The “professional” policymakers, who attended the attack and provided the Administration’s *Official* statements.

Given how very image-centered every other aspect of governance is, in this modern age, especially in the Executive branch, where all attention focuses on a single individual’s decisions and actions, I find it difficult to ascribe the clumsy messaging to incompetence.

A second aspect is the press’s reporting of the Administration’s bungled messaging. This aspect was analyzed in great depth during the Bush regime – how the press has great incentives to push up the current Administration’s agenda. There is the commercial incentive: (simply put – NBC is owned largely by GE, who manufactures a variety of hardware, including jet engines for fighter planes and helicopters. . . and therefore has a significant interest in editorial control towards the “pro-war” stance. Similar, but more subtle arguments are made for ALL other commercial networks). Then there is the incentive that, if a network is hostile to the politics of the Administration, they can lose their White House access, or simply not be called-on during press conferences.
So it’s very easy to see why the press complies with this.

And the third, and perhaps most interesting aspect; the psychology of the masses – I think you can boil it down to one very simple explanation: Any American will feel emotional discomfort at the notion that their government does immoral things, (like extrajudicial executions). Therefore, on an individual level, any one of us is likely to accept a “comforting rationalization”. On a mass-population level, of course, some of us accept these comforting rationalizations at face value. Some of us question them with a neutral critical eye. Some of us reject them all out.

I think that the whole notion of the idea that there IS such a thing as a “Fog of War” itself, is a “comforting rationalization” for the fact that horrible things happen during war, (and during non-war, where we’re at war, but don’t like to admit we’re at war, because we’re a “Peace Loving People – dig?). There is no such thing as a “Fog of War” – this is a superstitious explanation for a phenomenon. And that phenomenon is that people don’t like to hear uncomfortable truths about themselves. When we must take savage actions, to defend ourselves against savages. Or admit that, though we like to pretend we live in a civilized world, we really are all just savage beasts. We like to think we can make the choice to behave in a civilized manner. And to back that up, we “invent” bogeymen, like an “invisible hand” that causes poor people to starve and suffer, or “Satan” that causes us to steal, lie, and cheat, or a “Fog of War” that causes us to lie about what we really did when things got crazy when bombs were exploding and bullets were flying.

But the fact is, when we had this national debate after 9/11, and the talk was about; “it’s time to take the gloves off.” – this was the choice we made. To send in a team of gunmen in the dark of the night, and shoot an unarmed man in the head in front of his family, without a trial or so much as a howdy-do.

Some 50 million American voters re-enforced that choice in the 2004 presidential election. Like it or not. Look in the mirror, my countrymen.

For another, more technology = more complexity = more chance of confusion. The biggest use of technology is to allow us to make mistakes more efficiently than ever before.

I don’t recall seeing or reading about any snacks.

So regarding the truth, it will not come out, just different spins to make the masses move onto the next public offering. And why the whole charade, well if one starts to inquire why the great lengths to say he was killed, then what else have they lied about?