U.S. now planning Web Warfare!
Earl J. Prignitz
April 07, 2006
While it is true the U.S. is still committed to hunting down al-Queda operatives, it is also taking the battle to new fronts. Deep within the Pentagon, technologies are being deployed to wage the so-called "war on terror" on the internet, in newspapers and even through mobile phones.
This revolution in information warfare is merely an extension of the politics of the neoconservative Bush White House. Even before they were in office, the key players in the Bush administration were planning total military and political domination of the globe. You don't believe that? Look up the PNAC information on your search engine. It's available for anyone to see. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is an American think tank, based in Washington, DC. The group was established in early 1997 as a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting "American global leadership". Then in September 2000, the now-notorious document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' -- written by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the think-tank staffed by many of the Bush presidency's leading men -- said that America needed a blueprint for maintaining US global pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power-rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Now don't forget PNAC, was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Bush's younger brother, Jeb; Paul Wolfowitz, once Rumsfeld's deputy and now head of the World Bank; and Lewis Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, now indicted for perjury in America. Are you getting the picture?
If that isn't enough to cause alarm 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' also spoke of taking control of the internet. A heavily-censored version of the document was released under Freedom of Information legislation to the National Security Archive at George Washington University in the US. The report admits the US is vulnerable to electronic warfare. 'Networks are growing faster than we can defend them,' the report notes. 'The sophistication and capability of ... nation states to degrade system and network operations are rapidly increasing.' The report says the US military's first priority is that the Department [of defense] must be prepared to' fight the net'. The internet is seen in much the same way as an enemy state by the Pentagon because of the way it can be used to propagandize, organize, and mount electronic attacks on crucial US targets. Under the heading 'offensive cyber operations', two pages outlining possible operations are blacked out. Next, the Pentagon focuses on electronic warfare, saying it must be elevated to the heart of US military war planning. It will 'provide maximum control of the electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting or destroying the full spectrum of communications equipment ... it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities'. Put simply, this means US forces having the power to knock out any or all forms of telecommunications on the planet. That‘s pretty scary friends!.
Then after electronic warfare, the US war planners turn their attention to psychological operations: 'Military forces must be better prepared to use psyops in support of military operations.' The State Department, which carries out US diplomatic functions, is known to be worried that the rise of such operations could undermine American diplomacy if uncovered by foreign states. Other examples of information war listed in the report include the creation of 'Truth Squads' to provide public information when negative publicity, such as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, hits US operations, and the establishment of 'Humanitarian Road Shows,' which will talk up American support for democracy and freedom. The Pentagon also wants to target a 'broader set of select foreign media and audiences', with $161 million set aside to help place pro-US articles in overseas media.
A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.
To prepare the ground for the PNAC-like ideas that were circulating in the HardRight, several wealthy billionaires and corporations helped set up far-right think-tanks, and bought up various media outlets -- newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio talk shows, cable channels, etc. -- in support of that day when all the political tumblers would fall into place and the HardRight cabal and their supporters could assume complete control.
The Bush Administration, which came to see 9/11 as an "open door," used 9/11 and the fear that it generated in the general populace as their cover for enacting all sorts of draconian measures domestically and as their rationalization for launching preemptive military campaigns abroad. The Patriot Act, drafted earlier, was rushed through a frightened Congress in the days following 9/11 and the mysterious anthrax attack; few members even had read the huge document. The Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) to go after al Qaida in Afghanistan now is hauled out by the White House to justify torture, domestic eavesdropping, and anything else the "commander-in-chief" wants to authorize during "wartime."
Even today, the Bush manipulators, led by Karl Rove, continue to utilize fear, hyped-up patriotism and a permanent "war on terrorism" as the basis for their policy agenda, just as they did in 2004 to get Bush re-elected. This, is how they continue to fulfill their primary objectives, not the least of which is to roll back and, where possible, decimate and eliminate domestic social programs that the far-right has hated ever since the New Deal/Great Society days, and to free corporate ambitions from government regulation. To put it bluntly, it’s a great leap backward to turn-of-the-(20th)-century laissez-faire policy, which is generally understood to be a doctrine opposing economic interventionism by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain peace and property rights.
It isn’t hard to guess what the PNAC guys might be thinking these days, since they're quite open and proud of their theories and strategies. Indeed, their writings lay out quite openly what they're up to, but few took such extreme talk seriously. Now that they're in power, actually making the policy they only dreamed about a decade or so ago, with all sorts of frightening consequences for America and the rest of the world, we need to educate ourselves quickly as to how PNAC, and other HardRight think-tanks, work and what their future plans might be.
Just as soon as George W. Bush moved into the White House in January of 2001, a report, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was commissioned from the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy -- yep, that James Baker, the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II fame. The report advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture in the world and called for a "reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy," with access to oil repeatedly cited as a "security imperative." It's possible that inside Cheney's secret energy-panel papers, which he refuses to release to Congress or the American people, are references to foreign-policy plans for how to gain military control of oilfields across the globe. We do know now that maps were rolled out at those energy-panel meetings, which detailed which foreign oil-companies might get a slice of the Iraq oil pie.
Ladies and gentlemen these people are nothing but armchair theoreticians, most of whom made very sure not to serve in the military in Vietnam when that war was taking place. They may have truly believed, that the Iraqis would welcome the invading U.S. forces with bouquets of flowers and kisses when they "liberated" their country from the abominable conditions of Saddam Hussein's reign. As a matter of fact, many Iraqis, especially the majority Shias, were happy to be freed from Saddam's long reign of terror. But, as of now, U.S. military forces are more likely to remain trapped in a political/religious quagmire for years to come, given that so many of the Shia population, along with the rebellious minority Sunnis, just want the occupying soldiers to go home.
