Brigadier General Larry Nicholson addressed Marines before they conducted a helicopter assault into Marja, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesDan De Luce, Foreign Policy: Did the Pentagon Cook the Books on Its Afghanistan Intel?
The military has been accused of fudging the numbers in the fight against the Islamic State. Congress wants to know if it did with the Taliban too.
Lawmakers are probing whether senior U.S. military officers skewed intelligence reports about Afghanistan, raising new questions about whether policymakers can trust the accuracy of the Pentagon’s assessments of the nation’s wars.
The investigation, which has not been reported previously, adds a new dimension to the politically explosive scandal hanging over the military’s Central Command, where top officers stand accused of deliberately skewing their analysis of the campaign against the Islamic State to exaggerate successes while downplaying serious setbacks.
The allegations of the Pentagon cooking the books about both Afghanistan and the Islamic State will be at the center of a new congressional probe led by the leaders of three of the most powerful committees on Capitol Hill. Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee, told Foreign Policy that he and the chairmen of the House Armed Services Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee are forming a task force “to investigate numerous allegations of the manipulation of intelligence by Centcom officials.”
WNU Editor: What I find interesting about this case is its similarities to the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, in which President George W. Bush’s White House was accused of misusing intelligence and hyping the threat posed by dictator Saddam Hussein .... and in the end paid dearly for it politically. Even Barack Obama as a presidential candidate slammed the Bush administration over this issue. Will the same outrage now be applied to President Obama's administration and is Afghan policy for the past 7 years? I am willing to bet not.
3 comments:
WNU Editor,
The Office of Special Plans was set up in the White House's basement to cook the Intel.
During the Bush First term, the "Office" was dissolved, because the Pentagon , State and the Alphabet Agencies had learned their lessons, the "dissenters" had been forced to retire or had been fired, the new whistleblower rules had been enacted with several noted crucifixions,
And cooking the Intel had been internalized to all the Departments.
Obama "inherited " that mess, and did nothing to "fix" it, his appointments of Ambassadors and others show's he embraced it enthusiastically.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/19/tangled-threads-of-us-false-narratives/
Even during the run up to the Iraq War, a careful reading of many of the "left wing" US "anti war" sites made it pretty clear, they were not anti-war, they were anti-Republican War.
Many in the actual anti-war left learned once again , that there are no substantive differences between Libs/Cons, Dems/Repubs on the subject of war, just petty differences over the numbers of bombs and numbers of boots to be distributed,
And have moved on, to other actions, like #BLM, or the guys who crowd fund odious debt retirement, or make ShelterBoxes, places where they think they might make a difference, even if it's just a tiny one.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/20/the-war-on-terror-has-been-lost/
Jay. I stopped talking it a year or two ago .... but I always questioned where did the anti-war protesters go when President Obama was elected. We all know the answer .... it was more that many were anti-Republican war rather than anti-war.
WNU Editor,
A lot of the anti-war protestors, after the election of Obama, moved on to Occupy, to try to push for the economic change promised by Obama, and got crushed, figuratively and literally.
Those who could not afford to fight the spurious charges for decades through the Apellate Court System, were required to take plea deals which required their permenent surrender of their 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th Amendment Rights.
Gen.Y and the Millenial's learned (once again), that you cannot challenge the National Security State with peacefull protest, and voting really doesn't matter. The Wars will only end when the State can no longer economically afford them.
You will only see large anti war protests again, in another 50 years, when new generations have to relearn the old lessons the hard way.
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