Strategic Misdirection Quotes

Confuse the enemy. Keep him in the dark on your intentions. Sometimes what seems a victory isn't really a victory and sometimes a defeat isn't really a defeat. Whether in attacking, counterattacking, or defensive tactics, the idea of attacking should remain central, to always keep the initiative.

There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering. The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

Howard Dean is not the first politician to distort facts in his own interests. But many activists in the party he now leads are puzzled over what he thinks he is accomplishing politically. Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than even a flawed Islamic republic?

I allow the public to believe that I have more influence with the King than I do in reality.

For the strategies of deception are concerned with deceiving an opponent through the logistics of perception. But these strategies are not merely aimed at the Serbs or the Iraqis but also at all those who might support [Slobodan] Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.

In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them.

A Warrior of Light never resorts to trickery, but he knows how to distract his opponent.

By altering his arrangements and changing his plans, the skillful general keeps the enemy without definite knowledge. By shifting his camp and taking circuitous routes, he prevents the enemy from anticipating his purpose. At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him.

In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed.

We must constantly encourage Western journalists to write precisely the opposite of our real intentions and anyone who writes or speaks about our real intentions accurately or impartially in the Western sense of these words must quickly be dismissed and ridiculed as someone of the Right or a fascist, someone who wants to bring back McCarthyism.

The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.

The War office kept three sets of figures - one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet and the third to mislead itself.