Thread by @DanLamothe

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.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/…

In this blockbuster, @CraigMWhitlock won a three-year FOIA fight.

"... 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 most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation."

The documents come from a frequent critic of the war: @SIGARHQ. But they fought public release.

"... The Post began seeking Lessons Learned interview records in August 2016. SIGAR refused, arguing that the documents were privileged and that the public had no right to see them."

"... Lessons Learned interviews contain numerous admissions that the government routinely touted statistics that officials knew were distorted, spurious or downright false."

As I sit here reading this, I recall writing stories from northern Helmand in 2012 about rank-and-file Marines who saw evidence that the Taliban would take right back over in towns the United States was vacating.

I got pushback from U.S. military officials afterward questioning whether these men and women knew what they were talking about.

Of course they did.

And that makes me think of everyone still grappling with their own Afghan war story, whether it's 18 years or six months old.

washingtonpost.com/world/national…