The US military is engaged in a war. Their mission as they understand it is to confuse, demoralize, kill and destroy the enemy and do it while minimizing American casualties. They realize that anything they say in public can be heard around the world. Therefore anything they do say in public are either lies or dis-information. This accounts for the old axiom that "the truth is the first casualty of war." So there's really no point in asking them anything or quoting anything they say. This strategy can work well if, in fact, you have a strategy to win quickly and decisively. But if you are the military and you are not winning or can't win quickly or decisively, it soon becomes obvious that you have been lying about everything from the very beginning and then you no longer have any credibility with anyone. That's when your lies no longer confuse, demoralize or destroy the enemy... they confuse, demoralize your own troops and also the folks back home, which in turn destroys the mission. Of course the main problem is that the mission was ill conceived from the beginning. We are fighting the wrong enemy. And now no one in power recognized the truth, nor would they know what to do with it if they did recognize it.

Mark A. Goldman
www.gpln.com/protect.htm