The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

[DKW 86 7,431]

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-government-lied-for-two-decades

The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

Using the same deceitful tactics they pioneered in Vietnam, U.S. political and military officials repeatedly misled the country about the prospects for success in Afghanistan.

Glenn Greenwald 17 hr ago 545 578

 

The Taliban give an exclusive interview to Al Jazeera after taking control of the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021 (Al Jazeera/YouTube)

“The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds.  . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”

For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.

Just five weeks ago, on July 8, President Biden stood in the East Room of the White House and insisted that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable because, while their willingness to do so might be in doubt, “the Afghan government and leadership . . . clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.” Biden then vehemently denied the accuracy of a reporter’s assertion that “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.” Biden snapped: “That is not true.  They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.”

Biden continued his assurances by insisting that “the likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.” He went further: “the likelihood that there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” And then, in an exchange that will likely assume historic importance in terms of its sheer falsity from a presidential podium, Biden issued this decree:

Q.  Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan.  Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —

THE PRESIDENT:  None whatsoever.  Zero.  What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken. 

The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.  There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan.  It is not at all comparable. 

When asked about the Taliban being stronger than ever after twenty years of U.S. warfare there, Biden claimed: “Relative to the training and capacity of the [Afghan National Security Forces} and the training of the federal police, they’re not even close in terms of their capacity.” On July 21 — just three weeks ago — Gen. Mark Milley, Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that “there’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenario,” yet insisted: “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.”

Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war. “Are we losing this war?,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, asked rhetorically in a news briefing from Afghanistan in 2008, answering it this way: “Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.”

On September 4, 2013, then-Lt. Gen. Milley — now Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — complained that the media was not giving enough credit to the progress they had made in building up the Afghan national security forces: “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day,” Gen. Milley insisted.

None of this was true. It was always a lie,

designed first to justify the U.S’s endless occupation of that country and, then, once the U.S. was poised to withdraw, to concoct a pleasing fairy tale about why the prior twenty years were not, at best, an utter waste. That these claims were false cannot be reasonably disputed as the world watches the Taliban take over all of Afghanistan as if the vaunted “Afghan national security forces” were china dolls using paper weapons. But how do we know that these statements made over the course of two decades were actual lies rather than just wildly wrong claims delivered with sincerity?

---

To begin with, we have seen these tactics from U.S. officials — lying to the American public about wars to justify both their initiation and continuation — over and over. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was begun with a complete fabrication disseminated by the intelligence community and endorsed by corporate media outlets: that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In 2011, President Obama, who ultimately ignored a Congressional vote against authorization of his involvement in the war in Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi, justified the NATO war by denying that regime change was the goal: “our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives . . . broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Even as Obama issued those false assurances, The New York Times reported that “the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.”

Just as they did for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. political and military leaders lied for years to the American public about the prospects for winning in Vietnam. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times published reports about thousands of pages of top secret documents from military planners that came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers.” Provided by former RAND official Daniel Ellsberg, who said he could not in good conscience allow official lies about the Vietnam War to continue, the documents revealed that U.S. officials in secret were far more pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the North Vietnamese than their boastful public statements suggested. In 2021, The New York Times recalled some of the lies that were demonstrated by that archive on the 50th Anniversary of its publication:

Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.

“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”

That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”

Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam. The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. 

The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate.

The pattern of lying was virtually identical throughout several administrations when it came to Afghanistan. In 2019, The Washington Post — obviously with a nod to the Pentagon Papers — published a report about secret documents it dubbed “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.” Under the headline “AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH,” The Post summarized its findings: “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.” They explained:

Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.

In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”

None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable.

As the Post explained, “the documents contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” Those documents dispel any doubt about whether these falsehoods were intentional:

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

 

Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

---

In light of all this, it is simply inconceivable that Biden’s false statements last month about the readiness of the Afghan military and police force were anything but intentional. That is particularly true given how heavily the U.S. had Afghanistan under every conceivable kind of electronic surveillance for more than a decade. A significant portion of the archive provided to me by Edward Snowden detailed the extensive surveillance the NSA had imposed on all of Afghanistan. In accordance with the guidelines he required, we never published most of those documents about U.S. surveillance in Afghanistan on the ground that it could endanger people without adding to the public interest, but some of the reporting gave a glimpse into just how comprehensively monitored the country was by U.S. security services.

