Military Candid about War Progress

“The most surprising thing about WikiLeaks’ released trove of officially secret documents is how few surprises it contains,” says Doyle McManus for the L.A. Times. “That’s largely because of a little-noticed, little-credited change in important parts of the U.S. military establishment over the last five years: a conscious decision to deploy the unconventional weapons of honesty and candor about the conduct of the war. Mired in two wars that have been longer and more difficult than initially advertised, U.S. commanders have adopted an audacious but sensible strategy in describing facts on the ground: No more sugarcoating.”