@@ Ever more lies by the U.S. government @@
Arash
December 1, 2005
Missed Perceptions
No one is sure how well psychological operations have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq,
but that's not stopping efforts to step them up, using contractors to do it.
By Jason Vest
jvest[AT]govexec.com
From the State Department to the Pentagon, winning hearts and minds is an
increasingly important element of U.S. national security strategy. But while
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Hughes) has been the highest-profile example of
U.S. public relations in action, the Defense Department quietly has been tinkering
with its own systems of overseas influence.
Among these are psychological operations, or PSYOPS
(http://www.iwar.org.uk/psyops/index.htm).
But after-action reports on the invasion of Iraq are skeptical about PSYOPS' success,
and a psychological operations unit in Afghanistan recently tried to "demoralize" the
enemy by desecrating Islamic corpses. Questions about these matters have led some
policymakers to wonder how enhancing PSYOPS will complement other elements of
military information operations, such as public diplomacy and public affairs. In
addition, increasing reliance on contractors to conduct these operations is raising
eyebrows, especially because the contract prices aren't small and some firms hired
have murky pasts.
Psychological operations, defined by the military as the "systematic process of
conveying messages to selected foreign groups to promote particular themes that
result in desired foreign attitudes and behaviors", traditionally have been the
nearly exclusive purview of the 4th PSYOPS Group (Airborne) of the Army's Civil
Affairs and Psychological Operations Command
(http://www.soc.mil/usacapoc/capoc_default.htm).
Since the September 11 attacks, the military services have shown renewed interest in
mass persuasion. For example, two-and-a-half years ago at Fort Bragg
(http://www.bragg.army.mil/CAPSYOP), North Carolina, the Army unveiled its Special
Operations Forces Media Operations Complex, a 51,756-square-foot (4800-square-meter)
facility replete with all the tools 4th PSYOPS
(http://www.usacapoc.army.mil/Whatis.asp) requires - printing presses, studios and
digital audiovisual production facilities - in the service of producing materials to
win hearts and minds wherever the U.S. military finds itself in the world.
Colonel James A. Treadwell, the 4th's commander, said at the time that the facility's
opening "marks PSYOPS as a growth field". But PSYOPS had entered a boom phase well
before the new complex's ribbon was cut. From the post-9/11 involvement in
Afghanistan to the end of what have been termed "major combat operations" in Iraq,
Army PSYOPS units produced a deluge of media, including but not limited to 150
million flyers and leaflets and more than 20,000 radio broadcasts in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
And in the wake of Baghdad's collapse, there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction
that a virtually uninterrupted flow of PSYOPS material had played a critical role in
hastening the almost anticlimactic end of Iraq's military.
But when the Army's mammoth Operation Iraqi Freedom lessons-learned report
(http://call.army.mil/products/on-point/toc.asp) was published in 2004, it revealed
that PSYOPS weren't all they were cracked up to be. Part of this had nothing to do
with quality; some PSYOPS units had been incredibly useful, but failed in their duty
as "force multipliers" simply because there weren't enough of them. This was hardly
surprising, as PSYOPS accounts for only 4800 soldiers, 76% of whom are reservists.
But the report also concluded that, for reasons that had nothing to do with numbers,
PSYOPS simply hadn't had as profound an effect as some had thought.
Not long after the lessons-learned report, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board -
echoing an earlier Defense Planning Guidance report and a somewhat neglected 2003
Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap" - concluded that when it came to conception
and coordination of strategic communications, including PSYOPS, the military's
efforts had languished. The board strongly endorsed a number of nascent structural
and philosophical efforts at Defense and elsewhere to win a global battle of ideas.
So about two years ago, Colonel James A. Treadwell was ordered from piney Fort Bragg
to subtropical Tampa, Florida (http://www.socom.mil), where, from MacDill Air Force
Base (http://public.macdill.amc.af.mil), he now commands one of the newest and
perhaps least known elements of Special Operations Command: the Joint Psychological
Operations Support Element (JPSE, or more colloquially, "gypsy").
Described in official literature as a unit comprising "more than 50 senior military
and civilians with a deep knowledge of psychological operations", JPSE's raison
d'être isn't to horn in on the Army's PSYOPS turf, but rather to spare commanders
across services and commands the agony of going through multiple layers of
bureaucracy for support. And, according to a press release earlier this year, JPSE is
devoting itself not to the darker aspects of psychological warfare but to propagating
truthful messages.
