JBeukema
Rookie
- Banned
- #1
An Overeager Petraeus Ignored Danger Signs on Taliban Imposter | Dissident VoiceIPS The revelation that the man presumed to be a high-ranking Taliban leader who had met with top Afghan officials was an imposter sheds new light on Gen. David Petraeuss aggressive propaganda about the supposed Taliban approach to the Hamid Karzai regime.
Ever since August, Petraeus had been playing up the Talibans supposed willingness to talk peace with Karzai as a development that paralleled the success he had claimed in splitting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq in 2007.
It is now clear, however, that Petraeus was deceiving himself as well as the news media in accepting the man claiming to be the second-ranking Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, as genuine, despite a number of indications to the contrary.
Petraeuss failure to heed those signals was certainly driven by his strong desire to establish yet another narrative emphasising his brilliance as a war strategist, judging from his public statements prior to the revelation of the fraud.
The tale of self-deception began a few months ago when a man claiming to be Mullah Mansour somehow persuaded U.S. officials, including Petraeus, to help him go to Kabul to talk with Karzai. Mansour had been named, along with Abdul Qayum Zakir, to replace Mullah Baradar last March after Baradar was detained by Pakistani intelligence, according to a Taliban spokesman quoted in Newsweek.
The first warning signal that the man was an imposter was that he gave Karzai regime officials terms for peace that bore no resemblance to the public posture of the Taliban.