Public Affairs and Information Operations

By The Armorer - Cross-posted at Argghhh! and Small Wars Journal Blog

Public Affairs and Information Operations are seemingly competing and complementary missions and agendas, complicated by regulatory language created in a much different strategic communications environment, overlain with a frisson of the biases of persons of sensitive politics - from both ends of the spectrum.

The "Flies in Amber" and "Dueling Information Operations" posts, regarding the decision of CJT-101 to aggressively get ahead of a story out of Afghanistan have produced some discussion on the issue of Public Affairs and Information Operations. I for one have been pleased to see the change that started appearing when CJTF-82 was running the show has been continued, and arguably accelerated under Colonel O'Hara's CJTF-101 PAO section. I just wish they would write the stuff so as to be more readable and less stilted.

I invited Jack Holt, of the OSD Public Affairs office offer up his *personal* view on the subject as an insider. As that was done as a comment to a post, I decided to make it a post - and to post Cannoneer #4's response to Jack's comment, as a favor to my 60-odd Twitterers and those who follow the blog via Facebook and RSS readers, to see if we can't generate some more discussion on the topic...