And believe me these armchair quarterbacks are not about to concede defeat. Their plans are far more grandiose than you can imagine. They are dreaming Empire!
This revolution in information warfare is merely an extension of the politics of the neoconservative Bush White House. Even before they were in office, the key players in the Bush administration were planning total military and political domination of the globe. You don't believe that? Look up the PNAC information on your search engine. It's available for anyone to see. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is an American think tank, based in Washington, DC. The group was established in early 1997 as a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting "American global leadership". Then in September 2000, the now-notorious document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' -- written by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the think-tank staffed by many of the Bush presidency's leading men -- said that America needed a blueprint for maintaining US global pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power-rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Now don't forget PNAC, was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Bush's younger brother, Jeb; Paul Wolfowitz, once Rumsfeld's deputy and now head of the World Bank; and Lewis Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, now indicted for perjury in America. Are you getting the picture?
If that isn't enough to cause alarm 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' also spoke of taking control of the internet. A heavily-censored version of the document was released under Freedom of Information legislation to the National Security Archive at George Washington University in the US. The report admits the US is vulnerable to electronic warfare. 'Networks are growing faster than we can defend them,' the report notes. 'The sophistication and capability of ... nation states to degrade system and network operations are rapidly increasing.' The report says the US military's first priority is that the Department [of defense] must be prepared to' fight the net'. The internet is seen in much the same way as an enemy state by the Pentagon because of the way it can be used to propagandize, organize, and mount electronic attacks on crucial US targets. Under the heading 'offensive cyber operations', two pages outlining possible operations are blacked out. Next, the Pentagon focuses on electronic warfare, saying it must be elevated to the heart of US military war planning. It will 'provide maximum control of the electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting or destroying the full spectrum of communications equipment ... it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities'. Put simply, this means US forces having the power to knock out any or all forms of telecommunications on the planet. That‘s pretty scary friends!.
Then after electronic warfare, the US war planners turn their attention to psychological operations: 'Military forces must be better prepared to use psyops in support of military operations.' The State Department, which carries out US diplomatic functions, is known to be worried that the rise of such operations could undermine American diplomacy if uncovered by foreign states. Other examples of information war listed in the report include the creation of 'Truth Squads' to provide public information when negative publicity, such as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, hits US operations, and the establishment of 'Humanitarian Road Shows,' which will talk up American support for democracy and freedom. The Pentagon also wants to target a 'broader set of select foreign media and audiences', with $161 million set aside to help place pro-US articles in overseas media.
A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.
To prepare the ground for the PNAC-like ideas that were circulating in the HardRight, several wealthy billionaires and corporations helped set up far-right think-tanks, and bought up various media outlets -- newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio talk shows, cable channels, etc. -- in support of that day when all the political tumblers would fall into place and the HardRight cabal and their supporters could assume complete control.
The Bush Administration, which came to see 9/11 as an "open door," used 9/11 and the fear that it generated in the general populace as their cover for enacting all sorts of draconian measures domestically and as their rationalization for launching preemptive military campaigns abroad. The Patriot Act, drafted earlier, was rushed through a frightened Congress in the days following 9/11 and the mysterious anthrax attack; few members even had read the huge document. The Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) to go after al Qaida in Afghanistan now is hauled out by the White House to justify torture, domestic eavesdropping, and anything else the "commander-in-chief" wants to authorize during "wartime."
Even today, the Bush manipulators, led by Karl Rove, continue to utilize fear, hyped-up patriotism and a permanent "war on terrorism" as the basis for their policy agenda, just as they did in 2004 to get Bush re-elected. This, is how they continue to fulfill their primary objectives, not the least of which is to roll back and, where possible, decimate and eliminate domestic social programs that the far-right has hated ever since the New Deal/Great Society days, and to free corporate ambitions from government regulation. To put it bluntly, it’s a great leap backward to turn-of-the-(20th)-century laissez-faire policy, which is generally understood to be a doctrine opposing economic interventionism by the state beyond that which is perceived to be necessary to maintain peace and property rights.
It isn’t hard to guess what the PNAC guys might be thinking these days, since they're quite open and proud of their theories and strategies. Indeed, their writings lay out quite openly what they're up to, but few took such extreme talk seriously. Now that they're in power, actually making the policy they only dreamed about a decade or so ago, with all sorts of frightening consequences for America and the rest of the world, we need to educate ourselves quickly as to how PNAC, and other HardRight think-tanks, work and what their future plans might be.
Just as soon as George W. Bush moved into the White House in January of 2001, a report, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was commissioned from the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy -- yep, that James Baker, the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II fame. The report advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture in the world and called for a "reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy," with access to oil repeatedly cited as a "security imperative." It's possible that inside Cheney's secret energy-panel papers, which he refuses to release to Congress or the American people, are references to foreign-policy plans for how to gain military control of oilfields across the globe. We do know now that maps were rolled out at those energy-panel meetings, which detailed which foreign oil-companies might get a slice of the Iraq oil pie.
Ladies and gentlemen these people are nothing but armchair theoreticians, most of whom made very sure not to serve in the military in Vietnam when that war was taking place. They may have truly believed, that the Iraqis would welcome the invading U.S. forces with bouquets of flowers and kisses when they "liberated" their country from the abominable conditions of Saddam Hussein's reign. As a matter of fact, many Iraqis, especially the majority Shias, were happy to be freed from Saddam's long reign of terror. But, as of now, U.S. military forces are more likely to remain trapped in a political/religious quagmire for years to come, given that so many of the Shia population, along with the rebellious minority Sunnis, just want the occupying soldiers to go home.
And believe me these armchair quarterbacks are not about to concede defeat. Their plans are far more grandiose than you can imagine. They are dreaming Empire!
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