"Credibility gap" is the right name for it

The Pentagon spends a lot of money and energy trying to control the news that gets out.  Heck, they're even paying journalists in Iraq (and who knows where else) to write favorable stories.

As long as they're spending our tax money on this, maybe they could hire a consultant who's had experience working with companies having to deal with bad news - a product turns out to be deadly, for instance.  They might just get lucky and get a good one, who could explain to them how a certain quality called "candor" can be amazingly effective in winning public confidence for your organization.

It wouldn't be an easy lesson, as this Knight-Ridder story by Drew Brown illustrates: NATO commander: Drug trade is the greatest threat to Afghanistan 03/06/06.

The top military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Monday that the narcotics trade poses a greater threat to Afghanistan than a rekindled insurgency by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO's supreme commander, said he doesn't think that Taliban and al-Qaida remnants can "restart an insurgency of any size or major scope," but that they're part of a "wider span of problems" that includes the opium trade and rampant criminality.

Last week, however, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said that attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida forces had increased by 20 percent in the last year.

Maples told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the insurgents represent a greater threat to Afghanistan now "than at any point since 2001," when U.S. troops and Afghan Northern Alliance rebels ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

Folks, putting out boilerplate optimistic predictions just doesn't do any good in the end.  Ask your friend Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter.  She passed along bogus claim after bogus claim about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction".  Now her name is practically a synonym for "totally unreliable". 

So, if you're tempted to say stuff that's just optimistic puffery, try just shutting up instead.  Because if you keep on putting out these rosy statements that time after time after time prove to be wrong, well, people stop believing you!  And it's not because of some Liberal Press conspiracy.  No, it's because if people catch on that you're handing them hokum, they stop believing what you say. 

Then, you've got your basic "credibility gap".  Pat Tillman's family can tell you how that works.