THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS

THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS
PART 1. AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH

US officials constantly said they were making progress.
They were not, and they knew it.

By Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post - Craig Whitlock specializes in national security issues. Reported from more than 60 countries.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior US officials [lied] about the war in Afghanistan, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false, and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents include notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats, to aid workers and Afghan officials.

Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general -  served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations:

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing, What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction.; 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of US military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

Jeffrey Eggers - retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama

“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion? After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

Bob Crowley - Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to US military commanders in 2014

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible. Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

James Dobbins - former senior US diplomat, served as a special envoy to Afghanistan under Bush and Obama.

“We don’t invade poor countries to make them rich. We don’t invade authoritarian countries to make them democratic. We invade violent countries to make them peaceful and we clearly failed in Afghanistan.”

PART 2: Stranded without a strategy. Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war.

PART 3: Built to fail. Despite vows the US wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building,” it has wasted billions doing just that

PART 4: Consumed by corruption. The US flooded the country with money.

PART 5: Unguarded nation. Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were incompetent and corrupt.

PART 6: Overwhelmed by opium. The US war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn

INTERVIEWS AND MEMOS: Explore the documents.

POST REPORTS: ‘We didn’t know what the task was’.

MORE STORIES: A visual timeline of the war.

Interviewees respond.

 Share your story about the war:  (Kerry's Story: MY VERY VERY BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD COMMITTED SUICIDE STATESIDE AFTER A TOUR IN IRAQ, AS THE LINE MEDIC IN 2ND PLATOON. MEDICS SEE THE WORST OF THE WORST ALL DAY LONG. BABIES WITH BODY PARTS MISSING, PARENTS SCREAMING AT HIM IN AFGHAN, HIS PLATOON MEN SHOUTING, 'FIX MY BUDDY FIRST!")