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Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 3:41 pm
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<p>Via <a href="http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/a-leading-gener.html">Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman</a>, Lt. General William Caldwell IV penned a <a id="wh8k" href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/01/changing-the-organizational-cu-1/" title="really provocative post">really provocative post</a> for <a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/">Small Wars Journal</a> yesterday challenging the Army to encourage soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to blog freely and post their videos to YouTube. It’s fascinating to contrast Caldwell’s viral approach to information operations with Donald Rumsfeld’s "We need a new agency! What? I’m cold!" <a id="p7bu" href="../../../view/donald-rumsfeld" title="concept">concept</a>. Caldwell:</p>
<p><blockquote>The enemy video tapes operations and then distorts and twists the information and images to misinform the world. What if we had documented video footage of the same operations which refuted what our enemies say? By the way, that is not enough, we have to get our images out <span class="caps">FIRST</span>! The first images broadcast become reality to viewers. If we wait until we see the enemy’s images, we are being reactive and we have already squandered the opportunity.</blockquote></p>
<p>Caldwell, as Shachtman points out, now commands the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, an intellectual hub for mid-career officers that used to be commanded by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus">a certain general you might have heard of</a>.</p>
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2 Comments
Comment posted January 31, 2008 @ 11:24 pm
General Caldwell is absolutely correct in the use of battle videos by the insurgency. This war is and has always been about perception.
The problem that I see is that insurgent videos are used for a number of things such as; 1)recruitment, 2) motivation,3) I/O operations and 4) the videos are used to pass battle TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) to other Sunni Salafi global jihadists. It would be tough for us to follow suite—trying to get soldfiers to produce their videos and to get them in the internet is a logisterical nightmare.
Richard
Comment posted January 31, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
General Caldwell is absolutely correct in the use of battle videos by the insurgency. This war is and has always been about perception.
The problem that I see is that insurgent videos are used for a number of things such as; 1)recruitment, 2) motivation,3) I/O operations and 4) the videos are used to pass battle TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) to other Sunni Salafi global jihadists. It would be tough for us to follow suite—trying to get soldfiers to produce their videos and to get them in the internet is a logisterical nightmare.
Richard
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