Reports, reporters, and what they report

Anyone who has worked in a large organization knows that at times you become so focused on the process that you forget the mission. During my twenty years in the Marine Corps, I was responsible for processing a plethora of weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports. Some assignments had so many reports or a report of such importance that the report became the focus of the job rather than what the report was reporting.

One day as young captain, I was going over a report that broke down my artillery battery’s racial make up with my battalion commander. He asked me why I was tracking such things. I told him well because regiment and division require it. He said, “I know. But why are you doing it?” I had no clue. The report had become the focus. What it was telling me had long ago been forgotten.

It took an outsider to come in and remind me that my report was combined with others to tell recruiters and others if the make-up of the Corps was consistent with the make-up of America. It also told us if our promotion and disciplinary policies were in sync with the make-up of the Corps.

That may be where we are in our war with Islamo-terror-fascists. The NIE report gets illegally leaked and politicians begin to cherry pick it’s findings. We are now bickering so often and as such partisans among ourselves, we’ve forgotten why we're fighting and what’s at stake. It took an outsider to put our fight back into stark terms. Afghan president Karzi did that recently when some idiot reporter misstated a NIE finding. Here’s what Karzi had to say:

"PRESIDENT KARZAI: Ma'am, before I go to remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.

"They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again? That's why we need more action around the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to get them defeated -- extremism, their allies, terrorists and the like."