Washington (CNN)Confidential documents obtained by The Washington Post reveal that top US officials misled the American public about the war in Afghanistan in order to conceal doubts about the likelihood that the US could be successful in the nearly 20-year effort since its earliest days, the paper reported in a major investigation on Monday.
…
The paper said the interviews “bring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persist to this day” as “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.”
…
n one such case, the Post said Douglas Lute, “a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar” under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told interviewers “we were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing.”
…
In comparing the new documents to the Pentagon Papers, the Post said that “throughout the Afghan war, documents show that U.S. military officials have resorted to an old tactic from Vietnam — manipulating public opinion.”
…
“From the ambassadors down to the low level, [they all say] we are doing a great job,” Flynn told interviewers, the Post said. “Really? So if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing?”
The Post said that John Sopko, the head of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which oversaw the “Lessons Learned” project, told the paper that the report shows “the American people have constantly been lied to.”
Navy Vet
Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/09/politics/washington-post-afghanistan-war-investigation/index.html