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Saturday, March 4, 2006 |
DoD: "Blogs sometimes include information - accurate and otherwise - about the U.S. military's global war on terror. U.S. Central Command officials here took notice and created a team to engage these writers and their electronic information forums.
'The main interest is to drive their readers to our site,' Army Reserve Maj. Richard J. McNorton said. McNorton is CENTCOM's chief of engagement operations.
The ease with which bloggers spread information is what public affairs officials at CENTCOM saw when they created the blog team.
McNorton said the team contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. This outreach effort enables the team to offer complete information to bloggers by inviting them to visit CENTCOM's Web site for news releases, data or imagery."
MediaLens: "As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented: 'Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5.' Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of 'one of Britain's most distinguished journals' as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.
It is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US. But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation - such as the Official Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on - and as intelligence moves into the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.
Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats. There have been constant attempts to scare people - and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.
Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists."
12:08:56 PM 
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Yesterday the Pentagon released more than 5000 pages of transcripts that contain the names of detainees at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The release resulted from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.
And Bush is losing the war on terror. In fact, he is creating more terrorists.
WashingtonTimes: "Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism."
SMH: "Cherie Booth, the lawyer wife of British prime minister Tony Blair, has taken a sideswipe at alleged US practices at its Guantanamo Bay detention camp in a speech on torture in London.
Booth described torture as 'the terrorism of the state, usually practised for the same reasons that terrorists use violence: to break the will of those they cannot persuade by lawful means'."
Guardian: "Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed."
Editor&Publisher: "While newspaper editorials remain virtually silent on the subject, the American public seems to have made up its mind. A new Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll out tonight shows that 2 out of 3 adult Americans now want U.S. troops to start to come home from Iraq. And 55% call the decision to attack Iraq in 2003 a mistake.
Of the 1,020 adults surveyed, 59% said President Bush can no longer manage the government effectively."
11:49:43 AM
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