weapons caches or smuggled into the country, while the equipment used for the creation of propaganda, the cameras, the computers, the software, has continued to advance rapidly. On the one hand, there is clear and notable evolution in the technology being used in the generation of propaganda, based on what is being captured in the Iraqi battlespace:
Over time technology has gone bigger and bigger. We have seen more hard drives, as time goes on, hard drives coming off the battlefield have become more advanced, bigger hard drives, [with] more capability. Earlier in the fight [there were] 20 gig hard drives, now 40, some are 80, even 120. So we have seen an advancement as technology across the world has increased.[1]
It remains the case, in fairness, that most of the equipment recovered has generally been 3 to 5 years old.[2] And there could be any number of reasons for that, starting with the fact that, given the difficulty of gaining access to computers in the country during Saddam's time, the baseline was probably very far behind the curve, even compared to the rest of the region.
Where the technology itself is not the most advanced but is several generations behind, they use it to access cutting edge techniques, and constantly push the envelope in terms of creative applications of what technology allows. For example, the British have complained that insurgents have been using Google Earth to plan their attacks on British compounds in Iraq more precisely.
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