Tannishblog

Are you sitting down? Don’t reach for that drink just yet.

The Pentagon, our Paragon of Political Persuasiveness, is seeking to upgrade its image. Via the Washington Post, the Pentagon awarded three contracts to companies, worth a potential $300 million dollars, hoping to “inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion” about the US and its military.

“We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media,” said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command. “If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions.”

He said SYColeman Inc. of Arlington, Lincoln Group of the District, and Science Applications International Corp. will help develop ideas and prototypes for radio and television spots, documentaries, or even text messages, pop-up ads on the Internet, podcasting, billboards or novelty items.

Treadwell’s group was established last year and includes a graphic artist and videographer, he said. It assists “psyops” personnel stationed at military headquarters overseas. Col. Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Special Operations Command, which runs the Army’s Special Forces, Navy SEALs and other elite combat units, said the contractors might help the military develop commercials in Iraq, for example, illustrating how roadside bombs meant for soldiers also harm children and other innocent civilians.

The companies declined to comment.

Silence is golden. Sometimes more is said between words than can be expressed by the most effective speakers. For some reason, David Crosby’s vocals styling are ringing in my head… “Take the money and run…”

A Government Accountability Office report in April noted that the Pentagon had been pressing initiatives on “strategic communications” to fill “the planning void left by the lack of strategic direction from the White House.” A September 2004 Defense Science Board report concluded that the “U.S. strategic communication must be transformed.”

“The department is always looking for ways to improve our communication efforts, and we are working closely with the State Department to support their public diplomacy initiatives where appropriate,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in response to questions about how the new psyops program fits into an administration plan.

One would think at this point the Brass is finally getting it, until you add in the last quote:

“What’s changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this is not a force multiplier; this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you,” said Dan Kuehl, a specialist in information warfare at the National Defense University. “This gets to the importance of the war of ideas. There are a billion-plus Muslims that are undecided. How do we move them over to being more supportive of us? If we can do that, we can make progress and improve security.”

As a human being, I can proffer this humble opinion: Stop killing their children, give money to rebuild what we carpet-bombed, and let them run their own country. Perhaps this is too simple for our complicated world, but I feel this would go along way toward reparations.

I’m developing this burgeoning theory, more like wishful thinking, really:

With all the goofball antics happening in Florida recently - voter disenfranchisement, child abuse via Taser(R), hypocritical right-to-life politics, tromping on civil-rights of minorities - couldn’t all these hurricanes be nature’s way of trying to drown the whole state? As the union’s lowest state in terms of height above sea level, maybe the sea wants to reclaim some acreage. One massive mudpuddle.

I know, I’m dreaming again. Too bad Texas is too far inland.