Although the proposed guidelines will not take the place of the 2004 memo, they could form the basis of a new policy. However, such policies typically take months to develop because they must be widely reviewed and vetted within the military.
During the Vietnam war, military press conferences were derided as the "5 o'clock follies" because of misleading or irrelevant information provided to the press. Since then, Army public affairs officers adopted new practices that disavowed the use of misleading or deceptive information.
The military instituted its formal information operations effort in the 1990s, bringing together an array of activities, including deception, psychological operations and electronic warfare.
The changes proposed by Petraeus have reignited a wider debate within the Pentagon over the use of information during the Iraq war.
In one highly controversial information operations undertaking, the U.S. military used the Lincoln Group, a Washington defense contractor, to pay Iraqi editors to publish articles casting the American military in a favorable light. Although the articles, written by American troops, were truthful, some public affairs officers criticized the practice after it was revealed in the Los Angeles Times in 2005 because it appeared as though the military was peddling propaganda to journalists.
Nonetheless, some officers believe the Iraq war has demonstrated the problems of failing to aggressively manage information. They note that during World War II, nearly all information from the war theater was censored. Other officers believe that any substantive changes would erode the military's credibility and consider it naive to think the U.S. public would tolerate 1940s-style censorship.
Advocates of lowering the wall between public affairs and information operations point to one missed opportunity last month. Army Major Gen. Michael D. Barbero revealed at a Pentagon news conference that insurgents had placed two children in the backseat of a car laden with bombs as a decoy to get past a military checkpoint. Once through, the bombers tripped the explosives, killing the children and three bystanders.
The grisly incident was widely reported. But some officers believe the story would have had greater impact if released in a more dramatized way to underscore the insurgents' barbarism.
Those who favor more aggressive information management believe public affairs officials should work for information operations offices.
