Here’s the headline from a Washington Post article dated July 7th:

Somali American caught up in a shadowy Pentagon counterpropaganda campaign

Seems this American of Somali heritage named Abdiwali Warsame has a website called Somalimidnimo.com. It’s a news site that, according to Mr. Warsame, is provided because “I just want the community to know what’s going on”. Since most of the articles on the site are written in other languages, it’s difficult to gauge his intent. That’s not my job anyway. The point is, a beltway contractor, Navanti, targeted the guy, two Somalis wrote a report, and that got him an FBI visit to his house. In Minnesota.

Is there something wrong with this picture? You betcha. This contractor, Navanti, was working as a subcontractor for the Special Operations Command to help conduct “information operations to engage local populations and counter nefarious influences” in Africa and Europe. So what is this kind of work called? Psychological Operations, or PsyOps. But did you notice that defined locale? Africa and Europe. It doesn’t say Minnesota. Oops.

Here: let’s have some pictures to clarify.

and

. Can you spot the differences? Apparently, nobody at Navanti could.

Now here’s the problem, per the Washington Post: “The Pentagon is legally prohibited from conducting psychological operations at home or targeting U.S. audiences with propaganda, except during domestic emergencies. Defense Department rules also forbid the military from using psychological operations to target U.S. citizens at any time, in any location globally, or under any circumstances.”

Gee, that seems pretty clear, eh? Except that’s exactly what they did, and they knew he was an American citizen living in Minnesota when they did it.

So what’s the upshot of all this? Another brick in the wall of too many contractors doing work that is not well supervised and creates situations that embarrass everyone, and don’t make us one whit safer than we were before they did it? You decide. But I’ll say this about that: since our esteemed government does not hesitate to blow up American citizens with drones, what’s a little targeted psychological warfare? If I had to choose, well…OK, beatin’ this dead horse

But here’s the real kicker: again, per the Post: “In 2010, the U.S. military stopped using the phrase “psychological operations” because of its negative connotations. Instead, it adopted a blander term…” No more PsyOps. When did they make this change? In January of 2010. The movie “Men Who Stare at Goats” was released in November of 2009. In it, PsyOps is portrayed as a bunch of loonies running around doing strange things like making goats pass out by staring at them. November, 2009 – January, 2010. Tell me they didn’t change the name in reaction to this movie. Of course they did. But to what? Military Information Support Operations, or M.I.S.O.

MISO… as in MISO Soup. Ah, come on – you know what’s coming next…