In Marjah, the "Government in a Box" is about to deploy. It will be the moment of truth for General McChrystal and Hamid Karzai's battle strategy for Operation Moshtarak. The stakes are higher than simply the success of ISAF's COIN strategy in Marjah, and after Marjah comes Kandahar.

This past week I was lucky enough to attend two events featuring US Special Representative. Richard Holbrooke. During the second of these, a public address at the Kennedy School of Government, Amb. Holbrooke spoke of his fear of the possibility of a "dependency trap" in Afghanistan. This is not the first time the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan has touched on this subject. In a 2009 appearance with USAID, Holbrooke noted that his greatest concern was

“the dependency trap” in which USAID builds schools, clinics, and roads but they are not maintained once turned over to local control. “We can succeed only if the government of Afghanistan succeeds,”

Clear, Hold, and Build -- these are the first 3 stages of the current COIN strategy in Afghanistan. As Operation Moshtarak has shown in Marjah, ISAF forces are getting consistently better at these three things. But they are only the first three steps, and perhaps the least important in terms of grand strategic victory in Afghanistan. Without successful implementation of the fourth step -- Transfer -- clearing, holding, and building will not end...

Tonight's Huffington Post headline reads: "America's Once Secret War in Pakistan Busts Wide Open". I must admit, I saw, I was intrigued, and I clicked. The story is one of tragedy.

"(AP/Huffington Post) -- SHAHI KOTO, Pakistan — A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and partly destroyed a girls' school in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday in an attack that drew attention to a little-publicized American military training mission in the al-Qaida and Taliban heartland."

At first blush, a shocker. The US has very publicly not sent active-duty combat troops into Pakistan, at the demands of the ISI and Pakistani Government -- not to mention for lots of other reasons. My first question: what were these soldiers doing in Shahi Koto? The answer is buried well below the fold in the HuffPo story:

"The soldiers were part of a small contingent of American soldiers training members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, Pakistan's army and the U.S. Embassy said. The mission is trying to strengthen the ill-equipped and poorly trained outfit's ability to fight militants.

The soldiers were driving to attend the inauguration of a different girl's school, which had been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance, the embassy said in a statement."

WELL. If a headline was ever duplicitous, demagogue-ish, and plain wrong, this is it. A secret war in Pakistan? Not so much. Evidently the Huffington Post decided that research was over-rated. They could have looked here, here, or here -- and found out that there were US Military Advisers training Pakistani Troops. Not only were these stories published in 2009, but they were the top results in a search I did using the Google. Do the editors at HuffPo read the NYT?

How's that research department working for you, Arianna?

But then, the ultimate shocker -- within the report itself, we have the blunt assessment from the always diplomatic Richard Holbrooke:

Holbrooke also said the U.S. has not tried to hide its training mission with the Pakistani military."

"There is nothing secret about their presence there," he told reporters in Washington."

Amen Richard, amen.

We have, in this country, a cult that fetishizes the revealing of secrets. Sometimes it is a good thing -- Woodward and Bernstein, Tobacco Whistle-Blowers, and Tail-Hook -- but sometimes its a very, very, bad and dangerous delusion -- Birthers, Birchers, and recent Nick Cage movies.

But when it comes to US Soldiers in the field losing their lives, that is what the story should be about. Lets focus on what is important, and honor them with just the facts, and only the facts.