Sun Tzu's "Art of War" decries "bookish theory" as a strategy to win a war. Bravo! to the West Point faculty for their ingenious use of Al Qaeda documents. Sun Tzu's also says that war is based on deception. The Bush Administration has used this crafty aphorism to have 137,000 brave American soliders put in harms way, nearly 2,500 honored servicemen killed, thousands seriously wounded, and billions of dollars thrown down a rats hole. Watching our President
at Memorial Day events Monday should give each of us pause.

Mr.Kurzenbaum has used deception to good effect as a basis for his comment. Sun Tzu clearly did not intend “deception” to be the justification for war. The great general meant that it was to be implemented as a means toward victory. President Bush deceived no one prior or during this war on terror. Hard evidence of record that validates the Administration’s truthfulness has not, and will not, be honestly reported by our mainstream press.
Instead, this incremental and relentless spin on reality has taken its toll. The media dutifully reports each horrific ambush, murder bombing, civilian and American causality. Pathetic, unbalanced, and fame hungry folks like Cindy Sheehan are portrayed as “Patriots”. We are to believe that Mrs. Sheehan is a typical example of all American mothers with sons or daughters in uniform. Senators who claim our soldiers are themselves terrorists are adored and given front page status. Saddam Hussein is portrayed as nice, likeable guy, with his American guards adopting him as a “best friend”. Anything and everything that undermines the Administration and the war against terrorism is reported incessantly and relentlessly.
Apparently the media is trying to relive its glory days of the Viet Nam era. The press was instrumental in the failure of that war effort, and for some unfathomable reason seems damn proud of it. Today, our enemy manipulates mainstream media toward victory just as Ho Chi Minh did so successfully in Viet Nam. Somehow, the press appears to regard the Nation’s defeat in Viet Nam as a victory for journalism. Since the fall of Saigon, their pride in that accomplishment occasionally surfaces in a haughty, vainglorious arrogance read between the lines of an article, or slipping from interviewer’s false smile as he drills a conservative on camera, or smugly asks the Presidents spokesman a loaded question at the Whitehouse.
The withdrawal from Viet Nam was betrayal of friends that longed for Democracy, and hurled Indo-China into decades of brutal Communism, abject poverty, and mass genocide beyond the scale of WWII..
It demonstrated the power of American public opinion, and the ability of the press to manipulate it.
The enemy this time wants a tad more then having Americans leave “their” country. These people want all of us dead. I sincerely wish today’s “journalists” would keep that little fact in mind as they work to undermine the President’s efforts to protect our Nation.

Don't believe the hype of an "army" of Al Qaeda.
For the real picture on the so called "War On Terror" watch the awarded BBC documentary Power of Nightmares. It will open your eyes about the fear mongering, lies and deceit by the government and compliant mainstream media.

Part 1: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1002626006461047517&q=power+nightmares

Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7930933565201168&q=power+nightmares

Part 3:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3378107729331676799&q=power+nightmares

The weak-kneed, and the lilly-livered will always find a reason for not doing their duty as well as not supporting those who are willing to do it for them. The Middle East is well past overdue for evolving. We will drag into the 21st century, kicking and screaming if we have to.

Tom,
Maybe you should actually read those documents, particularly the one about jihadis flooding into Iraq in 2001!!!! before you shoot your mouth off about things you don't know jack squat about.

While West Point cadets study Al-queda's tactics, Al Queda already has the playbook for the Federal Air Marshal program.
The difference is how each obtained their information.
The cadets are benefitting from documents that were captured during warfare against the taliban.
Al-Queda obtained their information from the Former Director of the Federal Air Marshal Service, Thomas Quinn with full endorsement of his then Chief of Staff and current Director Dana Brown. They thought that by showing Al-Queda every aspect of our program to include operational counter-tactics within an aircraft during a hi-jacking, that it would "deter" the terrorists from using a plane as a missile. Instead, with their dog and pony shows to the media, they have nearly assured any astute competent team of terrorists the ability to successfully do just that.
Even though top management within the Federal Air Marshal program has known that a captured Al-Queda has testified to the FBI that they have studied Federal Air Marshal tactics and procedures, management has failed to adjust or change them. The flying FAMS, who are under a virtual gag order, are outraged that management does not understand how grave the danger is to the National Security. Anyone who speaks up is marked and retaliated against. For anyone who shows interest in the cadet story, please research the deliberate upper management media leaks within the Federal Air Marshal program.

