Well, the short term trims, as ford use them in these cars are actual commanded lambda, always. So, in a way, the initial statement is true. The long term is just a learned value that is used as a base correction, if the adaptive is not disabled, the initial statement is still true, over the learned correction.
At the end both statements (OP and Bruce's) are somehow basically true.
The thing is maybe what you define as commanded, and I think that is where the interpretation gets mistaken.
When you are at closed loop, your are not commanding lambda 1, you are targetting lambda 1 instead, the process commands different values to achieve this target. You only command an specific value at open loop, that is where you can actually talk about it commanding 1.000, 0.900, .820 or whatever.
When your tune is off, and adaptive is or either disabled or hasn't learned anything yet, PCM will command any value within the allowed (0.6-1.4 in stock form) to achieve lambda 1.000 target switching, so it can be commanding .820 to do it, for example, so effectively it is commanding 12AFR(gas) to see lambda 1.
Hope these clears the concepts a little further.