KitNotes

This news report from the BBC had me worried:

Pentagon mounts media offensive

The Pentagon has set up a new unit to focus on promoting its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet.

The US Defence Department said it would expand its public relations work to fight “inaccurate” news stories.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said media manipulation by enemies of the US is the only thing keeping him awake at night.

Domestic support for the war in Iraq has fallen as US mid-term polls near.

The opposition Democrats are trying to win control of Congress from the Republicans.

‘Correcting messages’

The newly-established Pentagon unit would use “new media” channels to push its message, a spokesman said.

“We’re looking at being quicker to respond to breaking news,” the spokesman said.

“Being quicker to respond, frankly, to inaccurate statements.”

According to the BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington, the Bush administration does not believe the true picture of events in Iraq has been made public.

He says the administration is particularly concerned that insurgents in areas such as Iraq have been able to use the web to disseminate their message and give the impression they are more powerful than the US.

A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit will “develop messages” for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to “correct the record”.

A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ “surrogates”, or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.

The emphasis is my own.

The Pentagon’s launch of their new “Rapid Rebuttal Force” comes hot off the heels of General Richard Dannan, who spoke out against the US/UK occupation in Iraq.

It’s quite clear to anyone that the Pentagon is being used as a political football in order to scare American voters into voting Republican in the up-coming Mid-term elections for the House and Senate. The military under capitalism has always been a political football, in so far as it is the armed force of capital and fights for the maintainance of the capitalist system, but in Western, ‘liberal’ democracies, it has always been subordinate to the legislative branch of Government.

The US military are worried, because they know that, while they are not losing outright (in that it is nothing like Vietnam), they aren’t winning, either. There are whole swathes of Iraq which are effectively under the control of the Islamist ‘resistance’ much fethishised (but never critisised by) the likes of the SWP and Workers Power. There is also a third camp developing which opposes both the reactionary Islamist militias and the US occupation.

The military should not be allowed to interfere in the political sphere. The US DoD should not be allowed to ‘correct mistaken stories’. By creating this RRF, they are creating a propaganda operation which has a disturbing similarity with Gobbels (and I’m not one for comparisons with Nazis).

Now all we have to do is hold on for the launch of the Pentagon Channel… oh wait…