Maurice, I don't need to see some "mockumentary" about the power that fear can have over a population. I have seen many examples of it throughout history. But for me, my moment of fear came from what I saw with my own eyes on September 11th. Not perpetrated on us by our own government, but by a band of merciless zealots who infiltrated a free and open society for the purpose of targeting and killing non-combatants on a mass scale. Any fear you see today in American society is real, and comes to us courtesy of the savages that committed that horrible act. There is literally nothing that our government could do that could increase our fear beyond what came to us that dreadful day.

While I agree that the administration's actions and policies have been incompetent at best (for instance, if you declare war on terror you should reinstate the draft and refocus industry and economy to the war effort, and if you invade another country there should be an occupation force of no less than a million soldiers after the shooting is over), I generally support what has been done so far, though not for the reasons that Bush gives us.

Reason #1: our economy depends on oil. You can say that oil isn't worth sacrificing soldier's lives for, but until you have a pedal-powered sedan made entirely of non-petroleum compounds, you depend on it just as much as I do. We already saw in 1973 what happens when our oil supply gets cut off: double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, and a worldwide recession for almost a decade. The embargo itself only lasted about 6 *months*, by the way. To me, that's just about the best justification for war there is.

Reason #2: The original Gulf War was unfinished. Saddam stood unpunished and unaccountable for the evil he perpetrated in 1990-91: a war of conquest, destruction of the environment, threatening the global economy, torture of Allied pilots protected under the rules of war, etc. His regime stood fast amid a growing cesspool of corruption, black marketeering and bribery that all but dismantled the sanctions regime. But because he did not renounce his aggression, we still had to keep sanctions and troops in place. Eventually there had to be an endgame: we couldn't just build a fence around him and contain him forever. Infiltration and assassination were out of the question. Invasion was our only option in a situation where there were literally NO good choices.

Reason #3: Oh, by the way, according to Osama's "declaration of war" against the USA, our troops' presence in Saudi Arabia and our continued enforcement of the Iraq sanctions were primary excuses for his actions against us. So you may think that our "war on terror" is in our minds, but terror declared war on us first, back in 1998.

I disagree with what our government is doing regarding prisoners, but I understand their reasoning. We can't penetrate the Al Qaeda organization with operatives, so we interrogate prisoners for intelligence instead. These people are by no means nice; they have been trained and conditioned in terror camps to withstand the kind of torture that occurs in ARAB jails. Our own methods are gentle by comparison.

We should support our troops who are in harms way to supress another attack on America!! Put the rhetoric aside and support our Troops and our President.. The one thing none of you have ever been is the President of this nation. The only person that makes any sense is Steve. Thank You. Jeff Kimbrel

You see, this is exactly what's wrong with popular opinion on GWOT. People like to politicize this, make it into a Dem. vs. Rep battle, turn it into an anti-media statement, equate it to Vietnam, etc etc etc.

None of these viewpoints present a good approach to the GWOT and OIF in particular, because the all completely ignore the most basic fact of this entire situation. It is a fact so innate to the basic concept of this conflict that it transcends (and in my opinion, supersedes) blaming any one particular group or party, be it the GOP, Bush/Cheney, Rumsfeld, the Media, political parties, etc.., and that simple fact is this:

America is facing, and fighting, a new type of war against a new type of enemy, unlike any war or enemy we have ever faced before. A de-centralized network of independent and semi-independent operational cells deployed internationally, and prosecuting a 4th Generation war of attrition. The only way to fight them, and win, is to analyze their operations, identify weaknesses, and exploit them to our advantage while at the same time pursuing (and in my opinion, intensifying) our ongoing military presence in theater.

In response to Mr. Carpenter's comments, yes Sun Tzu never presented deception as a justification for war. However, this does not necessarily mean that the current administration did not deceive the American people. There have been reports of administration officials picking and choosing intel tidbits that back up their WMD claims against Saddam while discarding intel that was neutral or that disproved the WMD claims. You say "liberal media". Ok. What agency investigated this? DOJ? Any Congressional committee? Nope. And that's not the only common-sense indication that something may not be right with what led up to the war. What about Mr. Cheney's links to Halliburton and report after report of no-bid contracts to that firm and its subsidiaries? This year, Mr. Cheney exercised his stock options to the tune of $8.89 Million. I wonder if those shares would have been as valuable if we had concentrated our GWOT efforts primarily on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, where we have yet to find a single WMD. This is hardly rock-solid evidence of wrongdoing, of course. But the american people aren't stupid, sooner or later they're going to put two and two together and come November we'll see what they come up with.

