According to a recent report published in the Washington Post, hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the American public has been consistently misled about this unwinnable war. The papers depict a conflict with vague and unachievable aims, pursued under George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald tRump, whose successes were presented repeatedly in inflated terms.

So this story should have been broadcast far and wide across the country, right?

Major headlines: AFGHAN WAR A COMPLETE FAILURE…PENTAGON OFFICIALS ADMIT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN UNWINNABLE…WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION ALLEGED IN ILLEGAL WAR…huh?

But we got nothing of the sort. No 60 Minutes special report…no 20/20, nothing on CNN or MSNBC. The story was buried faster than the Jeffery Epstein saga.

If the myth of the ‘liberal media’ were true that would certainly not be the case.

In a free country, this huge fucking bombshell would have sparked major public outrage, and investigations would be demanded by concerned citizens and legislators alike. But in the USA the story made the news cycle for about 36 hours and then went away.

The newly-released documents have echoes of the Pentagon Papers – the secret history of the Vietnam War which were leaked in 1971. They told a similarly predictable story of cover-up and military failure.

The 2,000 pages of documents reveal the bleak assessments of many insiders in a conflict which has already cost over a trillion dollars and killed more than 2,300 US servicemen and women, with more than 20,000 injured.

If only the American people had actually been made aware of it, we might actually give a shit…

Hundreds of confidential interviews revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict. But no, the most important story of the decade was quietly sent down the newshole in the wake of the IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS. Nice timing, that. Strange, perhaps.  Just in time for a new 1.7 trillion–dollar bipartisan defense budget to be approved with zero debate, too!

Every year, Pentagon officials stand before the media and the politicians – all jutting jaws and feeble minds – to say that this year is going to be the decisive one against the Taliban. But the reality was that the US never figured out what it was trying to do in Afghanistan, so it lied about it as usual.

In one scathing assessment, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, who served as the White House’s Afghan war Czar under Bush and Obama, told interviewers “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing…if the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction…2,400 lives lost…”

They knew exactly what they were doing, though: namely, creating a huge profit center for the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC); one which continues to this day.

John Sopko, the head of SIGAR – the organization overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Afghanistan – told WAPO that “the American people have constantly been lied to.” Gosh, you think? Say it ain’t so, John.

Let’s face it: lying about war is as American as apple pie. What would really be news is if the US government actually told the fucking truth about a war – now that would be news!

According to the documents, US officials manipulated statistics to suggest 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.

Some of those interviewed by the SIGAR project went even further, suggesting a deliberate effort to alter statistics on the war to convince the American public that it was winning.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” said Bob Crowley, an army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to US military commanders in 2013 and 2014.

But while tRump is by far the most loathsome “president” we’ve ever had, George W Bush still takes the cake for damage to our country. He (meaning Cheney and his handlers) took us to war with two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, destabilizing the entire Middle East for decades to come. More profits for the death merchants!

The full extend of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11 was never really known. But at long last, after many people suffered and died, bin Laden – a Saudi – was simply murdered in Pakistan, where he had been hiding out for years. Pakistan is supposedly a key US ally. Obviously, he had been living in that country for quite some time. Yet nobody considered invading Pakistan. Curious, isn’t it?

The Taliban had pretty much eradicated opium production in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion, so the CIA was unhappy that a prime funding source dried up. Predictably, opium production was soon up to record levels in the region following the occupation.

Hard to see where the good guys were in all that. Making the already rich richer is not something to fight for…but that is what war is really for.

The MIC, politicians, the mainstream media (MSM) and we as citizens – are all to blame. The military planners for having no real strategy and for being too stupid to admit they were losing with no idea how to turn it around; the politicians for being too dependent on bribes from defense contractors to call out our utterly incompetent military for the ongoing failures; the press and MSM for being embedded (literally) with the military and acting as nothing more than unquestioning cheerleaders for a clearly failed strategy.

This whole episode is a terrible indictment of the USA, on so many levels…but like, where is the public outcry? Where are all the anti-war protests? Where are the Congressional investigations? Could they not see, or don’t they care? Either way it’s pathetic. And chilling.

No more wars means the MIC can’t function, and without the MIC, America is screwed. That’s why we aren’t allowed to even KNOW about all the shit we do…

The USA: ‘Asshole of Democracy.’