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As perfected by the armed forces, the briefing creates a perfect, Platonic world—insular and self-contained, impervious to facts or thoughts that might spoil the symmetry. Every prospective doubt is silenced with a persuasive number—and Americans are peculiarly prone to believe that figures, from batting averages to traffic fatalities, never lie. Yet when facts are thrust together in an arbitrary manner, they can be more misleading than an outright lie. Military briefers are, of course, instructed not to lie, and for the most part, they do not; the problem is that the gritty reality of truth too often escapes the ritual of presentation.