David, why don't you keep telling us about how much progress our mission in #Afghanistan has been making, like the tales you and your pals in the @pentagon spun to the American people for almost two decades? defenseone.com/threats/2021/0…
"A confidential trove of governments..reveals senior US officials failed to tell the truth about war in Afghanistan throughout 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false & hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable" washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/…
“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?”
"Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by US govt to deliberately mislead public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul & White House to distort statistics to make it appear US was winning the war when that was not the case."
"By allowing corruption to fester, U.S. officials said, they helped destroy popular legitimacy of wobbly Afghan government they were fighting to prop up. With judges, police chiefs& bureaucrats extorting bribes,many Afghans soured on democracy & turned to Taliban to enforce order
“It was impossible to create good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory & none of it painted an accurate picture,” the senior NSC official told interviewers in 2016. “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”
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