Cindy Sheehan IS a patriot, because 1) she is actively exercising her right to free speech, and 2) she's already sacrificed more for this country than the majority of right-wing neocon extremists that criticize her ever will. She's a bereaved mother who lost her son in combat. She doesn't believe in the current leadership's tactics, confidence, or honesty. Her point is simply that if our choices are between fighting a war incompetently or not at all, then not at all is better. Because of the nature of this conflict, I don't agree with her conclusions - but she is entitled to her opinion AND her outrage, and for people to demonize her and call her unamerican is disgusting. She sacrificed plenty, so leave her alone.

I don't believe any Senator has labeled our troops "Terrorist". I think that's OBL's propaganda machine talking there. Sen. Murtha, whom I assume you're referring to, is a Marine who served his country honorably. If anyone in the Senate can criticize the actions of Marines in the field objectively, it's him. He's not saying that Marines are terrorists. He simply makes the point that in every faction of a society, from the highest government offices to the local garbage processing jobs, there exists the potential for crime. The military is no different, and if there's overwhelming evidence that a member of the military commited a crime, then they should be prosecuted according to the law. Or do you propose just throwing out the UCMJ altogether and assume that servicemembers can do no wrong?

Lastly, don't compare OIF to Vietnam. First of all, if you think the media is as much anti-government now as during the Johnson/Nixon administrations, then you're out of your mind. If the media now put forth 1/8th of the investigative reporting effort they put forth during 'Nam, Bush would probably already be out of office. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the media reports only from an extreme-left viewpoint, the GOP's viewpoint representation is STILL better now than during Vietnam when you consider prominent right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hennety and Bill O'Reilly, who are still HUGELY popular. Not to mention all the right-slanted internet news and blog sites. So don't wine about the liberal media - it's an old story and everyone is tired of hearing it.

You say it's our enemy that manipulates the mainstream media. HA! Yeah, OBL is sitting in a cave just plotting the next scandal that ABC is going to report on. That argument is so ludicrous that I need make no further comments on it. And for the record, I haven't seen a single report, article, package, feature, etc since the war started that presented SH in any light other than negative.

If you think that anything and everythying that undermines the Administration and the GWOT is being reported "incessantly and relentlessly", doesn't it make sense to stop and consider, given the current course of the war, that it's actually the ADMINISTRATION that's undermining our progress in the GWOT with failed foreign policies, inadequate deployment numbers, no equipment, and flawed tactics? And if elements in the media see that it is, in fact, the incompetence of the administration that is undermining the GWOT...then shouldn't the media report on that "incessantly and relentlessly"? Wouldn't that be the AMERICAN thing to do?

Withdrawing from Vietnam was not a betrayal of friends that longed for democracy. If the south vietnamese wanted democracy so much, they would have fought for it. But a people with no clear leadership that endured coup after coup after coup can only survive, which means rolling with the punches. We HAD to withdraw from Vietnam, because every single one of our policies, tactics, and methods of warfare, from the onset, were based on an incorrect assumption: that we were stopping the spread of Communism. We didn't stop to think and understand our enemy, put ourselves in their shoes and THEN plan our strategy. Had we done that, we probably would have learned earlier on that the North Vietnamese were not fighting for Communism, but for a free and indepentent Vietnam which had always been under foreign occupation.

Kudos to the West Point cadets who created this report. It means we are learning from our mistakes and we have good military leaders coming up the chain. As an enlisted reservists, that makes me feel damned good.

from any point u Americans study the taliban u will never know or understand taliban from document obtained in 2001
because the resistance is not linked to those document
But taliban are like ur grand grand fathers who fight aganist English Occupation in 18th century
at the time English Millarty called u rebels or torrists
it is a progonda aganist freedom fighters which was in 18th centery and it is still used by occuation Force
if u call the taliban torrists then u would be insilting ur own martys of 18th centry