We’ve noticed some fairly bizarre twitterings from the official feed for the U.S. Army’s Africa Command. Among them is a tweet sending @USArmyAfrica followers to an article on the website of truther in chief Alex Jones titled “Foiled Terrorist Bombing in Detroit: An Excuse to Expand the Bogus War On Terror.” Another tweet this morning sent followers to an article titled “Oil lust or war on terror? Nigerian airplane bomber raises some questions,” the lede of which reads:
Maybe someone, somewhere is asking those two questions. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has another question: who is updating the US Army Africa twitter feed? Has it been hacked by some crackpot truther, or is the public affairs officer in charge of updating that feed not convinced that jet fuel can melt steel? Another question we have for Africa Command is what value a Twitter feed has for a continent where more than half the population doesn’t even have access to electricity let alone high-speed Internet (the feed has just 2,483 followers) — and for those Africans who are following the feed, what message does the US Army Africa hope to send them with links to conspiratorial websites that impute the worst possible motives to the American government in general and Africa Command in particular? I’ve left messages with the US Army Africa public affairs office requesting comment and will update this post as soon as they get back to me. You can view the US Army Africa official Twitter feed here.
