The Pentagon truth offensive

NY Times:

The Pentagon is reorganizing its public affairs operation in an attempt to influence news coverage, amid internal frustration at the tone and substance of reporting on Iraq and on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The expanded office, which was first described by department officials in an informal press briefing on Monday, features a “rapid response unit” to react to news reports. It is also stepping up efforts to arrange appearances by department officials on talk radio and cable television, and to recruit “surrogates” who are not on the department’s payroll to defend its policies.

A dozen new staff members have started to work behind a newly installed wall in the Pentagon’s press office.

Officials involved say the new effort, which was conceived by Assistant Secretary of Defense Dorrance Smith, is not primarily a response to negative coverage but rather is aimed at more aggressively challenging articles and broadcasts deemed inaccurate and at making better use of podcasts, blogs and other new outlets.

“This is about the Department of Defense keeping the American people better informed about the nature of its operations, its activities, and its policies,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “We would have to do this even if we were not nation at war.”

... Pentagon officials in recent months have issued a flood of letters to the editor taking issue with accounts of Mr. Rumsfeld’s role in setting Iraq strategy, the content of his speeches and other matters of fact and interpretation in newspapers and magazine articles.

They have also begun responding within minutes to live television reports, calling reporters and producers to challenge their accuracy.

The overhaul of the public affairs operation, has received a mixed response among some senior military officials at the department, who say it reflects frustration at coverage of the Iraq war.

...

Mr. Rumsfeld has long been critical of the government’s efforts to respond to information disseminated by people sympathetic to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, who make use of the Internet and other technology networks and, as Mr. Rumsfeld often says, are not bound by rules of accuracy.

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Not mentioned in this story is the NY times refusal not only to correct the record, but even to publish letters to the editor pointing out factual errors. Since many of those items have been linked on sites like this one the times has a more difficult time ignoring facts that are inconvenient to its story lines.

For example, the NY Times has been one of the principal authors of the myth that Rumsfeld refused commanders request for additional troops in Iraq. There is zero evidence for this myth and there is direct evidence from the commanders themselves refuting it, yet the NY Times will not even acknowledge that and only obliquely referred to it in this story. The myth is based on the accounts of subordinate commanders who were never in a position to make the request and if they did it was rejected by Centcom commanders and not Rumsfeld. There is a reason why they want to pin the blame on Rumsfeld and not the generals in charge of troop level decisions. It makes it easier for the Democrats to play politics with decisions about the war and that is exactly what they have been doing. they would much rather make a pinata out of Rumsfeld than deal with military experts on their turf.

Also missing from this story is any reference to the enemy's belief that half this war is being fought in the media battle space. One of my criticisms of the media is that it has been too compliant in following the enemy script for coverage of the war, particularly in Iraq. Many of the people covering this war fail to comprehend the insignificance of may of the enemy attacks and elevate them out of proportion. In fact, most enemy attacks in Iraq are street theater for media consumption rather than militarily significant, i.e. they have no material effect on the correlation of forces. If they were not reported, the events would have minimal significance at all other than the individual tragedies.

Instead the media is pushing a chaos theory that blames the US for failing to stop insignificant attacks. The media seems to be trying to relive its "success" in the Tet offensive where it converted an enemy defeat into a strategic defeat. The media has never been held to account for this assault against the truth.