US: Pentagon Pledges to "Fight the Net" and Target Blogs

Rumsfeld announcing sweeping plans to fight the media war with information campaigns that target Internet blogs as well as traditional news outlets.

BBC's #1 headline at the moment is "US Losing Media War to Al-Qaeda." In the US this may be hard to beleive, but it undoubtebly is true to anyone paying attention. In "pro-American" Turkey the biggest movie opening EVER is an "anti-American" screed based on a real event in Iraq, an accidental raid on Turkish special forces. In the rest of the Muslim world, violent protests against the West persist. In recent elections religious parties have won (Hamas, SCRII and Dawa in Iraq, Ahmadinejad in Iran), public opinion against the US is at record low levels....

In this context, the Pentagon has been sendng signals a new information offensive is on the way. A report earlier inthe month called for "fighting the 'net." Then yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld came out with some interesting comments on the Pentagon's view of information and media. Washington and the army must respond faster to events and learn to exploit the internet and satellite TV, he said. He specifically cited BLOGS as a main target of these offensives.

I have a feeling we're not just talking about the Middle East here. Another battle we are losing is the quest to isolate Venezuela and Cuba. Check it out Sec. Rice's pathetic attempt to show Venezuela's Chavez as being one of the biggest concerns in Latin America. Problem is, as Chavez countered, the world sees this for what it is - agression - and that "world opinion is with Venezuela". Don't be suprised if we don't see more US funded "journalists" doing our work on the net and even blogosphere.