by R.E.D., Survival Blog:
In this article, I’ll explain why some subterfuge can be a good thing and some implications for present-day news reporting.
Many of my friends and acquaintances are terrible liars. I don’t mean to imply that my friends tell a lot of lies. However, they often tell the same lie consistently, and quite frankly it is not a very good lie. So, they are just not very good at telling that one lie.
A couple of reasons why I am lied to so often is because I live in a community with many military retirees and I worked for nearly 30 years in the defense industry. Many of the employees in the defense industry came out of the military – and they often told lies as well.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Many of these individuals I knew were in the military for more than 20 years. And they would tell me what he did in the military. However, quite often, I didn’t think they were telling the truth.
As an example, about 18 months ago, one gentleman (a sailor) who I met a social function, was talking to his friends and he explained that he was leaving the country. He went on to say that his mail should be sent to Nicaragua. Someone asked if he was going to be in Nicaragua and he said “No, I’m not going to be in Nicaragua”. He then went on and said “No matter what anybody says, I’m not going to Columbia”. He then went on and repeated, “No matter what anybody says, I’m not going to Columbia”. Now, if you ask me where he was going, I would guess it was Columbia.
I happened to be with the same group of friends, a little over a year later, when this gentleman came back from wherever he had been. He proudly stated when asked where he had been, “No matter what anybody says, I wasn’t in Columbia”.
There is an expression that goes “I think he doth protest too much”. If you asked me, I suspect this gentleman spent a little over a year in Columbia. Of course, I am aware that we had military operating in Columbia to fight against the drug cartels.
I also had a number of individuals flat out tell me that they couldn’t really tell me what they had done “in the service”.
I also spoke to one lady who explained that her husband (a Navy chief) was going to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to teach accounting to the Army. I happen to know that this particular individual had never taken any college classes (including accounting classes). So, do I think that the Army searched all over the world trying to find the best possible accounting teacher and decided to hire a Navy guy with no accounting background? Sure, I believed that…
After this individual retired, I understand he was hired as a contractor by the Navy to teach accounting. Sure, I believe that too…
The only thing that really bothers me about all this lying is individuals would think I’m stupid enough to believe their stories.
Of course, I know that the military often comes up with cover stories for the protection of their personnel. So, they are not really stories made up by individuals. These stories are really made up by the military to protect the servicemen and their families.
There are bad people in the world who would do bad things to our servicemen, if they found out what our servicemen had done during their careers. So, it’s a good thing these individuals have as a story (or a lie) about their military careers.
I think I understand, just a little, what it is like when you can’t tell people what you do. I worked for a government contractor years ago – in my youth. One project I worked on lasted about a year and was “secret”. So, for a year I couldn’t tell people anything that I did for a living. Later, most of the secret stuff I knew got released and published when that particular project was going up before Congress to get funded. The capabilities of that weapon systems were publicly discussed and most of the information was declassified and published in Newsweek magazine.
