The enemy is us

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
The enemy is us
Thu, 09-23-2004 - 8:35pm
Here's the direct link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/09/22/psychological_warfare/index_np.html

Here is the start of the article. I can't post all of it since I already used my free day and I don't go to the site enough to sign up and all that. If you'd like to read the rest of the article you can go there and pick the free day option or signup one to see the rest.

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The Army Field Manual describes information operations as the use of strategies such as information denial and psychological warfare to influence decision making. The notion is as old as war itself. With information operations, one seeks to gain and maintain information superiority -- control information and you control the battlefield. And in the information age, in which almost anyone can instantly spread falsehoods far and wide, it has become even more imperative to influence adversaries.

But with the Iraq war, information operations have gone seriously off track, moving beyond influencing adversaries on the battlefield to influencing the decision making of friendly nations and, even more important, American public opinion. In information denial, one attempts to deceive one's adversary. Since the declared end of combat operations, the Bush administration has orchestrated a number of deceptions about Iraq. But who is its adversary?