"‘Psy ops’ Army branch gets new name" by Associated Press | July 3, 2010
FORT BRAGG, N.C. — The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name “psychological operations’’ for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.
The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: “Military Information Support Operations,’’ or MISO....
Related: Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh and the OSI
They really like renaming things, huh?
Psychological operations have been cast as spooky in books and movies, portraying the soldiers as master manipulators. The 2009 film “The Men Who Stare at Goats,’’ starring George Clooney, for example, was about an army unit that trains psychic spies.
Haven't seen it, do not intend to.
But the real mission is far more mundane. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, psychological operations units dropped leaflets urging Iraqis to surrender.
You know, the kinds of things the Nazis did to France.
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