As a PSYOP soldier, this infuriates and frustrates me. I would hope the Marine Corps would be able to effectively utilize its PSYOP teams to combat this exact thing, but apparently they do not.

The Army unit I supported understood very little about Information Operations and Psychological Operations. They cared even less to learn.

PSYOP teams are trained and equipped to deal with EXACTLY this problem but can only do so if they become a key part of operational planning and receive the support they need from the units they are assigned to.

So often, I found myself asking for patrol support (give me some guntrucks, sir) from the S-3 only to be told, "hey, go out with this patrol and maybe they'll let you do your thing for a little bit." PSYOP is NOT a shake-and-bake operation and the Army's nonchalant attitude towards it is one of the reasons why we are losing the IO fight (and the fight in general) in Iraq.

And then the BC and his staff would pat eachother on the back when they found a weapons cache or caught an HVT... as if we were somehow making progress.

It's the people, stupid. That's what counterinsurgency is. And I don't care how many weapons caches you've found or HVT's you've caught... at the end of the day, it doesn't matter a bit if you don't have the people on your side.

When they write the book, "Why We Lost in Iraq" twenty years down the road, I guarantee you'll find in the index "PSYOP units, lack of and improper use" referenced with about thirty page numbers following it.

I'd be willing to bet half my pay that the insurgents in Iraq have specially-tasked people who do this exact thing... start rumors and plant misinformation.

I gotta stop here or my head will explode.