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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (91297)	12/14/2004 6:34:37 AM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<<I have never seen those posts at the other threads. If you want to copy and post them here it would be interesting to read them.>> That may take a bit of time. 800k+ posts on those two threads.

To: Grainne who wrote (91297)	12/14/2004 6:55:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

In battle for credibility, Pentagon injures its cause 2 hours, 34 minutes ago Op/Ed - USATODAY.com When Sgt. Dennis Edwards of the 82nd Airborne Division spoke to a group of high school students in Massachusetts last month, he put himself in legal jeopardy. His story of shooting an explosives-clad Iraqi boy may have been fabricated, according to the Army. Now, he faces possible charges. The Pentagon (news - web sites), it would seem, does not take kindly to falsehoods. Or does it? Even as it clamps down on sergeants who tell tall tales, higher ranking officials are spreading their own misinformation. This includes embellishing stories of heroism that either drum up patriotic sentiment or cover up embarrassing truths. It also includes sophisticated psychological operations, or "psy ops" campaigns, that spread false information to gauge how the enemy reacts. Both forms of misinformation have their short-term appeal. Embellished stories of heroism generate favorable press when much of the news is bleak, and first impressions are the ones that stick. Psy-ops campaigns can give soldiers a tactical advantage or produce valuable intelligence. But both do more harm than good by undermining the military's credibility. This lesson should have been learned in Vietnam, where phony body counts and inflated assessments of how the war was going gave the Pentagon a credibility gap that lasted nearly a generation. Today, credibility is even more crucial. The campaigns in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) are being fought on the battlefields of public perception almost as much as in cities and towns. Each day, the military struggles to keep facts, or erroneous perceptions, from swaying opinion against the United States. Just last month, for example, U.S. forces in Iraq had to counter inflammatory charges about civilian casualties, among them that U.S. Marines had napalmed 73 women and children in Fallujah. This effort to win the war of words can be won only if the military speaks with credibility and authority. That doesn't allow for fabrications or misrepresentations, which have become all too commonplace. Examples include initial, embellished stories about former NFL safety Pat Tillman, killed in Afghanistan in April, and Jessica Lynch, a maintenance unit soldier who was captured in Iraq in March 2003 and later rescued from a hospital by U.S. commandos. Even more objectionable is the deliberate planting of misinformation. The Pentagon did this in October by leaking to CNN that its campaign to retake Fallujah had begun, when in fact it had not, to see how the enemy would react. The Pentagon insists that deliberate falsehoods are rare, and initial battlefield accounts are often clouded by the fog of war. But its commitment to truthfulness is suspect. Just two years after public criticism forced it to close a controversial propaganda agency known as the Office of Strategic Influence, the Pentagon is considering whether to adopt some of the agency's proposals elsewhere in the Defense Department. Even occasional dishonesty can do enormous harm. It makes it harder for U.S. officials to be believed and sends a signal to those in the military that lying is okay. The Pentagon is right to clamp down on falsehoods. But the appropriate place to start is at the top of the chain of command, not lower down. The Department of Defense (news - web sites) declined to submit an opposing view.