Confirming long-standing speculations to that effect, the Pentagon today admitted that the 8,400 US troops that are in Afghanistan according to all official documents is not an accurate count, and that there are actually 11,000 US troops in the country.
Officials were quick to insist that the new higher figure did not represent any escalations of the sort that President Trump promised in last week’s speech, but rather was just meant to correct the 8,400 number that had long been put forward.
Pentagon officials admitted that they have routinely “lowballed” their troop levels across multiple wars, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis insisted that “this way of doing business is over,” and wants more transparency on the matter.
How that’s being addressed remains to be seen, however, as President Trump has sought to make troop levels officially secret across these war zones, and Pentagon officials had previously indicated that lying about troop levels in Iraq and Syria would be resolved by not giving out any numbers to the American public at all anymore. Today’s comments suggest more interest in giving out those figures within the Pentagon, though it’s not clear Trump has changed his mind.
At least we were eventually told the troop numbers were lies. The LA times story on this lied by calling Trump’s announcement a “new” strategy. The only thing new I heard was the idea that troop numbers WOULDN’T be shared with the American people at all anymore. So Trump is following the Bush / Obama strategy, and the generals are being a little more honest about it. The press generally is not being honest about the fundamentals, though.
Then translate Pentagon Double-Talk to plain English….
Pentagon Double Talk:
“We’ve low-balled the number of troops in combat zones for years”
Plain English:
“We’ve regularly lied to the American people for years, and in doing so have subverted and manipulated American Democracy”.
Democracy is the notion that the ultimate power in a society lies in the hands of the people. Not some Generals in the Pentagon, but with the people. When the Generals lie to the people and withhold information, what they are doing is seizing power for themselves and taking it away from the people which is where its supposed to be in a democracy.
The people can note vote in favor or against a policy when they are lied to about it. This is what the Pentagon was doing, lying to the American people and thus denying them a chance to know policy which means they can’t change policy.
We’ve been obsessed as a nation with the Russians meddling or interfering in our democracy. Yet, the DOD has been doing exactly the same thing, and probably with bigger impact, by lying to the American people.
Everytime the government lies or withholds information from the people, its committing a coup that siezes power from where its supposed to belong in a democracy.
Damn! The Pentagon lied to the American people. Never saw that coming. 🙁