Military spokespeople should be permitted to speak to the public and the press when they are only able to speak in terms of probabilities. So long as they make clear that they are only able to speak in those limited terms—we cannot be positive yet, we are in the midst of an accountability check to confirm, but we do not believe the claim that marines have been captured—there will be times when doing so will be far less damaging than saying nothing until they are able to speak with absolute certainty.
There is, of course, more to being proactive. Opportunities come along to either get ahead of a particular story or, on occasion, make news, and the military has been too hesitant on both accounts. For example, when enemy media labs have been captured, some of the material found there has been what might best be referred to as Islamist blooper reels. So that:
they put a video out, but when we find these places we find a lot of their edits, and … they have stuff they saved where they botched it up, for example a guy riding a horse with a gun and he's trying to look tough and he hits a tree and it knocks him off.[1]
Let's face it, that's nothing short of comedy gold—you literally couldn't make that up. Having footage of that nature fall into your hands presents an unbelievable opportunity. Why wasn't that clip ever circulated to make that group look ridiculous, to puncture their carefully crafted image of strength, of toughness, and manliness—and most of all, of competence? Indeed, that wasn't the only such video.
[There was ] another one where a guy's on the back of a motorcycle, he's going to jump off and start shooting, he looks real tough, but when he jumps off he just falls head over heels, the guy goes flying.[2]
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