Anything with the potential to disrupt internal and external American/Western propaganda is a threat.
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[1]
> With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show.
> Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 the first of six such Guantánamo trips which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key messages how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees.
> The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.
> The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.
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[2]
> Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.
> The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
It's only a little white lie here and there, just trust us bro!
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[3]
> Cable television channel Al Jazeera claimed 600 civilians had been killed and filled its broadcasts with images of dead children at the Fallujah hospital and other locations within the city. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts so stung U.S. national leaders that they considered withdrawing all U.S. forces—including CENTCOM’s forward headquarters—from Qatar if its government did not do more to “bring Al Jazeera under control.”
> With little time to prepare for the mission, MNF-W had not embedded Western journalists with I MEF forces, so that the critical ground of information operations was effectively ceded to an insurgency that could distribute a one-sided message. Worse, the haste with which the operation was executed precluded the opportunity to evacuate the city of civilians properly, essentially ensuring that the insurgency had the opportunity to exploit footage of civilian casualties.
Al Jazeera "claimed," but whoops it was also true, and we can't stand the exposure.
---
[1]
> With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show.
> Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 the first of six such Guantánamo trips which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key messages how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees.
> The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.
> The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.
---
[2]
> Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.
> The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
It's only a little white lie here and there, just trust us bro!
---
[3]
> Cable television channel Al Jazeera claimed 600 civilians had been killed and filled its broadcasts with images of dead children at the Fallujah hospital and other locations within the city. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts so stung U.S. national leaders that they considered withdrawing all U.S. forces—including CENTCOM’s forward headquarters—from Qatar if its government did not do more to “bring Al Jazeera under control.”
> With little time to prepare for the mission, MNF-W had not embedded Western journalists with I MEF forces, so that the critical ground of information operations was effectively ceded to an insurgency that could distribute a one-sided message. Worse, the haste with which the operation was executed precluded the opportunity to evacuate the city of civilians properly, essentially ensuring that the insurgency had the opportunity to exploit footage of civilian casualties.
Al Jazeera "claimed," but whoops it was also true, and we can't stand the exposure.
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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...
[3] The US Army in the Iraq War, 2003-2006