Key Takeaways in Newly Released Documents Detailing Failures of War in Afghanistan – The New York Times

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Eight years later, United States troops remain in Afghanistan — leaving many Americans to wonder why.

“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,” an unidentified official told investigators in 2015. The official was later identified by The Post as Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL who oversaw Afghanistan and Pakistan issues on the White House National Security Council during the Bush and Obama administrations.

Officials in Washington sought for years to assure the world that the American-led war in Afghanistan was succeeding — despite rough patches along the way.

John F. Sopko, who runs the inspector general’s office, told The Post that the documents reveal that is not true.

“The American people have constantly been lied to,” Mr. Sopko said.

In June 2006, a retired Army general, Barry R. McCaffrey, who had just returned from a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, warned that the situation was so tenuous that the entire effort could “collapse again into mayhem” without American support.

But that’s not how the United States government portrayed the campaign. Time and again, military officials, diplomats, cabinet secretaries and presidents have voiced optimism about the war in Afghanistan and urged the public to continue supporting it.

In fact, the “truth was rarely welcome,” an unnamed retired Army colonel told investigators in 2016. He was later identified as Bob Crowley, an American military adviser in Kabul.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/world/asia/afghanistan-war-documents-takeaways.html

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