In Wake of Battles of Yavin and Endor, Galactic Empire Admits to "Some Pretty Big Mistakes"!
	Corsucant: Imperial authorities today surprised all concerned when they publicly admitted that they had "made some pretty big mistakes". This amazing statement took news representatives by surprise at a press conference convened today, at what had been expected to be an inspirational "we'll crush the Rebels" media event. Instead of the anticipated media spectacle, a group of rather dishevelled Imperial officials wandered out, stated that in view of how things had turned out for the Empire recently, it looked like some pretty big mistakes had been made, and started drinking heavily. What then followed can only be described as a lengthy and detailed post mortem of Imperial activities over the past decade.
		"Probably our first mistake was not making stormtrooper armour blaster proof" said Lord Arginton of the Imperial Navy. "Upon reflection it probably wasn't the best move to make them white either", he went on. "I mean sure, white is all very pretty and all, but it tends to stick out for miles on planetary surfaces. We really should have put a little more thought into those uniforms, I mean the casualty rates started getting a little stupid there after a while, but it was too late to cancel the orders for the uniforms. So we just upped the recruitment rate instead. That's why when you see footage of stormtroopers in action they often look so inept. The poor bastards were getting blown away as fast as we could put them through basic training. The poor dumb bastards were green as grass."
		Admiral Jenson of the Admiralty discussed shortcomings of the Imperial TIE fighter. "Well we've got to face facts here", stated the Admiral. "The TIE fighter looked pretty cool, but it wasn't really a great success. See the big problem with the things was that we forgot to fit shields on them, and then put a bunch of yahoos into the cockpit. In hindsight we really should have put a little bit more effort into training the pilots. I mean, you can't just give kids a cool black uniform and then expect them to act like they're not invulnerable. We did a study on this, and we found that very few TIE fighters were blown up by rebel fighters, instead most were lost because the pilots kept crashing into things like asteroids and stuff. Then there were the Star Destroyers! Boy, did we drop the ball on that one! Sticking the ships bridge up on top was a bad call. Sure it was atheistically pleasing and all, but we might as well have painted a 'shoot me' sign on the damn thing. It was pretty embarrassing at the Battle of Endor when the Super Star Destroyer commanded by Admiral Piet crashed into the second Death Star after it's bridge was hit. I mean the ship was fine, 90% of the damn thing was in tiptop condition when it crashed. If I had my time again I'd probably stick the bridge somewhere in the middle of the ship where it wouldn't be quite so easy to blow up."
		Several Admiralty Ships Architects then discussed flaws with the whole Death Star concept, describing it as "fundamentally flawed". Ian Cobben of Imperial Fleet Systems stated, "Well I guess that we all got a little carried away with the thing. I suppose that it wasn't such a good idea to have one giant reactor in the middle, I know that Bob wanted us to have, like, a thousand smaller reactors within the base to avoid the sort of catastrophic systems failures that destroyed both Death Stars. But Bob's such a smart arse that none of us wanted to listen to him, smug git. That whole ventilation system thing wasn't such a winner of an idea either now we come to think of it, but who would have thought that a small fighter worth 10,000 Credits would have been able to destroy a space station worth a planets GDP for five years? Sure, Bob said that we should have put better sights on those anti-ship lasers, but we were way over budget and had to cut a few corners somewhere."
			"Actually the Death Star wasn't the only option for a weapon of soul crushing oppression", stated Imperial Ships Architect Jim Hoolin. "You see the Emperor originally just called for tenders for some sort of 'Mass Weapon of Terror', and so all the corporations just sort of dreamed up whatever they could and sent in their submissions. You know I always kind of liked the Giant Round Circle idea myself. The idea was that you put in between the enemy planet and their sun, plunging them into darkness. Then they'd run up their power bills running lights all the time, and you could just move in when they went over budget. But you know how it is, the plans for the Death Star specified that it should be black and, well, the Emperor always had this thing for black. What can I say? The rest is history."
			Members of the Imperial Bureaucracy continued to expand on the failings of the Imperial system whilst drinking heavily. "Who'd 'ave thought it", an inebriated General Veers was seen to say. "Little furry things, tall as my 'ip. They 'ashed up a legion o' crack troops. An' they did it with stupid 'ittle bits o' wood and junk. Shit."
		Commander Klern of the Imperial General Staff elaborated further to reporters. "You see, a big part of the problem on Endor was that we deployed an awful lot of speeder bikes, AT AS's and AT AT's. Now these weapons are best utilised in large open spaces, I mean take the battle on Hoth as an example. We really snotted the rebels there! Nice big open ice plains, it was great, lots of room to manoeuvre, great armour country. You could see any rebels trying to sneak up on you from miles away. Now the big thing about a forest moon is that there's an awful lot of trees in the way. This makes it really easy for rebels to drop things on you, jump onto your armour, or just generally sneak up on you. I said it was a bad idea to send all that armour into a forest, but you know Lord Vader, old Mister 'I find your lack of faith disturbing'. You just couldn't tell that guy anything, I mean I warned him about the speeder bikes, you don't take something that goes 500 klicks an hour put it in a forest, and then act all surprised when it hits something! I tell ya, we lost over five hundred scouts in the first two weeks of the occupation. I hear those stupid little Ewoks are still picking bits of 'em out of the trees."
		After this the press conference sort of degenerated into a kind of drunken brawl. Analysts declined to speculate as to whether this apparent soul searching on the part of the surviving Imperial leadership would lead to a more caring Galactic Empire, but it has been widely recognised that the Empire is looking to make a number of improvements on the existing situation.