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”.