In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.

There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.

In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.

Any residual doubt about the falsity of those two decades of optimistic claims has been obliterated by the easy and lightning-fast blitzkrieg whereby the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan as if the vaunted Afghan military did not even exist, as if it were August, 2001 all over again. It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.

[DKW 86 7,431]

Can anyone really tell a difference anymore?

Edited August 17, 2021 by DKW 86

[CoffeeTiger 5,135]

Most of this is sadly true I believe. 

The military and political leaders lied about our progress to justify a continued presence there.

 

America needs to learn that we can't magically turn foreign countries in into stable, western cultured Democracies through force and monetary contributions. That's not how cultures and politics work and it's frankly something that America is struggling with itself at the moment. 

 

[creed 1,641]

What a drum role conclusion statement! This writer is good.

 

It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.

 

Now who has the stones to write their representatives and tell them never again, no more and hold them accountable. Also, It's never too late to call those (political and milary leaders) from the past for questioning.

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by creed

[DKW 86 7,431]

From "WMDs!!!!" to "the ANSF is ready to defend their country," it was ALL LIES.  

The LIES were all for the buck$. Everyone in DC got rich as hell.
The other part? Our intelligence Community gives all kinds of evidence that it is the worst organization on the planet.

They missed WMDs going in and missed the Fall of Afghanistan going out...

[AU9377 4,977]

We had every right and I would argue a duty to go into Afghanistan and destroy terrorist training capabilities that aided in the 9/11 attack on this country.  We simply shouldn't have remained there for 20 years after that was done.  I don't know of anyone that actually believed it was a good idea to be there for at least 15 of those 20 years.  Of course, over the past several days, some of them have pretended to believe otherwise for the sake of purely political argument. 

When people are occupied, they usually resent the occupier to some degree, unless the occupier is paying for their loyalty.  This has been true going back to the Roman empire.  What amazes me the most are the Americans that have known this was coming, but are whining now about the time it is taking to get them out of the country.  They should have gotten themselves out of the country months ago.  All the same, we will get them out.  As for the Afghans, I have no problem with relocating those that worked closely with us on the ground.  However, that doesn't mean everyone that wants a new place to call home.  I find it hard to believe that the number is 20,000 or anything remotely close to that.  Done venting now.  LOL

[SLAG-91 1,483]

6 hours ago, AU9377 said:

We had every right and I would argue a duty to go into Afghanistan and destroy terrorist training capabilities that aided in the 9/11 attack on this country.  We simply shouldn't have remained there for 20 years after that was done.  I don't know of anyone that actually believed it was a good idea to be there for at least 15 of those 20 years.  Of course, over the past several days, some of them have pretended to believe otherwise for the sake of purely political argument. 

When people are occupied, they usually resent the occupier to some degree, unless the occupier is paying for their loyalty.  This has been true going back to the Roman empire.  What amazes me the most are the Americans that have known this was coming, but are whining now about the time it is taking to get them out of the country.  They should have gotten themselves out of the country months ago.  All the same, we will get them out.  As for the Afghans, I have no problem with relocating those that worked closely with us on the ground.  However, that doesn't mean everyone that wants a new place to call home.  I find it hard to believe that the number is 20,000 or anything remotely close to that.  Done venting now.  LOL

Post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan? Yep, good with that.

Wreck as much terrorist camp shop as possible? Yep.

Stay for a generation? Nope.

Once we'd knocked back Taliban capabilities sufficiently, try to maintain enough of a presence in the area to be able to stamp out any nascent threats, but that's it. Stick and move, to use a boxing term.

