By Pamela Geller
Douglas Feith's book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, is coming out in paperback, with all proceeds going to charities that support veterans and their families. He conducted an interview with a few bloggers (myself, Red State, Powerline, Fausta et al).
Geller: To what extent did the Islamic doctrines of jihad and the requirement to subjugate infidels under the rule of Islamic law enter into your calculations for Iraq, and do you think the persecution of Christians had anything to do with those doctrines?
Feith: Well ... uh, the jihadist ideology was obviously a major... issue, uh, in our analysis of the strategy for the war on terrorism. And one of the things the Pentagon took the lead on ... was calling attention to the ideological component of the war on terror, and one of the things I deal with with in the book (which is a very sad story), was how it was Rumsfeld and General Myers and others at the Pentagon, who over and over again, right from the beginning, right after 9/11, were emphasizing the importance of an ideological effort, a strategic communications effort and a general strategy for countering ideological support for terrorism. And when the rest of the government wasn't doing very much in that area, we created within my office, within the policy office at the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Influence to do work in this area. And the Public Affairs people in the Pentagon and other people around the US government were very unhappy with the creation of this office, some of it was for turf reasons and some of it was for other reasons, but one of the consequences was somebody leaked - well, leaked, no - no, somebody lied - to The New York Times and gave a report saying that this Office of Strategic Influence was intending to lie to foreign journalists. And The New York Times ran a front page story saying that. It caused a big imbroglio that resulted in the shutting down of this office. More ...
Douglas Feith's book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, is coming out in paperback, with all proceeds going to charities that support veterans and their families. He conducted an interview with a few bloggers (myself, Red State, Powerline, Fausta et al).
Geller: To what extent did the Islamic doctrines of jihad and the requirement to subjugate infidels under the rule of Islamic law enter into your calculations for Iraq, and do you think the persecution of Christians had anything to do with those doctrines?
Feith: Well ... uh, the jihadist ideology was obviously a major... issue, uh, in our analysis of the strategy for the war on terrorism. And one of the things the Pentagon took the lead on ... was calling attention to the ideological component of the war on terror, and one of the things I deal with with in the book (which is a very sad story), was how it was Rumsfeld and General Myers and others at the Pentagon, who over and over again, right from the beginning, right after 9/11, were emphasizing the importance of an ideological effort, a strategic communications effort and a general strategy for countering ideological support for terrorism. And when the rest of the government wasn't doing very much in that area, we created within my office, within the policy office at the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Influence to do work in this area. And the Public Affairs people in the Pentagon and other people around the US government were very unhappy with the creation of this office, some of it was for turf reasons and some of it was for other reasons, but one of the consequences was somebody leaked - well, leaked, no - no, somebody lied - to The New York Times and gave a report saying that this Office of Strategic Influence was intending to lie to foreign journalists. And The New York Times ran a front page story saying that. It caused a big imbroglio that resulted in the shutting down of this office. More ...
Source: Atlas
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