CENTCOM is making a push on blogs to get links out for their site and to announce a new newsletter. When I received my email, naturally I obliged because I support our soldiers and our mission and I’ve used information from CENTCOM several times over the past year. It is a valuable source of information and some great photos too.

I emailed back the officer at the Public Affairs office though to ask what we as a nation are doing to counter the Al Qaida propoganda. Below is the pertinent part of my email back leaving out the Officer’s name because no agreement other than the agreement found on my site called for using this email exchange for a post.

What is the U.S. military doing to either subvert or counter the propoganda coming from the opposition including even a few specific media outlets? Throughout this entire conflict, the lack of what I feel is adequate counter-propoganda has simply boggled my mind. As I am sure you are aware of, Al Qaida and similar groups have proven to be champions of using the Internet against us, but what is our nation doing to either take down or counter these many sites, videos, communiques, etc.? This is something I follow quite closely and there has been very little information, to say the least, about what we are doing to counter Al Qaida’s use of the Internet as their main propoganda tool.

Frequent readers of ITB know I have often been critical of the U.S. response to the propoganda spewed by Al Qaida and other various terrorist groups. I did not expect a response, but I was hoping I got one. I did.

Again, leaving out the Officer’s name:

I appreciate your timely response and support. My response is not meant to be harsh, only straight up. We don’t do propaganda at Public Affairs. Our motto is “Strength Thorough Truth”. And, I personally believe that if we as soldiers continue to try to do the right thing, good things will happen. Now the military will make it’s mistakes (Vietnam Public Affairs), and I know we will do our best to correct them and drive on. But today we tell the soldiers story. Good and Bad. There is however much more good, or I could not in good conscience do my job. So what we are trying to do is GET the word out. However, most of the mainstream media does not find 100 rebuilt schools to be as interesting as 1 IED. Such is the challenge. Again, thank you for the support. I look forward to browsing your blog for interesting news from time to time.

I do not view all propoganda as misleading nor full of half-truths or lies. It has come to mean such, but the actual roots of the word as best I know it is simply pushing an agenda. Nevertheless, you have to love the Officer’s response. It is quite telling when an officer with the Public Affairs office speaks out against the media’s slanting towards violence in covering the GWOT.

I’ve written quite a few posts detailing why the media does have a bias towards violence, but not necessarily an ideological bias. What is even further telling though is why we as consumers continue to support the same media which gives us only part of the story while even one of the larger wire services, Reuters, blames the United States military for not allowing Reuters journalists to cover the full story of Iraq.

It used to be a journalist’s job to dig into a situation to find the story, not anyone else’s responsibility to lead the journalist to a report. It is a sad state of affairs when media agencies as large as Reuters feel they need to be breast fed their entire lives by another agency whose job it is to protect, fight and build.

Speed of Thought linked with I got email...