[Aramike]

The government makes decisions on behalf of its citizens. The government is chosen by those same citizens. Now if you remove the ability for those citizens to know what the government does, how can the government be a truthful representative of the citizens? It can't.

Umm, really?

This is still citizen government. However, the government REPRESENTS the citizens. That's the whole freakin' point of representative government in a democratic republic - so that each citizen doesn't need to know everything in order to have what is accepted to be their best interests represented.

We are not a straight-up democracy where everything is voted upon, and therefore, it would be necessary to obtain fully informed votes upon everything. Our founding fathers weren't that stupid. Or rather, they were smart enough to know that it is not in the public's best interest to be completely transparent, but rather, to reveal such information to SELECT, duly elected REPRESENTATIVES of the people.

That is what the word "representation" means.

But how can the citizens know these decisions are not in agreement with them, if these decisions are not known?

Results.

Furthermore, the deployment of troops or the execution of military commands is not on the government level.

I'm sorry, but are you even taking this seriously? Who's the Commander-in-Chief? Is the Presidency (you know, the Executive Branch) not government now? Or is this just spin to try to make your argument make sense?

If the government would release any details on military operations, yes, the military would be at risk. But the government generally doesn't make those detailed plans, the military does. The government tells the army "Invade Iraq", "Kill Bin Laden" etc.

Do you really have any idea of what you're talking about?

What do YOU think the CinC does, or SecDef for that matter? Surely you do realize that pretty much all of our black operations come on directive from the White House, originating from a little document known as a National Intelligence Estimate, which our President reads daily... And, surely you're aware of the fact that the specifics of such operations, more often than not, are run through both the State Department and the Justice Department to examine possible ramifications, right?

If a government-issued command endangers an operation, I think such information can and should be withheld - UNTIL the end of the operation. When the operation is completed this government-issued command should be released to the public, so they can form their own opinion about it.

Why? So we can endanger those assets we have in the field which gives us intel on which commands are made?

This is a Submarine board, so let me use a Submarine example to make my point. Ever hear of the German Enigma code? What happens when we let the enemy know we're responding to things we're not even supposed to know about?

You guessed it: he changes the code.

Example: Obama decides Ahmadinejad should be killed. He commands this to the CIA.
Up until now, the public shouldn't know about it. If it does, Ahmadinejad can be tipped off and go into hiding.
The CIA sends a kill squad to Iran and shoots the target.
When the target is dead, it should be revealed that it was done by the CIA, or at least that the CIA had an ongoing operation to kill him. If the public is dead against the assassination, they can oppose it by for example not re-electing Obama.

I'm sorry, man, but that is hopelessly naive.

Should the State Department also release that we decided to act in concert with, say, the Germans? What if the Germans don't want that? Would they ever engage in such dealings with us again?

You can't be serious...