US trails al-Qaida in media battle

THE US lags dangerously behind al-Qaida and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr Rumsfeld said modernisation is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide, who are bombarded with negative images of the West.

He lamented that the vast media attention devoted to US abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of “Saddam Hussein’s mass graves”.

The US faced a torrent of criticism this week as fresh images of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse were released and a UN report called for Guantanamo Bay to be shut.

On Thursday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the US should close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

However, White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the call to shut the camp, saying the military treats all detainees humanely and “these are dangerous terrorists that we’re talking about”.

The panel’s report, released Thursday in Geneva, said the United States must close the detention facility “without further delay” because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.

Mr Annan told reporters he didn’t necessarily agree with everything in the report, but he added: “The basic premise that we need to be careful, to have a balance between effective action against terrorism and individual liberties and civil rights, I think, is valid.”