In the language of the air campaign, a target is not bombed. It is serviced, the way a car is serviced or a client is. The word comes from the maintenance shop and was chosen because it sounds like routine work performed competently on an object.

The phrase belongs to a whole grammar built during the televised wars: “degrade,” “neutralize,” “attrit,” “soften up,” “deliver ordnance,” and “collateral damage,” which is here too. Each was designed for a podium. Each replaces a sentence with a person in it with a sentence that has only assets and effects.

Mamet argued that the theatre could restore faith in words because the audience can see the gap. The briefing room was built to close it. A briefer who has said “serviced” for long enough has, in Mamet’s terms, stopped lying to the press and started lying to himself, and that is the harm the essay is actually about.