The Defense Department needs its own blog to Fisk mainstream media memes

The White House will occassionally will respond with a factual rebuttal of false assertions about policy. And, the Defense Department has several web sites to try to get information out. It also has a website with info specifically on operations in Iraq.

However, none of these sites is dedicated to correcting the misinformation that is presented daily by the media in an attempt to undermine support for the war effort. With recent polls showing 80 percent in the US believe that a civil war in Iraq is very likely, clearly many are misinformed about what is happening in Iraq.

While people like Ralph Peters and Bill Roggio are doing yoeman work in trying to get the facts out, it is hard to compete with the cacophoney of defeatist media who want to lose the war.

The folks in the Pentagon need to redirect their public information staff, to fact checking the major media and correcting them in a blog format on a daily basis. If they did, even if the mainstream media ignored it, there are many bloggers and radio talk shows who would spread the word and help them get the corrected message out there. This should be an urgent project.

If such a program were in place, stories like this that rebut the factual assertions of war opponents would be available with hyperlinks to information that shows what is being said by opponents of the war are misinformed. It is not a matter of calling liar, liar pants on fire. It is just fighting the misinformation with facts.

Update: This CNN report is an example of how the Defense Department is handling distorted media coverage now.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Tuesday the potential for civil war in Iraq but slammed the media for "exaggerated" reports about the security situation following recent violence between religious factions.

Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that he thought the news coverage since the February 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq had been filled with inaccurate information that would inflame the situation there.

He based his comments on remarks made Friday by U.S. Army Gen. George Casey, the top-ranking U.S. military official in Iraq.

...

"Interestingly, all of the exaggerations seem to be on one side," he said. "It isn't as though there simply have been a series of random errors on both sides of issues. On the contrary, the steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq."

...

This was required because the reporting covering Gen Casey either ignored or downplayed his comments. It is the problem of getting your message out while the guys responsible for the original erronious reports are still the filter through which you are trying to communicate. Much of the Baghdad hotel media uses Iraq stringers who may or may not be reliable. These stringers in turn check with hospitals who have notoriouly overstated casualties. (They also have a tendency to list enemy dead as civilian, because the enemy camoflages himself as a civilian rather than wearing a distinguishing unifor as required by the Geneva convention.) One of the failures of the US media is to point out how unreliable these initial reports of casualties are. Instead, they tend to hype them as they did in this case.

Update II: The Belmont Club also has thoughts on Rumsfeld's press briefing.