Panneta: the fact that we're losing proves that we're winning

That's a paraphrase, but a more-or-less accurate rendering of remarks attributed to him on CNN.

They come in the context of a story on changing the vocabulary of war to do away with the expression "green on blue" attacks. That's where the "allies" we're supposedly training in Afghanistan turn their guns on their trainers. That's going on at a rate double that of last year.

The apologists for empire would like to banish green on blue in favor of "insider". Presumably when a NATO/ISAF/US trainer is killed in an "insider" attack he is just as dead as if he were killed in a "green on blue" attack. Perhaps in the months ahead we can expect a good-news story about the decline in green on blue attacks now that we've decided to call them something else.

The attacks themselves are a sign that the Taliban are "desperate."

According to Panetta, "the reality is the Taliban has not been able to regain any territory lost, so they're resorting to these kinds of attacks to create havoc."

I would suggest an alternate reality. The Afghan army and police we are training are riddled through and through with Taliban and their sympathizers, and they mount these attacks because they can spring them at will, not because they're desperate.

After all, they just have to sit tight another sixteen months and the whole enchilada is theirs anyway.