How much spin is OK?

Dear Friends,

There is an article circulating on the internet entitled "Fiction of Marjah as City Was Misinformation" by Gareth Porter.  I read it first at Anti-war.com (here).  Here are a couple of paragraphs that give a good feel for the thrust of the article:

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.
It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.
"It’s not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a "rural community."
"It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.
Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marjah as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marjah has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers’ markets," Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.
The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometers, or about 125 square miles.

There is a similar article at ForeignPolicy.com (here). 

I was rather apprehensive about believing these articles since it seems that the press that were embedded with the troops or independent observers would not let the wrong impression stand.  So I decided that I would see what Google Maps could tell me about this place.  Google Maps is amazing.  The satellite images are clear that the entire area is rural and those parts that are not desert are farm land with individual farms.  See for yourself (here). 

I am not surprised that our government is spinning things, but how much spin is OK?  Both of the cited articles are contending that the hype for "Operation Moshtarak" was to make the American public believe that the Afghanistan War was going well and that all the deaths and terrible injuries and dollars spent were working.

The Gareth Porter article continues:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of ISAF, was clearly preparing to wage such a war in advance of the Marjah operation. In remarks made just before the offensive began, McChrystal invoked the language of the counterinsurgency manual, saying, "This is all a war of perceptions."
The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marjah was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a "large and loud victory." The false impression that Marjah was a significant city was an essential part of that message.

I suppose that it could be unrelated, and I do not want to be deemed a conspiracy theorist, but yesterday Secretary of Defense Gates is quoted as saying that some troops in Afghanistan could leave before the July 2011 date previously announced for the commencement of troop withdrawals.  Here is the AP report.

None of this makes me feel any better about the Afghanistan War, and none of this makes me feel any better about President Obama's promises to bring transparency to the United States government.  Unfortunately, these reports make me feel like in this regard there is no change from the Bush Administration.

So we are not doing very well today.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal