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Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Times They Are A-Changin'

"Stay the course" is out. "Changing tactics" is in. No, I'm not talking about Iraq. At least, not directly. In the battle for hearts and minds, it seems the US has accepted that the keyboard may be mightier than the Tomahawk Cruise Missile. I received the email below two days ago and I'm posting it here with Spc Erickson's permission. The website he refers seems to be a great source of information on the US military.

Greetings!

My name is SPC Chris Erickson with U.S. Central Command Public Affairs. I came across your blog, Gathara’s World, today and noticed your interest in different topics, particularly a post on Al Qaeda.

As a member of the US military, I like seeing open discussions on the happenings of the world, although many times I’m not able to get involved (especially if it gets political). I’m sure you’ve come across it in the past, but if you haven’t, I’d like to invite you to check out our web site, www.centcom.mil. It’s one more resource for information and you’re free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog. We also have a portion of the site set aside called “What Extremists are Saying”, which can serve to keep people knowledgeable about what’s being said.

Also, if you would like, you can be added to our mailing list. We send out news stories and press releases about US military and coalition forces operations, humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. This information is also available via RSS on our site. Most of the time we can get CENTCOM information out to bloggers before it appears in the main stream media.

I appreciate your time today and I do look forward to hearing back from you

Spc. Chris Erickson
Electronic Media Engagement Team
U.S. Central Command Public Affairs

6 comments:

coldtusker said...

Ur link doesn't work...

Gathara said...

Ta for the heads up. I've fixed it.

Anonymous said...

There are good people even among the Mauritanians (nah, not the North African country; one of the factions in Ernst Jünger's Heliopolis); may Spc. Chris Erickson is one of them.

The part of the website "What Extremists are Saying" would certainly be interesting, because one would be expecting there the first-hand rendering of Bush's and Cheney's speeches, hopefully even before they appear in the press.

Back to Erickson. Would you belief that I encountered an extraordinary photo artist nowhere else than in the Heart of Darkness, namely in the USMC's public relations dept. ? And yet it's true; Paula Fitzgerald is a great artist, and I do not hesitate to elevate her at least to the same height as Frank Capra, probably higher. In her photographs she manages the impossible, which only great artists achieve: to convey the Truth behind, to penetrate to a deeper level of humanity in spite of her mission. Subversive. One great young woman, in spite of her uniform. She is one of the few US servicehenchmen whom I would wish to survive the Iraq debacle safely and unharmed.

Osas

Anonymous said...

It's Frank Capa!

Anonymous said...

I have badly mixed it up, yeah. Thankd for the correction. Frank Capra was a movie director, the war photographer is Robert Capra (= Endre Friedmann). Quote from Wikipedia:

[i]"He adopted the name Robert Capa around this time, because he felt it would be recognisable and familiar, as it was close to the filmmaker Frank Capra's name and sounded American."[/i]

My apologies !

Osas

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