Thread by @RollingStone

From the invasion of Iraq to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, for 20 years Rolling Stone has been reporting on the War on Terror sparked by September 11th. Here’s a thread of our most impactful work, chronicling two decades of death, deception, and catastrophic failure.

In 2003, @evanscribe rode along for the invasion of Iraq with an elite, ultraviolent Marine platoon. "I’m a death-dealing killer," one screamed. "In my free time I do push-ups until my knuckles bleed. Then I sharpen my knife.” rol.st/3twkN1D

.@janetreitman took us inside the second battle of Fallujah, where disillusionment was already entrenched in the ranks. “There is no global war on terrorism,” one soldier said. “This is about propaganda and changing the way people think.” rol.st/3l8QlGQ

At the heart of the story that brought down General McChrystal was the revelation that military leaders were already predicting failure: “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win, or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument.” rol.st/2YNLB25

After a group of U.S. soldiers started murdering Afghan civilians for sport, collecting body parts as trophies, Rolling Stone obtained the photos and published them, along with a haunting narrative of their crimes. rol.st/39ejUBD

In 2012, Rolling Stone published the definitive first account of Bowe Bergdahl, who was disgusted by the military's treatment of Afghans and captured by the Taliban after wandering away from his unit. rol.st/3E8wuR6

.@mattaikins traveled to Afghanistan for this 2013 dispatch investigating alleged war crimes and the elite special forces team that was accused of torturing and murdering civilians. rol.st/3liDkuq

"The boomtown Kabul of the Surge has come and gone like a dream."

In what Obama had promised would be the last year of the war in Afghanistan, the relative safety of Kabul was pierced by escalating attacks on foreign civilians. rol.st/2YNNc85

By 2015, America was at war with ISIS, which was actively recruiting children from the U.S. “If you’re a Muslim-American teenager, America has been at war with the Muslims for as long as you’ve been conscious,” one expert told @janetreitman. rol.st/38WHHFQ

In 2015, Guantanamo Bay had become a perfect emblem of the War or Terror, a mistake nobody knew how to fix. “The people there are just following orders, and their orders are to ride it out until it collapses,” one official told @janetreitman rol.st/3k1YiOU

In the fight against ISIS, U.S. operations hit new levels of black-ops secrecy. Seth Harp embedded with Kurdish militia members in Raqqa to report on the siege of the ISIS capital. rol.st/3BUhMv0

Was Bilal Abdul Kareem, a U.S. citizen and journalist, on America's "kill list"? After five near-miss drone strikes in Syria, he believed so. @mtaibbi reported on Kareem's landmark lawsuit to preserve due process. rol.st/3yXyYhi

.@JasonMotlagh told the story of Trump's betrayal of the Kurds, our allies in defeating ISIS, through Hevrin Khalaf, a rising young political star preaching pluralism who was assassinated by a Turkish-backed militia. rol.st/3E7RmYq

The futility of America's nation-building in Afghanistan was embodied by Highway 1, the $300 million showpiece that became a bomb-blasted, Taliban-besieged symbol of America's failure. rol.st/3lfdBmJ

In the summer of 2021, as district after district fell to the Taliban, @JasonMotlagh reported from the front lines of the northern city of Kunduz as Afghanistan’s government forces made their last stand. ​​rol.st/3leVXzF