U.S. needs to get more online friends than Al Qaeda

 CNN reports that James Glassman, nominated to head public diplomacy at the State Department, said that Al Qaeda is proving more effective at gaining support through the internet than the Bush Administration.  “Our enemies are eating our lunch in terms of getting the word out in digital technology,” said Glassman. Glassman is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and he operates radio, television and Internet broadcast networks paid for by U.S. taxpayers including the Voice of America, available in dozens of languages, and Arabic language Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said  “Public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals”.

“Glassman said the United States must overturn a misconception in the Muslim world that it is a military threat, that it wants to weaken and divide the Muslim world and spread Christianity.

One member of the committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, asked Glassman, “Do we broadcast what people want to hear or what they need to hear?”

Glassman replied, “We have to be honest. If we tell them lies they are going to figure that out very quickly.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, introduced Glassman to the committee, saying the public diplomacy post is “the closest thing to a supreme allied commander in the war of ideas and one of the most important posts in Washington.”" -Charley Keyes, CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/30/internet.pr.failure/index.html?iref=newssearch