Getting people out who provided material support for our time there is the right thing to do, but I do hope there is some very thorough vetting happening for anyone brought here. That's the right thing to do for our citizens, imo, but I'm not at all confident that will happen.

[DKW 86 7,431]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9901833/Pentagon-admits-dont-know-number-Americans-trapped-Afghanistan.html

He confirmed on CNN that the number of Americans could be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000.

WTF? Is this for real?

 

[AU9377 4,977]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9901833/Pentagon-admits-dont-know-number-Americans-trapped-Afghanistan.html

He confirmed on CNN that the number of Americans could be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000.

WTF? Is this for real?

 

My understanding is that the majority of them are military contractors and all sorts of private American contractors from security to industrial.  WTF is right!  They have known for months what the timeline was and were most likely staying there to feed off the trough of U.S. government money for as long as possible.

[AU9377 4,977]

9 hours ago, creed said:

What a drum role conclusion statement! This writer is good.

 

It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.

 

Now who has the stones to write their representatives and tell them never again, no more and hold them accountable. Also, It's never too late to call those (political and milary leaders) from the past for questioning.

 

It is really sickening how much money we will pour into these countries. We tell the military to give us a number and we write the check. 

[AUDub 11,158]

Everything old is new again. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

[bigbird 60,571]

There's a reason so many don't trust the information the government tries to push out.  History is full of instances like this

[homersapien 11,393]

I wonder just how many Americans are aware of this:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/the-united-states-overthrew-irans-last-democratic-leader/

[PUB78 1,358]

On 8/17/2021 at 5:23 AM, DKW 86 said:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-government-lied-for-two-decades

The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan

Using the same deceitful tactics they pioneered in Vietnam, U.S. political and military officials repeatedly misled the country about the prospects for success in Afghanistan.

Glenn Greenwald 17 hr ago 545 578

 

The Taliban give an exclusive interview to Al Jazeera after taking control of the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021 (Al Jazeera/YouTube)

“The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds.  . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”

For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.

Just five weeks ago, on July 8, President Biden stood in the East Room of the White House and insisted that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable because, while their willingness to do so might be in doubt, “the Afghan government and leadership . . . clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.” Biden then vehemently denied the accuracy of a reporter’s assertion that “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.” Biden snapped: “That is not true.  They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.”

Biden continued his assurances by insisting that “the likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.” He went further: “the likelihood that there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” And then, in an exchange that will likely assume historic importance in terms of its sheer falsity from a presidential podium, Biden issued this decree:

Q.  Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan.  Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —

THE PRESIDENT:  None whatsoever.  Zero.  What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken. 

The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.  There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan.  It is not at all comparable. 

When asked about the Taliban being stronger than ever after twenty years of U.S. warfare there, Biden claimed: “Relative to the training and capacity of the [Afghan National Security Forces} and the training of the federal police, they’re not even close in terms of their capacity.” On July 21 — just three weeks ago — Gen. Mark Milley, Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that “there’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenario,” yet insisted: “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.”

Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war. “Are we losing this war?,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, asked rhetorically in a news briefing from Afghanistan in 2008, answering it this way: “Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.”

On September 4, 2013, then-Lt. Gen. Milley — now Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — complained that the media was not giving enough credit to the progress they had made in building up the Afghan national security forces: “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day,” Gen. Milley insisted.

None of this was true. It was always a lie,

designed first to justify the U.S’s endless occupation of that country and, then, once the U.S. was poised to withdraw, to concoct a pleasing fairy tale about why the prior twenty years were not, at best, an utter waste. That these claims were false cannot be reasonably disputed as the world watches the Taliban take over all of Afghanistan as if the vaunted “Afghan national security forces” were china dolls using paper weapons. But how do we know that these statements made over the course of two decades were actual lies rather than just wildly wrong claims delivered with sincerity?

---

To begin with, we have seen these tactics from U.S. officials — lying to the American public about wars to justify both their initiation and continuation — over and over. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was begun with a complete fabrication disseminated by the intelligence community and endorsed by corporate media outlets: that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In 2011, President Obama, who ultimately ignored a Congressional vote against authorization of his involvement in the war in Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi, justified the NATO war by denying that regime change was the goal: “our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives . . . broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Even as Obama issued those false assurances, The New York Times reported that “the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.”

