A Show of Hands: Who Believes The Ad Wasn't Authorized? Not You, Mr. Cox. We're Aware of Where You Stand.

Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago — and again this week by mistake — depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque.

"It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell," reads the ad, which ran this week in the National Journal and earlier in the Armed Forces Journal.

"What we meant to say is that it 'unleashes heck,'" Mike Cox, a Bell vice president, did not say. "Yeah. That's it."

And when that drew even more disapproving looks, "What? No good? Okay, we'll work on it."