Lesson unlearned on danger of spin by Anthony Cordesman

We are now dealing with the legacy of neoconservatives, and a badly planned gamble with the lives of 27 million Iraqis. We have again lied and exaggerated our progress in political development, security efforts, economic aid and the development of host country forces. For the second time in my life, we may well be seeing a failed president and a failed administration preside over a failed war.

I cannot promise you that we can avoid this. The chances are all too great that we cannot. I do not believe, for example, that we can ever succeed with Iraqi force development unless we can succeed in persuading the Iraqis to achieve political conciliation between Arab Sunni, Arab Shiite and Kurd. As Gen. David Petraeus and many other senior U.S. officers have said, the key to security is not military but political.

I also cannot deny that much of the official reporting on Iraqi force readiness, and progress in Iraqi force development, is the same tissue of lies, spin, distortion and omissions I saw in Vietnam. There is simply no integrity in the reporting on manpower and the number of units in the lead. Very real progress and success have been distorted and exaggerated to the point of absurdity. The critical linkages between creating effective regular military forces and creating effective police, rule of law and government services have been misreported or ignored.