Winning in the media battle space

Reuters:

The U.S. military said on Saturday it had hampered al Qaeda's ability to recruit new members in Iraq by capturing or killing many of the people who make slick videos used to attract disaffected young Muslims.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith said that in the past year, 39 al Qaeda members in Iraq responsible for producing and disseminating videos and other material to thousands of Internet Web sites had been captured or killed.

"The power of this information is obvious. These guys are using material that is used on Web sites to recruit and raise money," Smith told Reuters in an interview.

"We think the vast majority of this media network has been degraded at this point," he said, adding that the arrests had led to fewer Internet postings of al Qaeda beheadings, kidnappings and other attacks in Iraq.

U.S. defence officials have in the past complained the military was losing the propaganda battle against militants who skilfully exploited communication tools like the Internet.

Smith said there has been a steady decline in videos broadcast on 5,000 pro-al Qaeda Web sites since June 2007, roughly coinciding with falling levels of violence across Iraq.

In February, U.S. intelligence monitoring of those Web sites showed 34 new postings of videos and audio material from Iraqi networks, down from 144 postings in June 2007, Smith said.

"Those responsible for the more finished product, the stuff that really grabs the attention in mosques and elsewhere, we have those people on the run," he said.

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Smith said militant groups had become increasingly sophisticated in their distribution of information, publishing professional-looking videos with narration, music and special effects of attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqis.

"Most of al Qaeda's coordinated attacks tend to be so well-planned that they allow for camera crews to be on location filming just before it happens," he said.

These media networks, found mainly in northern Baghdad, then take the crude videos and re-package them into a more polished product for distribution to Web sites, he said. The networks also put out other material to educate and recruit new members.

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Zawahiri has said that half their war effort was in the media battle space so this is a significant degradation of that effort. If you analyze most of al Qaeda's attacks they have no military significance, i.e. they have no effect on our sides efforts to make war against al Qaeda. They are usually media events where unfortunately the western media has also followed the al Qaeda script.

For example, human bomb attacks are aimed a maximum mass murder of non combatants. Rather than report these events as multiple war crimes and violations of the Geneva Conventions, much of the western media reports them as a success for al Qaeda and a failure of the government to stop the violence.

It is part of a double standard on the Geneva Conventions where the western media view them as a unilateral contract where only our side of the war is bound by them. This is grossly unfair reporting that gives great aid to the enemy.