Pentagon to set new communications policy-official

Reuters AlertNet - Pentagon to set new communications policy-official

Pentagon to set new communications policy-official
11 Jan 2006 18:04:44 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The Pentagon, stung by criticism over secret U.S. military payments to Iraqi newspapers to print pro-American articles, is moving to develop a "strategic communications" plan, a senior defense official said on Wednesday.

The White House and some members of Congress have expressed concern over the payments, but the military says it is important to spread the truth in Iraq to counter what it calls lying by insurgents to the Iraqi people.

The defense official said that developing clear guidance for communicating with the public at home and abroad is a key issue that will be taken up this year as a result of top-level debate in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR.

"There are a number of road maps that have been identified to be developed over the next year. One of them happens to be on strategic communications," the official, who asked not to be identified, told reporters of the QDR report, which will be sent to the White House and Congress in February.

"It basically gives you a direction in which to then develop your policies, your directives, your instructions, your doctrine," the official said.

The military's Central Command, with responsibility for operations in Iraq, is investigating the payments to Iraqi journalists and news organizations by the Washington-based Lincoln Group, a defense contractor, as part of "information operations" there.

That investigation is almost complete, but Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the Central Command, had thus far not ordered any halt to the media payments.

"I don't know if there is any specific tie," the senior defense official told reporters on Wednesday when asked if there was any direct link between the Iraq media issue and the QDR decision to move toward a new communications policy.

"For some time we have recognized that we are in a new and very challenging communications environment out there and we tend to focus our efforts to ensuring that the combatant commander has all of the capabilities that he needs to accomplish his missions," the official said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, last month expressed concern over the Iraq media payments.

A senior State Department official, who asked for anonymity, also said at the time that the reports of planted stories undermined U.S. diplomats' efforts to foster democracy in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, was asked during a briefing in Baghdad in December whether paying off Iraqi news organizations to run pro-American stories undermines the credibility of the U.S. military and of the new Iraqi media.

"We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact not based on fiction," Lynch said.