Ode to the Power of the Blog: or the Story on the Military Considering Recruiting and Hiring Bloggers to Hack Sites "Anti-thetical to US Interests"

Whoah...if nearly a trillion dollars spent on the war isn't enough to wage it and they need to infiltrate the blogosphere, it must be that US soldiers and Iraqi bloggers have had quite a bit of influence.


Wired.com just leaked the story that "A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested 'clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."

The report "introduces the military audience to the "blogging phenomenon," and "lays out a number of ways in which the armed forces -- specifically, the military's public affairs, information operations, and psychological operations units -- might use the sites to their advantage. " The report also suggested that these bloggers should hack blogs that are "anti-thetical to US interests".

The report continues to suggest "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence... to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering.

What do you say gang? FCNL Peace in Politics by day and take on a moonlighting shift for the Pentagon by night?

Sound a bit, well, I don't know....1984-like to have the state develop a plan for psych-ops to use against their own people that they are trying to sell a war to? No reason for alarm- the report warned that these clandestine operations could lose some American hearts and minds:

"On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust."

HOLD IT!!! PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE BEING DECEIVED?!!

That and that the price of propagandizing the American people is being found out--- if only politicians were this honest!

Could they actually stoop that low?

As mentioned above, they already have.

Here's a reminder of what a "free press" means in Iraq:

Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.

If that isn't enough to get you motivated to blog, I don't know what is :)