anita - agreed.
More from the same link. I think Michael Yon is doing us all a huge favour by revealing what is going on with Media Ops in Afghanistan.
But if xxx is the "roach" leg, the king roach is the boss of Media Ops in Afghanistan, Lt-Col. yyy. Says Yon, yyy is doing more damage to the war effort than the Taliban media machine. By perpetrating falsehoods that undermine our combat capacity, yyy has helped the enemy. He thus writes:
Some of the smokescreens are less important but they are demonstrative of the pattern: On 20 August a, CH-47 helicopter was shot down by a Taleban RPG during a British Special Forces mission. yyy reported that the aircraft landed due to an engine fire. Some hours later, while I was on a mission nearby, the Taleban were singing over the radios about shooting it down. I heard the rumble when the helicopter was destroyed by airstrikes. The Taleban knew they hit the helicopter. So who is yyy lying to? Not the enemy … unless the enemy is the British public.
and further:
Quite how serious this is Yon himself points out. The British people are demanding truth and they deserve accountability. They aren't getting it from Camp Bastion, he writes. Given the importance of the home front, it is impossible to stress how important it is that we are able to judge what is going on out in Helmand. For a long time, we have known that we are not being told the full story – or even part of it. For its contribution to that failure, "Media Ops" – with Major xxx and Lt-Col yyy in particular - is losing us the war.