~~~ who thought all along as he announced the number of each day's sorties during the conflict that he was referring to missions; such as 40 sorties would mean forty missions (aviation) for that day... but in fact he had to explain to CNN and the like that a sortie (in military aviation) indicated the total usages of individual units in one mission; so if a mission included six aircraft the total would be six sorties (not six missions)... Some of the media believed it kind of deflated his reports once they learned that there weren't really all those missions they thought he was talking [boasting] about...