New friendly fire coverup: Army shreds files on dead soldiers. "Hours after Salon revealed evidence that two Americans were killed by a U.S. tank, not enemy fire, military officials destroyed papers on the men."
posted by homunculus on Nov 19, 2008 - 46 comments

Need money? Have a blog? Well, your troubles may be over: "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." Of course, if you don't want to play along, there are other ways to make your blog useful:

Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience.... If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and... take down the site (and the blogger) themselves....

Who might you be interested in "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers"? Oh, the US military.
posted by orthogonality on Apr 5, 2008 - 20 comments

Saddam's Confessions - Given Saddam Hussein's central place in the American Consciousness over the last couple decades and particularly in recent years, I found 60 minutes' interview with FBI interrogator George Piro pretty fascinating.
posted by kliuless on Jan 27, 2008 - 24 comments

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press --As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories ... The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor ... Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. ... The Lincoln Group is involved, and the military's "Information Operations Task Force". Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
posted by amberglow on Nov 30, 2005 - 46 comments

CENTCOM trolls for a blogger to help with the propaganda--but he picks Jesus' General --I am a Public Affairs Officer writing from US Central Command. I would like to inquire about the possibility of you posting a link to our web site. I see that you are covering a lot of different types of stories in a lot of countries. I would like to get some of the stories out that are happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. ... Gen. JC Christian, patriot, of course responds with an even better idea, and cc:s Pat Robertson.
posted by amberglow on Aug 25, 2005 - 20 comments

Identical quotations and the truth, as disseminated by the US Military ...Following a car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military issued a statement with a quotation attributed to an unidentified Iraqi that was virtually identical to a quote reacting to an attack on July 13. ... (quotes inside)
posted by amberglow on Jul 24, 2005 - 85 comments

Sex and PsyOps. An interesting look at sexual propaganda throughout modern military history. Unfortunately slightly censored, but a good look into what may or may not have been an effective demoralization tool.
posted by eas98 on May 19, 2004 - 25 comments

Gallery of anti-war propaganda posters remixed from old wartime posters. Some are perhaps over the top, but its very thought provoking work. Some of these posters really drive the point home that we are not that far removed from from the grisly battles of that past regardless of the government spin and all the high-tech military toys. This one is especially moving.
posted by skallas on Aug 14, 2002 - 104 comments

Art Fights Back — an exhibit of poster art at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa — displays images dedicated to the memory of September 11 and support of the Unites States and its troops. Seems like a typical thing to do around war time, right?

Take a close look at the actual poster design. Don't they seem rather non-American in their artistic style? In fact, they recall an era of poster design for a dramatically different context than what was typically thought of as U.S. patriotism.
posted by Down10 on Mar 11, 2002 - 39 comments

Captures from a video of an attack on a Taliban BMP. All I have to say is "holy crap." Graphic. Interesting. Discuss amongst yourselves.
posted by manero on Jan 25, 2002 - 24 comments

This propaganda leaflet is apparently being dropped in afghanistan by the American Military (taken from this msnbc story about the first american soldier to die from hostile fire). Regardless of your opinion about propaganda, this seems rather sloppy. If the purpose of propaganda is to convince people of something, wouldn't you want to say it in a language they understand? Is the American military getting lazy / sloppy / over-confident? It looks like the propaganda leaflets from Desert storm (1991), Desert Fox (1998), and the bombing of Kosovo were at least in the local languages. (Who knew there was a quarterly magazine dedicated to aerial leaflet propaganda?)
posted by jnthnjng on Jan 4, 2002 - 25 comments

"No Sir, I Am Not A Monkey" (But I play one on TV.)
posted by holgate on Dec 15, 2000 - 5 comments