Explanation: Stars And Stripes is an American military newspaper whose exact level of editorial independence varies according to the level of fuckery willing to be employed by a given administration. The most recent US administration seems intent on… minimizing its independence

During the Vietnam War, the paper largely repeated the claims of the American government… but those claims themselves were mostly for domestic consumption, to convince the civilian US electorate that the war was being ‘won’, while Stars And Stripes was largely read by soldiers and veterans. The soldiers serving in Vietnam who read news of ‘stunning victories’ generally were less impressed - even when the stories were completely true, they left out the strategic context of the Vietnam War that even a GI could plainly see: wars are not won by K/d ratios. You can kill a million people, but so long as there are another million incensed enough to take up arms after them, you’ve made no progress.

Wars are won by political settlements, and it was quite apparent, year after year, that the US drew no closer to any political settlement with North Vietnam no matter how many big bombs went off, or how many large-scale operations were successful.