In addition to facilitating more agile PSYOPS support, JPSE also is beginning to do
something psychological operations traditionally hasn't: consider the big picture,
according to Professor Philip M. Taylor
(http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/index.cfm?outfit=pmt) of England's University of
Leeds. "PSYOPS has really only worked in tactical/operations contexts, but in today's
global infosphere, there's no longer any such thing as tactical information -
everything has a strategic capability. This is where PSYOPS has traditionally been
weak", says Professor Taylor, one of the world's leading experts on psychological
operations, public diplomacy and propaganda, and a consultant to the American and
British governments. "JPSE is a recognition that 4th PSYOPS has been quite effective
at the tactical/operational levels but less so at the strategic, and is part of the
roadmap by which all components of information operations are to become more closely
coordinated than they have thus far".
Policymakers have realized, he adds, that mechanisms of delivery and the messages
themselves have to be integrated. Professor Nancy Snow
(http://www.nancysnow.com/bio.htm), senior research fellow at the University of
Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and adjunct assistant professor with
USC's Annenberg School for Communication, adds that when it comes to trying to create
a unified front in the practice of strategic communications, it's not uncommon for
each tactical element to see itself as holding the magic strategic bullet. Thus, it's
devilishly difficult to bring order to communications chaos, leading Professor Taylor
to wonder whether such integration, including that of PSYOPS, can be accomplished.
A Mixed Bag
PSYOPS have been a part of American military and intelligence endeavors since World
War II. They range from above-board and even earnest to devious and mendacious. One
of the problems with persuasion and perception manipulation is that success is not
always easy to gauge and can become the subject of fierce debates. Policymakers and
practitioners alike are grappling with this reality as they seek to figure out the
PSYOPS part of a larger strategic communications equation.
Pre-invasion airdropped leaflets, for example, historically have been intended to
affect a population by countering disinformation, promoting ideology and image, and
appealing to the survival instincts of soldiers and civilians.
Studying the leafleting efforts of the Army's 4th Psychological Warfare Group in
2002-2003, two University of Texas professors found that the majority of leaflets
dropped on Iraq were of the survival motif, exhorting Iraqi soldiers to quickly
surrender and imploring Iraqi civilians to shelter in place during the invasion, as
well as to preserve their oil facilities. Given the quick collapse of the Iraqi
military and the lack of refugee crisis that certain Pentagon planners were convinced
was inevitable, some observers, including the Texas professors, posited that the
4th's leafleting efforts played a key role in the successful invasion.
Yet as some in the military noted then and later, there was no metric for objectively
determining this. "In retrospect, the leaflets did seem to have the effect intended",
wrote Lieutenant Colonel Steven Collins in "Mind Games"
(http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2003/issue2/english/art4.html), a paper published in
the summer 2003 issue of NATO Review. But, he added, just as PSYOPS is geared to
slant perceptions, so too, can perceptions slant the analysis of psychological
operations. The problem with the leaflets was "the problem with all PSYOPS actions:
the difficulty in determining the cause of behavior during a war. Did the Iraqi
military melt away primarily as a result of PSYOPS, or of bombing by coalition
aircraft, or of lack of logistical support, or a combination of all three?" At best,
Lt. Col. Collins concluded, PSYOPS' role "remains an important variable to
determine".
In early 2004, the Army Command General and Staff College's Combined Arms Research
Library published a detailed study of major combat operations in Iraq (On Point:
United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom
http://call.army.mil/products/on-point/toc.asp). Its conclusion: PSYOPS were at best
a mixed bag. "PSYOPS units can point with satisfaction to success in minimizing
damage to the oil fields and keeping civilians off roads", it said. "However, they do
so with risk since there is very little evidence available yet to support that
contention. . . . Moreover, the PSYOPS effort enjoyed far less success in encouraging
Iraqi units to surrender. . . . PSYOPS produced much less than expected and perhaps
less than claimed"
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2004/onpoint/index.html).
Such considerations have led some to wonder whether military efforts such as JPSE are
neglecting ways to improve PSYOPS in its strongest areas, tactical and operational,
by beginning to dabble in the strategic.
In a 2004 briefing (http://www.oss.net/extra/news/?module_instance=1&id=2646), Marine
Colonel G.I. Wilson and two retired military officers observed that the problem with
PSYOPS has less to do with the operations themselves and more to do with how they
are, or are not, integrated into existing combat forces. Holding that psychological
and information operations should be incorporated into every basic military
consideration, Colonel Wilson and his colleagues suggested that in places such as
Iraq, "regional fusion centers" should be established where the tactical and
strategic mission specialists could work together to help frame and guide ongoing
operations.
Similarly, a recent National Defense University study held that the priority for
PSYOPS should be doctrinal and structural reforms focused on the tactical level,
because it's impossible for military PSYOPS to adequately compensate for a weak
national strategic communications program.
