Rumsfeld wants to deal with "universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone"

So there it is. Rumsfeld blithers madly over the agility and speed of current news communication and its ideological danger to U.S. interests.

Well, yeah, I can see how speed makes all the difference when news is being flashed around the world on events that happened three years ago! Actually, I remember when news on the the real cause of Dilawar’s death (torture/murder not natural causes) came out a while back (see LA Times link), the leaked gory details of which now resurrect and rally attention.

Rumsfeld is likely referring also to the now retracted “Newsweak” story on the use of the Quran to humiliate prisoners, which the Red Cross had lodged complaints about with the Pentagon back in 2002 and 2003 (complaints which had been previously been made by detainees but which U.S. officials downplayed because the complaints came from detainees).

And god knows to what else Rumsfeld is referring with his lament over the mercurial swiftness of the news that manages to make it out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Rumsfeld Laments Global Reach of War News
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA – One of the military’s new wartime challenges is dealing with global media that can instantly spread around the world information that may be false or damaging to U.S. interests, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

The United States needs to respond to anti-American messages with greater agility and speed if it is to win the ideological struggle with Islamic extremists, Rumsfeld said in a speech to members of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

“We’ll need to develop considerably more sophisticated ways of using these new means of communication that are now available to reach the many and diverse audiences,” he said.

Rumsfeld didn’t delve deeply into specifics in his brief talk with members of the civic group. But in the recent past, news outlets have broadcast messages from terrorist groups, or reported stories that have fueled rage against Americans in the Muslim world.

“This is really the first war in history that is being conducted in an era of multiple global satellite television networks, 24-hour news outlets with live coverage of terrorist attacks, disasters and combat operations,” Rumsfeld said.

He said U.S. officials must also deal with “a global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions, e-mail, cell phones, digital cameras wielded by anyone and everyone” and “a seemingly casual disregard for the protection of classified information, resulting in a near continuous hemorrhage of classified documents, to the detriment of the country.”

The defense secretary was among those who complained earlier this month following deadly riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek published a story that U.S. interrogators desecrated a copy of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay. The magazine later retracted the story amid questions about its truthfulness.

Suppression of information is not new. The History News Network has a piece by Nathan Williams on how the flow of information has been dealt with by the US Government in wars previous to Terror Corp’s Crusade Against Terror. And instantaneous news has been around since the telegraph. No, so the problem isn’t speed. The problem is the ability to disseminate news broadly, once it reaches fertile ground, with the adding annoying component of ability for broad discussion on the news. And probably also very annoying the archiving of news, discussion and opinion and ease of access via search engines. One doesn’t have to go digging through the library stacks.

That is, with the news that manages to make it out of the castle walls.

Another correction. Rumsfeld said, “The United States needs to respond to anti-American messages with greater agility and speed if it is to win the ideological struggle with Islamic extremists.” But what Rumsfeld is talking about is not so much anti-American perhaps as it is anti-war and maybe anti-BushCo.

Interesting that Rumsfeld’s complaint comes on the same day that Amnesty international condemns the US example on Human Rights.

Speaking at the launch of Amnesty’s annual report into human rights abuses, the group’s secretary general, Irene Khan, said governments worldwide had betrayed their promises on human rights last year.

She singled out as bleak examples international inaction on the killings in Darfur, the UN’s failure to deal with abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the torture of prisoners by the US military in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The US came in for particular criticism over its pronouncements on torture and for “usurping the language of justice and freedom to pursue policies of fear and insecurity”, she told a London press conference.

“The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyperpower, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide,” she said. “When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity.”

The Pony Express (10 days from Saint Louis to California!) would have been too fast for Rumsfeld. But he would have appreciated that the nature of the work demanded a preference for orphans.