War on Terror = War on Courage Through Manipulating the Conscience

19th century strategist, Carl von Clausewitz once said, "Killing the enemy's courage is as vital as killing his troops."   Hence, the war on American courage that's progressing seamlessly from one idiotic terror inducing scheme to another.

If you don't believe, just visit your nearest airport and observe the willingness of  most American citizens to submit to harmful TSA body scans and the groping of their private parts.  And, for what?  An underwear bomber? A shoe bomber? Who both appeared as if brushing their teeth every morning might present quite a challenge, let alone, carrying out an international plan of terror.

You see, that's why the war on our courage is winning.  Unaware of all of the classic propaganda techniques - evasion, confusion, misdirection, focus grouped selected highly charged rhetoric, disinformation, secrecy, withholding of important facts, selective leaks - we swallow whole what the corporately owned mainstream media dishes out as gospel truth. Which brings us to the military PSYOP operations, that's currently being used against we, the people.

According to the academic research paper, PSYOP Operations in the 21st Century, from the US Army War College:

A revolution in Psychological Operations (PSYOP) will occur in the near future. The Internet will be the vehicle to enable a revolution in PSYOP and improve the capabilities of PSYOP to achieve objectives specified in the National Security Strategy (NSS).

Now, PSYOP has been used in warfare since ancient times; however, what's so concerning now is - more than ever before, due to the rapidly advancing technology, and an elite agenda to subvert the public -  PSYOP's main target: us.  

Here are just a few examples of PSYOP operations employed against we, the people that we know of:

Recently, Rolling Stone has learned  that the US Army inappropriately used members of a psychological operations team to influence visiting U.S. senators into providing more funding for the war.

In addition, over the years, the army has embedded active-duty PSYOPS soldiers at local TV stations.  Local television stations have regularly hosted active-duty soldiers from the Army's 4th Psychological Operations group as part of the Army's Training With Industry program. And the unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. And although CNN promised never to allow that again, they placed an intern in 2007-08.

Under NORTHCOM, PSYOP, now the less offensive sounding, Military Information Support Operations (MISO), can "spring into action domestically." That's right.  The planes that are equipped to broadcast radio and television messages to counter an adversary’s propaganda or propagate our own to a foreign audience, can now be used to target US.

Then, the Chicago Tribune hosted two Marine Corps public affairs officers between 2002 and 2004. Lt. Col. Ricardo Player's - who had previously served as public affairs officer for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a military aide to former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke - time at the Tribune coincided with the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

The insidious nature of psychological warfare makes it a much more efficient weapon and or tool to control the masses whether domestic or foreign.  Moreover, in a global society as we are, it's even more important to inflict, as both domestic and foreign must be dealt with at the same time.

If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so. Your first job is to build the credibility and the authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you although you are his enemy. - A Psychological Warfare Casebook Operations Research Office Johns Hopkins University Baltimore (1958)

"In military actions, attacking minds_that is the primary mission; attacking fortifications, that is a secondary mission. Psychological war is the main thing. Combat is secondary." —Third Century Chinese Military Theoretician

"...there was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, 'and this will always be the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology...Hatred and contempt must be directed at particular individuals." - H. Trevor-Roper (ed), The Goebbels Diaries, p. XX, cited in Regan, Geoffrey. 1987. Great Military Disasters. New York: M. Evans and Company.

"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." - Katherine Graham

Links:

The cartoon that came in from the cold

For George Orwell, there was nothing pro-American about Animal Farm. The CIA, however, had other ideas. Karl Cohen tells the remarkable story of how US intelligence secretly funded a landmark British movie

An offer they couldn't refuse.

The CIA is often credited with 'advice' on Hollywood films, but no one is truly sure about the extent of its shadowy involvement.

Human Network Attacks