Just as they did for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. political and military leaders lied for years to the American public about the prospects for winning in Vietnam. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times published reports about thousands of pages of top secret documents from military planners that came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers.” Provided by former RAND official Daniel Ellsberg, who said he could not in good conscience allow official lies about the Vietnam War to continue, the documents revealed that U.S. officials in secret were far more pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the North Vietnamese than their boastful public statements suggested. In 2021, The New York Times recalled some of the lies that were demonstrated by that archive on the 50th Anniversary of its publication:

Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.

“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”

That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”

Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam. The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. 

The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate.

The pattern of lying was virtually identical throughout several administrations when it came to Afghanistan. In 2019, The Washington Post — obviously with a nod to the Pentagon Papers — published a report about secret documents it dubbed “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.” Under the headline “AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH,” The Post summarized its findings: “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.” They explained:

Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.

In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”

None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable.

As the Post explained, “the documents contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” Those documents dispel any doubt about whether these falsehoods were intentional:

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

 

Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

---

In light of all this, it is simply inconceivable that Biden’s false statements last month about the readiness of the Afghan military and police force were anything but intentional. That is particularly true given how heavily the U.S. had Afghanistan under every conceivable kind of electronic surveillance for more than a decade. A significant portion of the archive provided to me by Edward Snowden detailed the extensive surveillance the NSA had imposed on all of Afghanistan. In accordance with the guidelines he required, we never published most of those documents about U.S. surveillance in Afghanistan on the ground that it could endanger people without adding to the public interest, but some of the reporting gave a glimpse into just how comprehensively monitored the country was by U.S. security services.

In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.

There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.

In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.

Any residual doubt about the falsity of those two decades of optimistic claims has been obliterated by the easy and lightning-fast blitzkrieg whereby the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan as if the vaunted Afghan military did not even exist, as if it were August, 2001 all over again. It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.

Like was said in 2001, after 9/11, we should build a wall around Afghanistan. Then fill it with water.

[1716AU 730]

War is profitable...

To a few.

Eisenhower warned us, and we ignored it to this country's peril.

People always think that the US looks a lot like Rome at the end of it's Imperial 'splendor." 

Nope.  It feels a lot like Athens just before they lost the Peloponesian War to Sparta.

That was not a great deal for Athens, and that did not turn out all that well.

But I 'll warrant most of you don't know about that

[AU9377 4,977]

On 8/19/2021 at 3:29 PM, homersapien said:

I wonder just how many Americans are aware of this:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/the-united-states-overthrew-irans-last-democratic-leader/

Doesn't that gloss over the revolution of 1979, after which the Shah fled? The Islamic revolution was upset that the Shah had adopted so many modern ways of doing things.  Prior to 1979, Iranians were the most educated open society in that part of the world (not including Israel).  I'm not so sure that it matters the form of government they have if that government is required to gain approval for its actions from religious clerics.  The problems associated with radical Islam are, unfortunately, likely to grow over the next few decades. Governments propped up by oil wealth will see less and less revenue, making their ability to provide for the needs of those they govern more difficult.

[AU9377 4,977]

3 hours ago, 1716AU said:

War is profitable...

To a few.

Eisenhower warned us, and we ignored it to this country's peril.

People always think that the US looks a lot like Rome at the end of it's Imperial 'splendor." 

Nope.  It feels a lot like Athens just before they lost the Peloponesian War to Sparta.

That was not a great deal for Athens, and that did not turn out all that well.

But I 'll warrant most of you don't know about that

That was a war, a civil war, between Athens and Sparta. We aren't remotely close to having a civil war.  If I was to imagine what one would look like, I would be forced to assume that Russia and China would back the authoritarian South and the free world would back the other side. Not being able to imagine that, I cannot imagine it actually happening.

