I think the first question we must ponder is how we identify what were cyberwar actions and what were not. Certain inputs here at the Belmont Club clearly were, and I don’t want to comment on them because I have no desire to aid the other side in BDA.

We heard at various times that Russian forces were and were not pushing past South Ossetia and were or were not in Gori. One news service would report one thing and another would contradict it. There were multiple such conflicting reports on similar issues.

Now how much of that was time-phased and how much was the fog of war and how much was bad reporting and how much was disinformation? I am sure that we all recall how when US forces took the Baghdad airport and one Reuters reporter was saying he was just there and the Americans were nowhere to be seen. Then another report came out maybe 30 min later, also from Reuters I believe, from another reporter who was at the airport and the place was covered with Americans. Was one of those reports disinformation or bad reporting?

And then there was the delightful Baghdad Bob, giving news conferences saying the Americans were nowhere near and if they had turned up the mike gain you would have been able to hear the M1A1’s rumbling by outside. Now, we know that was disinformation.

In the case of the Georgian conflict, knowing things such as whether the Russians were going outside South Ossetia was absolutely critical to framing the nature of the conflict. Moving out of South Ossetia changed the perception from that of an armed man defending his home from intruders to that of an armed man slipping a bank teller a threatening note.

Now, I’m sure that the CIA, DIA, and DoD knew the answer, but they were almost certainly not able to publicize it due to intelligence sources and methods issues. But was the news media played or complicit or gullible or merely confused?