Likewise with the Koran burnings. I have seen referenced elsewhere that the personnel who burned them did consult about the proper procedure and were informed, correctly, that burning was the prescribed solution, yet none of "our" spokesmen seem willing to make that case.
My personal opinion is that the Obama administration sanctioned the original leak of the story as part of a plan to stoke and inflame violence against our troops as justification for a planned, humiliating, Vietnam-style withdrawal of our forces before the end of the year.
Taken further, though we have been correctly informed by SOME that the korans were desecrated by Muslim prisoners writing messages to each other in them, we very seldom if ever hear the fact that those korans were required by Islamic law to be burned because of the desecration.
IMO somebody somewhere decided that it was in the better protection of our troops that we simply say it was inadvertant because the stone age stupid people who are rioting and killing our people either couldn't pay attention long enough to "get" the true background or didn't know their own damn law and wanted to kill us anyway.
The other possibility is that "our" people wanted what's happening and wanted it for the purpose you state.
If that is the strategy, then it is working. There is a developing consensus among the political elites of both parties that we need to leave sooner rather than the 2014 target date.
I should note that our combat troops were out of Vietnam in November 1972 with just 16,000 military advisers remaining. On March 29, 1973 all remaining troops were withdrawn leaving just a few military personnel protecting our diplomatic facilities. On April 30, 1975 - At 8:35 a.m., the last Americans, ten Marines from the embassy, depart Saigon, concluding the United States presence in Vietnam.
The famous picture of US personnel being evacuated from our Embassy's roof in Saigon created the false impression that our military was being routed and escaping in panic. The reality is that we had an orderly departure two years prior to the fall of Saigon and the South Vietnamese fought valiantly for two more years until Congress cut off aid and the NVA violated the Paris Peace Acords and invaded the South in mass numbers. Most of the people evacuated from the Embassy roof top during the last days of Saigon were South Vietnamese who had worked with and for us.