Hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict.
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Two major claims in the documents are that US officials manipulated statistics to suggest to the American public that the war was being won and that successive administrations turned a blind eye to widespread corruption among Afghan officials, allowing the theft of US aid with impunity.
The long-term nature of the manipulation of statistics was detailed in an interview with an individual identified only as a senior “National Security Council official”.
The long-term nature of the manipulation of statistics was detailed in an interview with an individual identified only as a senior “National Security Council official”.
“It was impossible to create good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture,” the official told interviewers in 2016. “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”
The papers depict the view of many people of a conflict with vague and unachievable war aims, pursued under three US presidents, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, whose alleged successes were presented repeatedly in inflated terms.
In one scathing assessment Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who served as the White House Afghan war tsar during the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations, told interviewers in 2015: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing.”
The papers depict the view of many people of a conflict with vague and unachievable war aims, pursued under three US presidents, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, whose alleged successes were presented repeatedly in inflated terms.
In one scathing assessment Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who served as the White House Afghan war tsar during the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations, told interviewers in 2015: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing.”
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