[aubiefifty 16,822]

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

Lucas Kunce

Mon, August 23, 2021, 5:00 AM

 

 

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.

You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.

And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.

I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.

I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.

You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.

War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.

Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened this week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?

We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.

I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.

The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.

Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.

Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.

The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:

For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

[1716AU 730]

6 hours ago, AU9377 said:

That was a war, a civil war, between Athens and Sparta. We aren't remotely close to having a civil war.  If I was to imagine what one would look like, I would be forced to assume that Russia and China would back the authoritarian South and the free world would back the other side. Not being able to imagine that, I cannot imagine it actually happening.

I appreciate your view, but we ARE in the beginning of a civil war.  January 6 and this gentleman in front of the capitol are just a few examples of violent resistance.  

The incessant bs from Trump and his followers is an example.

The problem with this one is that it won't be defined by state lines on a map.

We sit on the edge, just as our ancestors did prior to the Rebellion in the 1860s.  

Not all wars follow your romantic vision.  

[DKW 86 7,431]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

 

 

Lucas Kunce

Mon, August 23, 2021, 5:00 AM

 

 

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.

You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.

And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.

I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.

I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.

You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.

War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.

Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened this week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?

We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.

I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.

The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.

Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.

Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.

The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:

For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Loved reading every bit of that. And some of you cant understand why a large segment of the American People do not believe a word our Pol leaders tell us? 
The American Political Heads and American Media Heads have been lying to us for two decades to prop up one of the biggest griffs in world history. And some wonder why no one believes a word our leaders say anymore? I would ask why you believe anything they say.

WMDs? Nope.
"Nation Building?" Nope, just graft and corruption stealing $TNs from the taxpayer. Some estimates run as high as 80%+ of the money went to bogus work and bogus workers and bogus Afghan Soldiers. 
The media actively invested in keeping this going for 20 years. 
Told us lie after lie about how well this was going. Just watched it all blow up in our faces.
I am actually very happy we are finally leaving. You cant get any better until you stop the bleeding.
Could it have been better managed? Yes!
But Biden et al were told over and over and over that there was this 300,000 man army ready and trained to fight. Truth is likely more like 3K than 300K.

If you believed our leaders, you were tricked and lied to.
If you continue to believe them without questioning every word, you are a braindead fool.
 

Edited August 23, 2021 by DKW 86

[DKW 86 7,431]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

H

Lucas Kunce

Mon, August 23, 2021, 5:00 AM

 

Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Prediction: This guy is about to get knee-capped by the DNC. You are never allowed to criticize anything related to the Washington DC Elites and live to fight another day. I bet it will be something like: we will have a few women he worked with suddenly coming forth with sexual assault allegations or something like that. The DNC and DC Elites cannot be crossed.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by DKW 86

[AU9377 4,977]

3 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

 

 

Lucas Kunce

Mon, August 23, 2021, 5:00 AM

 

 

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.

You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.

And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.

I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.

I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.

You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.

War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.

Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened this week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?

We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.

I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.

The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.

Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.

Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.

The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:

For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

AMEN TO THAT

[AUDub 11,158]

Wrong thread

Edited August 23, 2021 by AUDub

[aubiefifty 16,822]

13 hours ago, AU9377 said:

Doesn't that gloss over the revolution of 1979, after which the Shah fled? The Islamic revolution was upset that the Shah had adopted so many modern ways of doing things.  Prior to 1979, Iranians were the most educated open society in that part of the world (not including Israel).  I'm not so sure that it matters the form of government they have if that government is required to gain approval for its actions from religious clerics.  The problems associated with radical Islam are, unfortunately, likely to grow over the next few decades. Governments propped up by oil wealth will see less and less revenue, making their ability to provide for the needs of those they govern more difficult.

you are correct. also the iranian people loved america except for the religious hard liners. we left a lot of those guys hanging as well. a bunch of those guys died because they wanted to be more like americans as well.

[aubiefifty 16,822]

i would like to add i met a young man who was stationed over there and it broke his heart.