Most of us have suspected for some time that we have been lied to...but this report is damning..and shows how Afghanistan became another Vietnam...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...apers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.
The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.
The Afghanistan Papers
At war with the truth
Interviews and memos
Explore the documents
Key insiders speak bluntly about the failures of the longest conflict in U.S. history
Post Reports
‘We didn’t know what the task was’
Hear candid interviews with former ambassador Ryan Crocker and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
The fight for the documents
About the investigation
It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records
Part 1
At war with the truth
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.
Part 2
Stranded without a strategy
Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.
Part 3
Built to fail
Despite vows the U.S. wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building,” it has wasted billions doing just that
Part 4
Consumed by corruption
The U.S. flooded the country with money — then turned a blind eye to the graft it fueled
Part 5
Unguarded nation
Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were dogged by incompetence and corruption
Part 6
Overwhelmed by opium
The U.S. war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn
More stories
Interviewees respond
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
Click any underlined text in the story to see the statement in the original document
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”
Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...apers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.
The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.
The Afghanistan Papers
At war with the truth
Interviews and memos
Explore the documents
Key insiders speak bluntly about the failures of the longest conflict in U.S. history
Post Reports
‘We didn’t know what the task was’
Hear candid interviews with former ambassador Ryan Crocker and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
The fight for the documents
About the investigation
It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records
Part 1
At war with the truth
U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.
Part 2
Stranded without a strategy
Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.
Part 3
Built to fail
Despite vows the U.S. wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building,” it has wasted billions doing just that
Part 4
Consumed by corruption
The U.S. flooded the country with money — then turned a blind eye to the graft it fueled
Part 5
Unguarded nation
Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were dogged by incompetence and corruption
Part 6
Overwhelmed by opium
The U.S. war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn
More stories
Interviewees respond
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
Click any underlined text in the story to see the statement in the original document
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”
Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.
