While Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised the recent offensive in Marjah, the military historian and journalist Gareth Porter reports the Pentagon may have purposely over-hyped the importance of Marjah to make it out to be a historic turning point in the war. While Marjah was described in the press as a city of 80,000, Porter reports it is not even a real town, just a few clusters of farmers’ homes and a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley. Porter describes the picture of Marjah presented by military officials as one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war.