And, says Professor Taylor, even the most ambitious and effective PSYOPS reform can
be easily undermined by soldiers' actions, for example, desecrating Afghan bodies or
the Koran. "Democracies are their own worst enemies in this field", he says. "It's
true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that
full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment", even
over U.S. soldiers.
'Sorry, It Wasn't Us'
Further, Professor Taylor adds, groups contracted by the government to do PSYOPS or
related work and analysis also can do damage. "There are plenty who have messed up
and been fired; there are risks", he says. "But if the attitude is 'Something has to
be done', who is going to do it? There are so many PR firms willing to take bucks
from the U.S. government.
"Outsourcing is either a sign of recognition that the military is not terribly good
at certain types of persuasion, or a way of distancing the U.S. government from the
messages. If that company then does something which is controversial, the government
can say, 'Sorry, it wasn't us, but we'll fire the company that did this supposedly in
our name' ".
Those concerned about the state of both PSYOPS and contracting paid close attention
to JPSE's June announcement that it was giving indefinite delivery/ indefinite
quantity contracts to three contractors for media approach planning, prototype
product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and
dissemination, and media effects analysis.
While JPSE commander Colonel James A. Treadwell said the initial contracts were
likely to be in the $250,000 range, the potential maximum value of each tender, $100
million, stirred great interest as did the choice of contractors. It wasn't
necessarily surprising that Arlington, Virginia-based defense contractor SYColeman
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SYColeman) got one of the JPSE tenders,
based on its formidable number of existing contracts with the Pentagon; media work,
however, is not something the company lists among its core competencies.
Similarly, while San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp.
(http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=17) has dozens of offices
worldwide devoted to administering its Pentagon contracts, most of SAIC's work has
been in the areas of engineering, systems and quantitative analysis, not media.
Indeed, the last time it won a contract for media work - specifically, setting up
post-Saddam television operations in Iraq - it performed with such ineptitude that
the company was excoriated not just by the Pentagon inspector general and Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., but also by its former
project manager. SAIC ultimately lost that contract.
Also inviting curiosity has been Lincoln Group
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lincoln_Group), which despite having
virtually no public profile and no demonstrable history in strategic communications -
and having gone through multiple changes in name and orientation in less than three
years - has landed two major media contracts with the U.S. military in the past year.
"A lot of these things go on if not in secret, then kind of out of view with very
little tracking or public accountability, and as such, we don't really know when
things go wrong", says USC's Professor Snow. "But none of it really addresses whether
any of this will have any impact if the people they're trying to reach just won't
have any of it because we have unpopular policies".
http://www.govexec.com/features/1205-01/1205-01s1.htm
verifying...@yahoo.com
"who said muhammad's not a jew? at least he's descends from a jew...
you
know abraham?"
My saying:
" real-world, as I have said before and will say again: "you, Muslims
are all foolish; for you, Muslims, thread without the true knowledge
with
understanding of the truth of God".
As such you, Muslims, always lie because you, muslims, speak without
proof or understanding knowledge! For example, you are now lying by
saying that Mohammed was a Jew.
Mohammed was definitely not a Jew.
Jew is a person from the tribe of Judah or from the kingdom of Judah
which no longer exists. And Jacob renamed Israel by God (The True
Allah) is the Father of all Israelites.
Mohammed claimed to be a descendant of Ishmael, a son of Abraham and
Abraham is the Father of All Hebrews. Thus Mohammed could only be a
Hebrew, but DEFINITELY not a Jew if Mohammed's claim to be a descendant
of Ishmael is true.
But then again, Mohammed also claimed to be an Arab from the tribe of
Queish, but the Father of all Arabs is Joktan and Qahtan in Arabic
(Yogtan in Hebrew)(Gen 10:26 - 29) who begat Almodad, Sheleph,
Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir,
Havilah and Jobab; and these 13 sons descended the 13 Arabic tribes AND
NONE OF THESE TRIBES IS NAMED QUEISH !!!
Now, was Mohammed an Arab or Hebrew? Guess you, Muslims, have no
TRUTHFUL answer AT ALL.
Would you, Muslims, believe the sayings of a person who claimed to be
a descendant of Ishmael, a Hebrew, and then again he claimed to be a
descendant
of Qahtan, an Arab? Then he claimed that he was the Islamic prophet,
would you,
Muslims, believe him as THE LAST MESSENGER???
Definitely not when you know that such person lied; for no one could be
an Arab and at the same time, a Hebrew !!!
False religion will accept false believers who are evil and unrepenting
of their sins.
True religion will accept true believers who have repented of their
evil sins."
Amen.