top military journalist for The Washington Post, The New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal.  Thousands of officers who spend countless hours learning every facet of their profession do not spend one iota of their time understanding or learning to engage with a strategic force that can make or break their best efforts.

And this is just the beginning of a thorough dissection of the lack of foresight and coordination of the PA effort in the Central Region. More importantly, he provides solid, though controversial recommendations to help solve this continuing fight between the military and the media.  The bottom line is that in order to get the information out the military must play the media hand they've been dealt, and that no amount of complaining is going to fix the major media's faults overnight.

Lacey's critique is outstanding as far as it goes, but he only touches on the real weakness of CENTCOM's campaign, and that is public affairs is but one key component of an information warfare strategy.  Information operations make full use of public affairs, electronic warfare, deception, and propaganda to target and defeat an adversary.  Lacey's piece reveals that al—Qaeda understands this, but that for various reasons, we have made IW a very low priority.  And let's face it, an occasional leaflet dropon Fallujah is only a minor 'firefight' compared to what should happen in a fully coordinated IW campaign.

Amazingly, Gen. Abizaid, the commander of CENTCOM, recently complained that al—Qaeda should not be so free to spread Islamic extremism via the internet and other new media.  Specifically, Abizaid said,

Why is it that people have the right to get on the Internet and spread this hatred and insanity without there being some curb, some law?" said General John Abizaid, the chief of the US Central Command.

"To me if we think this is some kind of freedom of speech to put on a picture of someone getting their head chopped off on the Internet and people have the right to purvey that, that's not the world I want to live in, and it just encourages this kind of behaviour," he said.

Calling for a new law to restrict traffic on the internet is a puzzling statement coming from somebody who has not realized the full potential of IW, and has seemingly not gone on the offense to counter what is obviously part of a well executed enemy propaganda campaign.  In fact, by opening the Pandora's Box of internet restrictions, Abizaid may be calling for the strangulation of those who conducted his IW campaign for him: the bloggers in the US and the service members in theater who got the true stories out to the American people.

Doug Hanson   11—30—04