The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jack V:

guthrie @ 42: God no! I'm a 26-year-old mostly liberal semi-pacifist software engineer in the UK :) But it's the kind of thing PartiallyClips or XKCD would do and I've become attuned to seeing the MOST spin that could possibly be imparted, just sometimes.

Jonathan Birge @ 52: That interpretation also occurred to me, obviously, indeed, you ideally keep *on* killing the #3 guy. However it didn't seem initially plausible to me that the organisation is centralised enough that there is always an identifiable #3 guy, yet decentralised enough that even if the #3 guy is killed fifteen times it doesn't start falling apart.

Of course, there could be many leaders of cells in large areas, or important but non-hierarchical guys, and it is likely most of them would get killed in an ongoing campaign, so the quotes would be accurate in that sense -- but I think it supports the point that the original list was making, that this is at best a bit of a stretch, even if not actually a distortion.

The way I imagine it is in a high-level meeting within the army. Another large military installation was suicide-blown-up by another of the horde of Al-queda creative vice presidents this afternoon. A bunch of generals are urgently debating the least damaging way of spinning the story to the media.

Young general: "Military installation gone to great snafu in the sky at 2pm today"?
Another young general: Ummm... "Military installation losses down 100% since 2pm today?"
Old general: *clears throat* (room falls silent)
Old general: Ahem. "A top Al-queda leader was killed at 2pm today."
Young general: *awe*
Old general: That's the way we spin it here, son. You'll learn.

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