Admiral James Stavridis

Admiral James Stavridis and Misrata

Admiral James G Stavridis, NATO Supreme Commander Europe, tops the military command structure with regard to the coalition operation in Misrata.

As we have stated before his job encompasses the war on the land, air, on the sea and also the ‘information war’ and in his words:

“We sail in a cyber-sea and it is a rebel sea, and we must learn how to govern, how to sail in that sea.”

Because of the sheer weight of evidence that the USA cluster bombed Misrata the spotlight is now back on him.

Admiral James Stavridis and Special Operations

We find that Admiral James Stavridis is deeply involved in US Special Operations (including the operation which killed Bin Laden):

As the Telegraph’s Toby Harnden put it::

But here’s what the legendarily verbose and loose-lipped Vice President Joe Biden said at a dinner at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel last night to mark the 50th anniversary of the Atlantic Council:

Let me briefly acknowledge tonight’s distinguished honorees.  Admiral James Stavridis is a, is the real deal.  He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.

And:

Folks, I’d be remiss also if I didn’t say an extra word about the incredible events, extraordinary events of this past Sunday.  As Vice President of the United States, as an American, I was in absolute awe of the capacity and dedication of the entire team, both the intelligence community, the CIA, the SEALs.  It just was extraordinary.

Admiral Stavridis and the information war

On 21/07/2010 Admiral Stavridis picked this question out of the many sent to him on his social networks:

“What’s the best advice you can give to operational commanders to help with the information war, that is so critical in today’s environment?”

His answer was telling and indicates the importance given to this aspect of warfare and perhaps why the coalition propaganda has been so effective in the case of Libya. It also indicates a danger to democracy, with free speech being undermined by a new network of dedicated, military-trained bloggers and information specialists:

“People. Its investing in our young people who already have intuitively so many of the information age skill-sets. What we need to do is gather them up in their 20s, get them the right training and education and create a cadre within the military who are specialised in this kind of information war and frankly if we look today at the kind of environment we’re in, its pretty easy to project a future in which the information aspects of conflict are going to be quite significant.”

So we can assume that there is a cadre of covert information specialists out there who are working full-time at shaping the public discussion over the war in Libya – and there likely will be such a cadre in all future wars.

Admiral Stavridis and humanitarian organisations

Another major concern of Admiral Stavridis is “government-civilian” connections and specifically working with humanitarian operations – and we can now see the fruits of his labours as certain humanitarian organisations (along with most of the mainstream media) actively embrace pro-war propaganda.